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Sportsmen of the Somme - The emergency man of rugby league

In the final profile of our Sportsmen of the Somme series, Peter Bloor focuses on Billy Jarman, who played Rugby in the Northern Union, the competition that was created after the split from Rugby Union, which would later be known as Rugby League. Peter reflects on Billy’s noted versatility on the pitch and his fate at the Somme.

One of the best dozen forwards in the Northern Union?

The selection of the Leeds forward Billy Jarman for the 1914 Northern Union tour of Australia and New Zealand came towards the end of a season in which he had seemed to drop out of contention for representative honours. He had not played for England against Wales in February, a match from which none of the best players in the Northern Union withdrew, knowing that it was in effect a trial match and that they were playing for tour places, all of which made for a fast, competitive and high-quality game played in front of an attendance of 10,000.

By contrast Billy’s only representative honour that season had come in December 1913 when he had played for an injury-weakened Yorkshire in a poor Northern Union County Championship match against Lancashire at Huddersfield. Yorkshire won 19-11 but the match had generated little interest - just 3500 attended - and decided nothing, all three teams - Cumberland was the other - winning one match and losing the other.

“William Jarman, forward and general emergency player”

A forward rush led by Billy had begun the move for one of Yorkshire’s five tries but the England forwards in the Wales match had been impressive in both the scrum and the loose, and at club level Billy was playing for an erratic Leeds, yet at the end of March he was still selected for the tour.

In a distinctly moderate season in which Leeds finished joint ninth of twenty-five teams Billy had been the forwards’ driving force in a win against Batley and a victory over Halifax, when he was quick to follow up and tackle once the scrum had broken up, as he was in a spirited defeat to third-placed Huddersfield. He was equally tireless in a Yorkshire Cup defeat to Wakefield Trinity and in a somewhat unexpected victory over Wigan at Headingley, when he allied unflagging effort with passing as skilful as that of a three-quarter.

“Jarman was a sort of general utility man to Leeds”

He was also one of Leeds’ best players in a 10-0 defeat at Salford but at centre, for Billy was also versatile and when there was a gap to fill, an emergency to avert or even an experiment to conduct Billy was the man to whom Leeds turned. At Oldham he switched to half-back for fifteen minutes before Jimmy Sanders returned with his head bandaged, and into the three-quarters at Dewsbury for most of the match after an injury to Belfred Ward, for whom Billy made a perfectly able substitute, albeit in defeat. Such moves did not always succeed though, as they did not against Hull when Billy worked hard at centre but gave a pass that was intercepted and led to a try in a match Leeds only won 7-6, nor against Hull Kingston Rovers when it was clear that he lacked the pace to play on the wing.

“Jarman as chief jester”

However successful or otherwise he may have been, Billy was undeniably versatile, and this it seems was what appealed to a Selection Committee seeking insurance against the possibility of injury to both of the players they had selected for each position. He was also a good tourist, being an energetic participant in deck sports and the accompanist on a melodeon he bought in Marseilles to the dances that were held on deck. In the evenings he was also a hugely popular performer of comic songs in the concerts that the players and passengers arranged and continued in his role as team jester when the party toured a pineapple plantation near Brisbane, where Billy asked if the pineapples were grown in tins but lost all interest in the answer when invited to sample a few.

‘Other players to win renown included Jarman…’

Billy did play most of his matches on tour as a forward but if the selectors had chosen him for his versatility they were vindicated in only the second match against Metropolis when Alf Wood left the field with an injured foot and Billy took over at full-back. He played an excellent game and deputised again, this time from the start, against Ipswich when Wood and the other full-back Gwyn Thomas were injured. Billy also stood in for Thomas in the first Test against Australia, when he played with marked skill and resolve but did miss a conversion from in front of the posts - the Northern Union nevertheless won 23-5 - before reverting to a forward position just two days later, when they lost 12-7.

He was injured for the third Test but recovered to play in the first three matches of the New Zealand leg of the tour against Wellington, Hawkes Bay and Taranaki but not in the Test or against New South Wales, the last match of a tour on which he had played in eleven of the eighteen matches, including two of the four Test Matches.

“Jarman, the Leeds forward, reported killed”

By that time war had been declared and Billy, a former regular soldier and now a reservist, was given twenty-four hours from his return to report to his regiment, the Scots Guards in London. 

Billy was once again the man for an emergency, but this was not one he could meet immediately having sprained his knee when performing a handspring on board the ship home which rolled just as he was landing. Found temporarily unfit, it was not until November 1914, two months later, that Billy was posted to the 3rd Scots Guards, which remained his unit until he was transferred to the 2nd and embarked for France in May 1916. Just three months later, on 15th August, he was killed near Bus-Les-Artois on the Somme when the trench he was occupying was shelled during the night and blown in. Billy was killed not while taking part in any great attack, nor while defending a position, but while filling a gap and holding the line, as he done for Leeds and for the Northern Union in Australia.

References

The information and quotes in this article are taken from the Athletic News, the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Leeds Mercury and other Yorkshire and Lancashire local newspapers 1913-1916. 

Billy’s appearances for Leeds in 1913-14 and on the tour of Australasia also taken from the Rugby League project site, and his service with the Scots Guards from his service record and the Battalion War Diary held at The National Archives.

Images: Recruiting poster Imperial War Museum reference IWM PST4486, Scots Guards colour and cap badge Players 1930, banner image Boguslavsky 1925.