Welcome to the relaunched CountyRugby website.
This site is dedicated to the English County
Championship. In the old amateur days the County
Championship was the main competitive event in the
English rugby calendar. Although it has diminished in
importance over the years it continues in the form of
the Bill Beaumont Cup.
I first started this site back in 2007 with the object
of providing a record of the County Championship. The
first stage was a list of all county championship finals
from 1896 to the present day with dates, scores and
ground where played. It also included a number of
historic rugby programmes.
On many occasions I had searched the web for information
on memorable matches from the Championship but the best
I could find was a list of winners from 1960 onwards. No
scores of the finals, nor even the names of the runners
up. One of the proudest counties, Cornwall, has a number
of web sites dedicated to its rugby heritage. Their
victorious years of 1908 and 1991 as well as their loss
in the final of 1969 are well documented. But I could
find no record of their epic and ultimately tragic
semi-final struggle with Surrey in 1967 which lasted
over three matches. (Tragic for Cornwall as Surrey
won!). I still remember the first replay at Richmond as
one of the greatest rugby matches I have ever seen,
ending in a 14 all draw thanks to a last minute
touch-line conversion by the late Roger Hosen.
Having spent many hours researching the results of all
County Championship finals from 1896 to the present day
and publishing them on this website, I was disappointed
when someone copied the whole lot virtually word for
word and figure for figure and put it all on Wikipedia.
It was some years before I got round to updating the
site. Now with a new server and a new design
countyrugby.com lives again!
Feedback is welcome. We now have a "Contact" button! I
would like to publish more match programmes, although
scanning them is an arduous task. Personal memories of
matches and players as well as old photographs could
also find a place on the site.
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