Established in 1950, the East Africa rugby union team is a multi-national rugby union team drawing players from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; however, the vast majority of these came from Kenya, which has traditionally been the strongest rugby playing nation in the region. The team has played against incoming international, representative and club touring sides and it conducted seven tours between 1954 and 1982.
Though East Africa do play under the Tuskers nickname, it is used exclusively when they are on tour; for all matches played at home they are referred to as East Africa. This tradition has come into being because the team had existed for five years by the time of the first external tour in 1954 when the touring side adopted the Tuskers moniker, as have all subsequent tours.
For 30 years, the team lay dormant, though the Rugby Football Union of East Africa (RFUEA) continued to exist as the governing body of rugby within the three countries, until (on 9 July 2011 at an event at the RFUEA Ground) the team was re-launched by Mwangi Muthee (Chairman of the Kenya Rugby Football Union), William Blick (President of the Uganda Rugby Union), George Kariuki (Rugby Football Union of East Africa) and John Lloyd (Rugby Patrons Society). The team played its first fixture in almost exactly 30 years against England Counties XV at the RFUEA grounds in early June 2012.
Early history The first union in British East Africa was the Rugby Football Union of Kenya (RFU-K), founded in August 1921;Campbell (1960) pp 51 it was responsible for the administration of the game throughout Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika which it carried out through various district sub-unions throughout the region. Several universities and Royal Navy ships sent teams to tour East Africa during this period. The Combined South African Universities toured in 1929.Godwin (1981) pp 21 In 1935, Danie Craven captained Stellenbosch University on a tour of the region;Godwin (1981) pp 22 though none of these encounters included a match against a representative East Africa team.
The first representative team called East Africa are recorded facing the Cape Town University team that toured the region in late 1949 early 1950.Godwin (1981) pp 23 Three matches were played in January 1950, East Africa losing each encounter. At this time, the East Africa team represented the colonies of British East Africa (Kenya Colony, Tanganyika and Uganda Protectorate) and the players were predominantly white settlers.Bath, Richard (ed.) The Complete Book of Rugby (Seven Oaks Ltd, 1997 ) p 70 (it was not until the 1960s that rugby's popularity spread and indigenous players started to take up the game; with time the East African team has seen a commensurate increase in the numbers of black players being selected).
In 1953, the Rugby Football Union of East Africa (RFUEA) was created in order to take over the mantle as the umbrella organisation for rugby in the region. The creation of the RFUEA allowed for the formation of the Tanganyika Rugby Football Union (TRFU) in 1954 and Uganda Rugby Football Union (URFU) in 1955. Each of these were essentially a sub-union of the RFUEA much as the district unions in Kenya were, so the RFU-K was dissolved in 1956 allowing the already existing district unions to deal directly with the RFUEA.
The formation of the RFUEA was just in time for the East Africa representative side's first tour, the First Tuskers Tour of the Copperbelt in 1954. It also gave the team slightly more official status though little, if anything, had changed with regard to the management of the team. Tuskers tours to the Copperbelt became somewhat of a tradition, six of the eight Tuskers tours have been to this rugby stronghold in southern Africa; a region that can provide an appropriate level of opposition and at a distance that does not strain the purse-strings of the players and unions alike. The only Tuskers tours not to the Copperbelt were to England (1966) and Ireland (1972).
A year after the first tour, East Africa faced the British Lions in the first game played at the recently constructed headquarters of East African rugby, the RFUEA Ground and during the next six years welcomed other touring sides from the United Kingdom and South Africa including the Barbarians and South Africa and several prestigious university and military teams.
The Second Tuskers Tour took place in 1962 and again East Africa's first game at home after returning from a tour was against the British Lions. Between 1963 and 1966 several clubs and universities toured East Africa and played against the full representative side including, in 1964, Wales. Tours from South Africa were no longer welcomed as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were participating in the boycott protesting the apartheid regime in that country.
In the six years between the Third (1966) and Fourth (1972) Tuskers tours, 15 high-profile clubs from the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic toured the region and played matches against East Africa, including Richmond FC, Blackheath FC, Harlequins FC and Blackrock College RFC, several touring twice in those year.
After the fifth Tuskers tour, there was only one more British club to visit East Africa because the Rugby Football Union refused to participate in the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa; as a result clubs administered by the RFU were no longer welcome. It is during this period that East Africa saw an increase in touring sides from France (including ACBB, Club Sportif Municipal (CSM) Clamart and ASCO ONERA), Italy (Including Rugby Roma Olimpic), Argentina (Old Georgians and various islands in the Indian Ocean (Réunion and Mauritius).
Major Internationals When the British Lions went to South Africa for their 1955Kenya Rugby Historical Highlights at kenyarfu.com retrieved 24 August 2009 and 1962 tours, they played East Africa in Nairobi on the return legs of their journeys. The Lions won both of these games, 39–12Thomas (2001) pp100-117 and 50–0Thomas (2001) pp127-133 respectively. The 1955 game was East Africa's first international and also saw the official opening of the team's home stadium, the RFUEA Ground,IRB Junior World Rugby Trophy IRB.com then called the Ngong Road Ground.Godwin (1981) p 24
In 1958, East Africa hosted the Barbarians on their first tour of Africa. The Barbarians, managed by Brigadier Glyn Hughes and captained by Scotland's Jim Greenwood, took in six matches, the first five all played in South Africa, but the final match of the tour was against East Africa.Starmer-Smith (1977) p 204 The game was played on 28 May, with the Barbarians winning 58–12, Tony O'Reilly scoring seven tries.Starmer-Smith (1977) p 236
East Africa would also play against South Africa in 1961 (losing 39–0),RFUEA (1975) p 37 and Wales on their 1964 tour of Africa. Wales' game, held at the RFUEA Ground, Nairobi, on 12 May 1964, was the first time that they had played a match outside of EuropeWales Rugby Tour to South Africa 1964 at rugbyrelics.com retrieved 7 June 2010 and therefore also their first in the Southern Hemisphere,Billot (1974); Smith (1980) albeit a mere hundred miles from the Equator. Wales won the match, 26–8.
Prior to the introduction of standard numbering systems, many teams would wear numbers (or in the case of Bristol RFC and Leicester FC, letters) in a different order to that known today. The first set of East African jerseys was numbered from fullback (1) to scrum-half (7) followed by loosehead prop (8) to Number-8 (15). It must also be remembered that prior to the innovation, by Sherborne School, in the 1960s of using the hooker to throw the ball into the line-out, this was the job of the winger. Thus there are photos of East African matches with the unusual combination of a winger, numbered 2 or 5, throwing in to a line of eight forwards, numbered 8 to 15.
British Lions 1955 Sources:
Five and a half years after their first match against the University of Cape Town, East Africa played their first international match against the British Lions, as they returned home from their 1955 tour of South Africa.
The Rugby Football Union of East Africa (RFUEA) took the opportunity of the 1955 match to invite the Lions manager (J.A.E. Siggins) to officially open their newly built national stadium, the RFUEA Ground (then called the Ngong Road Ground) prior to kick-off. The capacity crowd of 6000 was treated to a magnificent display of running handling rugby that had characterised the tourists' games in South Africa.
According to the match programme, East Africa fielded seven players who were winning their first cap, Brodziak, Chambers, Darroch, MacLean, Meintjes, Tippett and Wheeler. In addition East Africa selected two reserves and the Lions one; although substitutions were not allowed it was usual to select reserves at this time in case a player did not arrive on time or was unable to start the match. The match programme also states that Frank Sykes (Northampton & ), Robin Roe (Lansdowne & ) and Tom Reid (Garryowen & ) had been selected to play this match, but the Lions' archives suggest that ultimately they did not. It appears that the reserve Bryn Meredith and Billy Williams (who had been assigned as the Lions touch-judge) were called upon to start in place of Roe and R.H. Williams while D.G.S. Baker was required to fill in for Sykes. East Africa took the field as advertised in the programme.
One of the contemporary match reports was written by Tony Coxall, a 13-year-old pupil from Arusha School in Tanzania who attended the match as part of a school trip in which twenty boys undertook the five-and-a-half-hour, journey to Nairobi in a 1.5 ton lorry. In this report it is stated that the Lions scored two tries before East Africa answered with a penalty and that at half time the score was 6–19. It also states that the seats cost 1 shilling each and that the crowd were entertained by the band of the Royal Irish Fusiliers at half-time.
As was usual for touring teams visiting East Africa during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the Lions were given private hospitality as opposed to staying in hotels. Cliff Morgan, Haydn Morris and Gareth Griffiths (all players with Cardiff RFC) stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur "Pat" Bryant, who had played for Cardiff prior to World War I, and who was an official of the East African Rugby Union. He had refereed for the RFUEA (in his blue and black Cardiff jersey) until his retirement at about 63 years of age. The tourists also encountered another former Cardiff player from the 1940s, Captain Howell Loveluck who was in Kenya as chaplain to the British Forces stationed there at the time of the Mau Mau Uprising.
There is a frequently repeated urban legendCain, Nick & Growden, Greg "Chapter 21: Ten Peculiar Facts about Rugby" in Rugby Union for Dummies (2nd Edition), p 294 (pub: John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, England) Cotton, p 111 that Idi Amin (later to become the infamous military dictator of Uganda) was selected as a replacement by East Africa for their match against the 1955 British Lions. The story is entirely unfounded, he does not appear on the team list or in the team photograph and replacements were first introduced into international rugby 13 years after this event is supposed to have taken place. Mike Gibson of Ireland is generally recognised as being the first ever replacement in a rugby union match (he came on for the injured Barry John during the first test in Pretoria on the 1968 British Lions tour to South Africa). The first replacement for East Africa was Douglas "Dougie" Hamilton who came on in the 1968 match versus Queen's University (Belfast) R.F.C.