1960s Overview

Club History Article – 1960’s Extract

By 1961 the Club had expanded its playing membership, fielding four sides and as a result of this, the Committee secured two new pitches on the former allotments on what is now the Neville Playing Fields. Lacerations to the knees and other body parts was common place and the A & E department at the former Hove General Hospital was always kept busy stitching up the wounded.

In those early years Hove gained a reputation as a good social club; girlfriends and wives providing the after-match meals, players entertaining the opposition and consuming quantities of Watneys Red Barrel, a brew fortunately long forgotten. We had a somewhat uneasy relationship with our neighbours living in Goldstone Crescent, variously members being accused of indecent exposure, (a well known member of the property profession), intoxication (most of the playing members and the opposition) and noise (the raucous sound of Eskimo Nell and O’Reilly’s Daughter echoing across the park). Presiding over this period of free expression was that bastion of Hove Rugby Club, Charles Phillip Lungley known to all as ‘CP’.

A knowledgeable former Member of Blackheath RFC, CP ruled the Selection Committee with a rod of iron. Usually there was an ‘old crusty’ on the touchline seconded by CP to watch the lower sides for hidden talent. This was deemed necessary, as the more ambitious captains would often field their better players under a pseudonym. The now defunct Brighton & Hove Herald, which printed the names (and their initials) of the players of each team fielded, on one occasion, included an unknown Hove player in the B team who had the curious initials, A.R.S.Hole. The Selection Committee sat in the club every Sunday morning during the season at 10.30am. CP, his fellow selectors and the Captains discussed the previous day’s activities and agreed the team selection after which players `were admitted at around midday to see if they had been promoted or dropped in the team sheets displayed. Sunday morning was another good excuse and CP sat in his chair drinking gin and a dash of tonic dispensing words of wisdom equally to those on an upward path and those awarded the pig’s ear.

Acknowledgement

Once again, my thanks to the estates of Jonathan Boreham, Graham Gordon and George Fawcett for the handbooks and ephemera. Others have also kindly provided items for this decade.

Teams

The table below shows the teams that competed on behalf of the Club during the 60s. You will see that the Bs became the Beefeaters in 1967-1968 but then expansion caused the creation of a 5th team – named the Bs – the very next year. The Yeomen became the new  name for the Extra A (which you may recall was the new name for the original Bs).

It would seem in the early days that every time you created a new team it had a default name of a letter with or without the word Extra until a real name was dreamed up!

You will see in 1965-1966 that the word Colts started to be used. Now to me that means people not yet 18 but they also call it the Extra Bs – I will see if I can get any further info as to whether we had started a youth team or if this was just naming errors.

Old Name	New Name	Gender	Founded	Club Level	Renamed To	When	Last Seen
	1st XV	Men	1952-1953	1		Assumed
	A XV	Men	1952-1953	2		Assumed
B XV	Extra A XV	Men	1959-1960	3	Yeomen	1962-1963
	B XV	Men	1960-1961	4	Beefeaters	1967-1968
	New B XV	Men	1959-1960	5
	Extra B XV / Colts	Men	1965-1966	5/6			1966-1967

1960’s Alumni

The table below inludes people who played for Hove and either gone on to higher things or come to us after theirhigher level careers.

Player	Hove Dates	County Honours	Divisional Honours	Professional Honours	National Honours	Where Now
Simon Clarke - Born 02/04/1938	1957-1960	Unknown	Unknown	1960-1963 Cambridge University, After 1965 to Blackheath, Bath and Yokohama (Japan)	1963-1965 13 Caps for England. 1963 Five Nations Championship	Died 2017 aged 79

Governance

The table below shows the Committees and Sub-committees that formed the Club Governance during the 1960s. No new committees in this decade, but the Fixture Committee did cease to exist after 1962-1963. The work was taken over by the Fixture Secretary,

Committee	Date Founded	Didn't Sit	Last Operated	Comments / Role
General	Original			Main Committee
Finance & General Purpose	Original
House & Wine	Original
Social	Original
Selection	Original			All Senior Teams
Fixtures	Original		1962-1963	Taken over by individual
Schools	1956-1957	1967-1968 to 1970-1971

Points

Please note that throughout the 1960s the points awarded for a try remained at 3 points. The points awarded for a conversion remained at 2 points and the points awarded for both a penalty goal and a drop goal remained at 3 points.