How it all Began

We caught up with OA Ed Mahon to find out more about how the Boxing Day tradition began. Ed is an OA and has organised 20 Boxing Day fixtures.

The Old Boys’ Boxing Day rugby spectacle at Fylde goes back to the late 90s. Prior to that, there was a tradition at Arnold for an annual fixture of Old Boys v 1st XV but due to RFU ruling that was changed (around 1990). It was agreed an OAs XV would play OLs on the last Wednesday of Autumn Term, alternating games at Arnold, then King Edward’s.

Generally, more of the active Arnold players tended to move away and a lot of the King Edwards players remained local, so this often led to a one-sided victory for the Old Lidunians (one year their backline was the Fylde 1st XV backline)!

In 1998 the OL organiser Mike Pemberton contacted his OA counterpart Mark Worsley to suggest moving the fixture to Fylde RFC, a neutral venue where a lot of the players still played. With added help from Mark Evans (OL) and Ed Mahon (OA) the numbers swelled over the coming years. Traditionally Fylde played local rivals Preston Grasshoppers on Boxing Day, but a change in structure (and club success) had led to a gap in the Fylde calendar.

The first 2 Boxing Day matches were played in front of meagre crowds in horrible weather, both matches ended (once more) in a comprehensive OL win. At the time the Fylde 1st XV was made up of a strong OL core, however, the late 90s saw a few years of a resurgence at Blackpool RUFC, featuring many OAs in their squad. Bolstered by the Blackpool contingent the 2000 OAs recorded a long-awaited win, in front of a healthy crowd on a day blessed with good weather. This provided a real spark of local interest; it was a great game and both sets of players stayed long into the night celebrating. From this point onwards the crowds swelled and the traditional fixture became a showcase, often pulling in crowds of over 1000. The next decade saw some very close games, all well-attended and saw 5 wins for each team. Features of the Old Boys game has been a mixture of Barbarians spirit (run the ball where possible) and Christmas spirit (friendly, often smelling of booze)! Every year the sets of teams have managed to raise at least 15 players (even in the old days) and sometimes upward of 30!! A couple of years were touch and go but now we have a healthy squad number for both teams.

Fylde used to provide the ref (previous refs including ex-international David Leslie) and each team provides a touch judge (often Phil Rudd for OLs and Robbie Jones for the OAs)

There is always a large and friendly crowd, now Fylde treats this as an extra home game, with hospitality tables often selling out.

In 2010 when the weather caused the game to be cancelled, we did play a football match on the astroturf instead!

The merge has seen a slight change to squad selection, but the fixture goes from strength to strength.

Previous players of note…

OAs Premiership players

Mike Fielden

Greg Nicholls

Christian Day

Josh Beaumont

Representative players (inc Fylde 1st XV regulars)

OAs

Martin Wallwork

Mark Stephenson

Andy Parker

Grant Ferguson

Greg Johnson

Sam Beaumont

Oli Brennand

Matt Garrod

OLs

Mark Greatorex

Dave Tanner

Ian Barclay

Mark Evans

Greg Anderton

Carl Lavin

Tom Lavelle

John Kay