CRISPIN CARTER REMEMBERED

Crispin Carter pictured in Coventry kit 1912

The Story of Crispin Carter

By Coventry Bears President Ron Banks

We were recently contacted by lady called Sheila Evans (nee Carter). Sheila has been looking into her family history. She tells me that she has gone back into the 1500's in her search so far.

As part of her research she asked us if we could any shed on light on the career of her Grandfather Crispin Carter. She knew he had played rugby league for Coventry before the first world war.

Alan Robinson passed the message over to me as he knew that I too had a connection with Crispin Carter.
Now cones the history lesson...

Some people may be surprised that we had rugby league here all those years ago.

In 1895 some of the clubs in Lancashire and Yorkshire wanted to pay " Broken Payments" to their players.
The clubs in the North drew their players from the mills and coal mines where the players were employed.
In those days the games were played on Saturday and would draw large crowds. The spectators were happy to pay for the privilege of watching professional football and both football codes were flourishing.

Soccer players were being paid handsomely to play. In fact my Grandfather was playing for West Bromwich Albion in 1895. He had captained WBA in the FA cup final in 1895 when they lost to Aston Villa 1-0 at Crystal Palace.

My father told me that he knows that my Grandfather was paid £12 a week in the season and £9 a week in the close season this compared to my other Grandfather was only paid £1/10s ( £1.50p) a week as a labourer in a paper mill.

The problem for the rugby players in the North was that they were working at the same employers as the spectators were. In those days Saturdays were normal working days albeit finishing at lunchtime. The speccies had the afternoons off and could attend games but the players couldn't get the mornings off to travel to away games.

The answer was for the club's to pay them "Broken Time" for the time they had to miss from work.
Unfortunately the RFU opposed the idea and there was a school of thought that if you couldn't afford to play rugby union then perhaps you would be better off playing soccer.

As a result 12 clubs held a meeting at the George Hotel and decided to breakaway and form their association and the Northern Rugby Union came into being. The Northern Union changed its name to Rugby League in 1923.
It was a roaring success. The spectators loved it especially when the rules were being tweaked to make the game more spectator happy.

It was just after that some of the players in Coventry decided they wanted to play. As a result the Coventry Club split into two. The Northern Union club played at the Butts Stadium and the union club moved to a new stadium in Coundon Road.

This is where my connection to Crispin Carter comes in. Crispin was playing for his ( and mine) home town club Barrow. He was married to my Grandma's sister Jessie. Making him my Great Uncle.

My mother always told me that her Uncle had played for Coventry before WW1 and I knew that when I got involved when we started Coventry Bears.

Unfortunately the experiment came to an end just as the war started and professional rugby league was in Coventry for about 80 years although there were works teams in the city into the '30s.

Now back to Sheila's request.
Alan posted a round robin to some of us that might be able to help her. I in turn contacted some people I knew in Barrow and a good friend of mine Steve Andrews who is the statistician at Barrow came up trumps. He had a couple of photos in his own collection one of which was of Crispin in the Coventry kit.

Crispin was recruited specifically to come to the Midlands for the very first Coventry team and in fact he liked it so much he lived here for the rest of his life apart from a spell playing for Bradford Northern.

From Steve we were able to piece together that Crispin had left playing for Barrow and had gone back to his amatuer team Roose. He was working as an Angleiron Smith when he came to Coventry to play. He went to Bradford and scored over 40 points for them. Then he joined up in 1914. He joined the Royal Field Artillery as a Shoesmith and Gunner. He was sent overseas and contracted Malaria in Egypt and was posted posted back to Blighty and was demobbed in 1919. He worked as a Millwright in Coventry and settled into Strathmore Avenue with Jessie. Crispin passed away in late 1962.

I’m sure you will agree this is a fantastic story and to remember a player such as Crispin only adds to the forgotten history of Rugby League in Coventry.