In 1974 the YC&AC rugby section went on tour to Seoul and played to matches. This appears to be the first overseas tour made by any YC&AC sports team and is one of the first rugby tour to Korea by any team. Alex Russell allowed me to copy his rugby photos displayed before he left Japan. The text is from the YC&AC magazine.
An email out of the blue containing two photos reveals the true start of Yokohama’s first kids rugby school.
BEST YC&AC RUGBY PLAYER IN 1930s Norman Keith Lamport was born 24th March 1907 and was educated at King’s School, Sydney and at Sydney University. His nickname in Australia was not ‘Lampy’ but ‘Butts’. He played rugby for the University and for New South Wales, and was selected to play for the Wallabies in 1929….
Background Only a handful of “open” rugby clubs in the world can trace their history back 150 years. The Yokohama Country and Athletic Club (YC&AC) in the port of Yokohama is one of them as one of four sports clubs which merged in 1884 to form the current multi-sport club was originally established as the…
Background At the end of the 19th century the two leading international trading ports in Japan were Yokohama and Kobe and they were both home to foreign sports clubs, the largest of which were the Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club (YC&AC) and the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club. (KR&AC). Not long after the latter was…
Play rugby in Japan. If you are looking for a great rugby club, check out the YC&AC whose rugby team’s establishment preceded that of the the RFU by five years. The club is one of the very few clubs in Japan to have its own ground on a hill with a great view of Mt. Fuji and has a special sports bar for after-match receptions yards from the pitch ….
The annual rugby interport match played between Yokohama (YC&AC) and Kobe (KR&AC) started on Xmas day 1902 and was Japan’s longest running rugby fixture. Kobe hasn’t been able to field a team for more than 10 years. Here is a report on the 1972 match that was published in the club’s monthly in-house magazine and forwarded to me by John Quin, who played for the YC&AC that day.
Article written by me for The Japan Times On June 25, 1863, a Royal Navy team drawn from officers on ships sent to protect British expats in Japan had plenty to worry about as the lanky James Campbell Fraser strode out to bat against them on an apology for a cricket pitch in Yokohama. A…
1866 and all that: the untold early history of rugby in Japan Article written by JMG for The Japan Times published in March 2014 before Tokyo International 7s The history of rugby in Japan is arguably longer than that of every major rugby-playing country in the world outside of the British Isles and Australia. Very…
Days before the eagerly awaited RWC2019 commences, Yokohama City will commemorate the city’s leading role in the start of rugby in Japan and Asia by unveiling a plaque. This article takes a look at the background to this event and why such post-WW2 recognition took almost 75 years. On September 5 there will be a…
The YC&AC grounds and sports facilities at Yaguchidai have been enjoyed by the club’s sporting members for just over 100 years and those of no other “open” club in Japan’s major cities come anywhere near matching them. Many members over those years happily played field sports at the YC&AC for ten or even twenty years…
GLIMPSES OF YC&AC AND RUGBY IN JAPAN ON AND OFF THE FIELD IN 1920s & 1930s – BILL SALTER’S REMINISCENCES
The image is most likely the oldest image of rugby in Asia and one of the very oldest in the world relating to ‘club’ football – at glance at the picture will tell you that the players were certainly not playing a game of soccer – actually being played as opposed to football/rugby played in schools and universities.
Messages mostly from descendants of players and also from living ex-players involved in rugby in Yokohama history – 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1950s to 1980, 1971, 1979, and 1980s
This is the earliest evidence of British army officers and Yokohama civilians playing football regularly in Yokohama, Japan in the mid-1860s
SCHOOL’S ALUMNI HELPED INTRODUCE MANY SPORTS IN JAPAN, INCLUDING RUGBY, INITIATED FOUNDING OF KEY YOKOHAMA & KOBE SPORTS CLUBS, & EVEN HELPED WRITE JAPAN’S CONSTITUTION Marlborough College is justly proud of its rugby history and pedigree in the UK. The school played the first inter-school game in 1864 when it played a match against Clifton…
Japan’s YC&AC rugby club, founded in the turbulent last days of the ferocious samurai and the Tokugawa shoguns, was the first rugby club established in Asia and is one of the very oldest in the world.
The evidence that the first baseball club in Japan was not the Shimbashi Athletic Clud allegedly founded by Hiroshi Hiraoka in 1878 but the Yokohama Base Ball Club and not the Shimbashi Athletic Club!
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