Rosslyn Park FC

Rosslyn Park had been blessed by Russian royalty, part of a much-vaunted history, but the advent of professionalism led to a plummet down the leagues. It was only saved when a stranger with a familiar surname walked through the clubhouse door offering a route to salvation.

When Alexander Sergeevich Obolensky got the ball in his hands, there was still sixty metres between him and the Twickenham try line. Piercing through the tackles of the first two New Zealand defenders, the nineteen-year-old swerved to his right, outpacing one final flailing defender before powering his way down the touchline, sliding over to give England the lead against the All Blacks. He’d repeat the feat a few minutes later, with the same corner beckoning, but opting instead to cut diagonally back across the field, searing past three black shirts to score on the left. A first-ever victory for England over the All Blacks, 13-0, was secured and Obolensky had earned his right to wear the Red Rose. 

Obolensky, the Flying Prince, remains one of rugby’s great stories. His father, Prince Sergei, an officer in the Tsar’s Imperial Horse Guards, and his mother, Princess Lubov Naryshkina, had fled from Russia during the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, bringing with them one-year-old Alexander to settle in Muswell Hill. 

At Oxford, he proved his rugby talents, yet a British passport was still required, and duly organised, for him to represent the England team. Many, however, remained unconvinced, with Prince Edward of Wales himself confronting Obolensky and asking him ‘by what rights do you presume to play for England?’. That brace against New Zealand would provide the answer. Tragically, with the Second World War on the horizon, he would only wear the Red Rose three more times, losing his life in a training accident at the seat of a Hurricane in March 1940, aged 24. 

Obolensky’s story has been told many times, and at Rosslyn Park, one of the clubs he called home in his fleeting career, the Obolensky Bar and yearly commemorative Obolensky Dinner have helped immortalise his name. “He joined Rosslyn Park in the 1934/35 season and then played for England the year after,” explains club historian Charlie Addiman when we meet in the Prince’s eponymous bar. “He didn’t play for us that many times, but he was very highly rated. In those days you could play for any club on any day you wanted, so he also played for Leicester.” 

Obolensky is but one reason for the National One club’s fame. Another is the world-famous Rosslyn Park 7s, now the largest schools rugby tournament anywhere in the world, hosting over ten thousand players every year and celebrating its 85th birthday in 2024.

In the fifteens game, Rosslyn Park has plenty of credit too, not least for the time it flirted with the top of the English game, led by the flowing locks of the late great Corinthian Andy Ripley. “He joined us in 1971 and he was quite an exceptional athlete,” recalls Charlie. “His galloping runs earned him quite a few caps for England [24 to be exact, plus a tour with the Lions in 1974]. In a time when forwards really were quite immobile, he would hare up the field and be faster than the backs on the other team.” 

Excelling in a bleak period for English rugby, overshadowed by the great Welsh team of the 70s, Ripley’s maverick attitude saw him transcend the game in his own unique way. Athletically for one: Ripley emerged as a star of the running track, reaching the semi-finals of the UK Amateur Athletics Champions in 1978, later becoming a world indoor rowing champion and coming within an oars length of making the Boat Race crew aged fifty. Winning the BBC series Superstars would showcase his incredible abilities to a wider audience. “He ran against Edwin Moses over the 400-metre hurdles [a two-time Olympic gold medallist], which shows just how good he was,” says Charlie.

But as good a player and an athlete as he was, Ripley is remembered best for his character, embodying the ideals of sport played for joy and, most importantly, with integrity. “He was the ultimate amateur; he was always going to be,” he continues. “I remember he drove his own side mad once. We were having a close game, we converted a try that would have won us the game, and Ripley as captain thought it hadn’t gone over and told the referee. Of course, his teammates went mad, but that’s the sort of guy he was; he was as honest as the day is long and it was just against everything he believed to cheat.”

Ripley stood at an imposing 6ft 5in, but he was a gentle giant. “I never saw him react violently to anything on the pitch. We played sevens at Neath once, and a local hard man smacked him one. There was going to be a bit of a ruckus, but he stopped it and just said, ‘he just wants to tell his mates he smacked Andy Ripley’.”

Ripley would later serve as president of the club before passing away prematurely from prostate cancer at the age of 62. The enduring icon of Rosslyn Park and of the amateur spirit, how is he remembered by the Rosslyn faithful? “He was just a smashing guy.”

Today, Rosslyn Park’s home is Roehampton, a south-west London suburb sandwiched between Richmond and Putney, but the story of the club begins north of the river, in the salubrious Hampstead. It was here that Rosslyn Park Cricket Club had been formed, named after the estate of the Earl of Rosslyn on which the founders had played scratch cricket games together. In 1879, the members also formed a football club. 

After occupying a few early homes, the club found their way south to Acton in 1885, and faced the big names of the time, Blackheath, Harlequins and Richmond. They made early history too, in 1892, when they took part in the first-ever overseas match for an English team, facing Stade Français in Paris and emerging victorious. 

Richmond’s Old Deer Park was their next move, a full-time home until 1956 – and where some non first-team games are still played – before a long-term lease was secured in Roehampton, at ‘The Rock’, a name earned from a season in which Park were invincible at home but fallible away. 

Visit The Rock today and it’s a mix of old and new. If you head inside, you’ve got all the makings of a classic rugby home, whereas the view from the clubhouse is of a modern 4G surface, a hint that this is a club looking firmly to the future. The imminent prospect when Rugby Journal visits is the arrival of National 1 opponents Bishop’s Stortford.

Led by director of rugby Kieran Power, or KP to everyone at Rosslyn, the club are in their thirteenth consecutive season in this league, but this year’s start has been far from ideal. Three wins and four losses from seven games, including two defeats at The Rock, has left them ninth from fourteen clubs in the table. “We’ve had a lot of changes of personnel, we’re in that cycle where we’ve lost a lot of players to retirement, that generational cycle,” Kieran tells Rugby Journal ahead of kick off. “We’ve probably recruited more younger players this year than ever before. Normally we’ve been known for guys transitioning out of rugby, but this year we’ve gone for guys coming out of university. We had a great gathering of guys who’d been here for a good few years, the likes of Hugo Ellis, Jack Gash, Henry Robinson, who were the spine of our side. These guys have played hundreds of times, Premiership rugby, and it takes away from your team [when they retire]. So, we’ve got to look at that regeneration.”

But Rosslyn aren’t alone in this year being one of change; arguably, it’s a transition year across National 1. Sale FC, who were within a point of promotion last season, sit bottom of the league with only a single win to their name, while Leicester Lions, newly promoted from National 2, defeated league leaders Rams 26-24, as well as Sale FC on the opening day. “It’s a surprise,” admits Kieran, formerly a player at London Irish, Richmond and finally Ealing, where his coaching journey began. “We sort of knew ourselves that we weren’t as strong as years gone by, but the thing is, Sedgley Park for example, they came to us and we put in a great performance [a 67-15 win], and they’d beaten Chinnor the week before, beaten Richmond and only just lost to Rams. Bishop’s Stortford, who we’re playing today, have only been a few points away in a few games and they play really entertaining rugby. That’s good for rugby and it’s good for the league.”

Within just a few games, the fallout from rugby’s unstable climate seems to already have had a significant effect, to the detriment of some and the advantage of others. It’s created a scenario where in National 1, always a competitive league, any team can beat anyone. “There’s quality right through this league,” continues Kieran, now in his eighth season with the club. “I think perhaps players who have dropped down from the higher leagues, they may take it for granted. It’s a faster game, it’s a more skilful game at National 1, because there’s a little bit more freedom to play than you have in the Championship, where it’s more attritional.”

So, with the league as competitive as ever and a less experienced squad to draw from, Rosslyn have had to reset expectations for this season. In the last five years the club haven’t finished lower than fourth in the league, but ambitions of reaching the Championship will have to be put in check for yet another year. “In the last couple of weeks we’ve realised where we are as a team and how young we are, and what we need to do to develop,” says Kieran, “but if you’d told me in the middle of pre-season that we’d beat Richmond and Plymouth, I’d have snapped your hand off. Whether we’ll be pushing the top teams, I don’t know.

“I think the first thing is to try and find this group togetherness and who they are. There’s still an ability there to be in the top half of the table. There’s still a fair amount of work to do to achieve that, but the boys are willing to put it in.”

Putting those ambitions in the background won’t be easy for a club like Rosslyn Park. Having played in English rugby’s top tier, albeit only for three seasons over 30 years ago, between 1989-92, and having now knocked on the door of the Championship for almost a decade, the club has every reason to be ambitious. That being said, stability in today’s National 1 is not something to be sniffed at, and it could so easily have been a very different story at The Rock. 

When the game went professional in 1995 it was a challenging few years for Rosslyn. With Andy Ripley as president, the committee decided the club would remain amateur, going against the momentum of the time. “There were some people who thought there wasn’t room for more than one professional club in London,” explains Charlie, picking up the history again. “There was a view that we should act quickly, get first-mover advantage and be that club, however that was very much a minority view. In the end, I think we were the last major club to actually go professional, and that’s what pitched us into the lower divisions.” 

It was a principled decision for sure, but one that led to an inevitable slide. Falling to the fourth tier in 2001/02 was almost inevitable, and despite winning promotion back at the first time of asking, their new reality hit home as they finished twelfth two season later. Only saved by the demise of Wakefield, they followed it up with rock bottom finish, seventeen points adrift of safety and this time there were no crisis clubs to save them. 

Three seasons in National 3 South followed, featuring mid to low table finishes, showing little signs of revival and with players hard to come by as an amateur club in a professional world. Even clubs beneath the fourth tier were offering renumeration to players.

Salvation came in a man called Simon Tindall. “No one had ever heard of him,” explains Charlie. “He just walked in the office one day and said, ‘my grandfather used to play here, I’d like to help you’.”

Simon was an incredibly successful businessman, having been the managing director of Haymarket Publishing for thirty years, with the notorious Thatcher antagonist Michael Heseltine as his chairman. 

The grandfather in question was Lennox Tindall, not just any old former Rosslyn member but one of the first great players. An all-round athlete, before joining the club in 1886, Tindall had excelled for two years as a county cricketer for Kent, featuring with W G Grace for a South of England side that beat the Australian touring team in 1893. Swapping bat for ball, he formed a formidable partnership in the Rosslyn Park centres with Scottish international G C Lindsay and scored two hattricks in his first four appearances. If Tindall hadn’t already etched the family name in the club’s history books, his record seven tries and four goals in an 1897/98 match against Old Millhillians carved it even deeper, remaining one of the greatest individual feats by any to wear the red and white. 

Almost 120 years later, Simon had come to honour that Tindall legacy. Almost overnight, his investment changed Park’s fortunes. “It was at the same that Chris Ritchie, who played for the Barbarians and had gone to London Welsh to play semi pro, had just come back because Welsh were going full time,” says Charlie. “Simon brought money, and Chris knew all these players who didn’t have a part-time club to play for anymore, so Simon’s cheque book and Chris Ritchie’s contact book got us out of the shit, really.” The likes of Rob Jewell, formerly of Gloucester and Harlequins, joined Rosslyn – as captain – and they began to rise once again. 

From finishing ninth in 2007/08, Rosslyn finished second a season later, winning promotion back to National 2. It didn’t stop there; in their first season, Park accrued 113 points to finish second and secure back-to-back promotions. “Westcombe Park said we should’ve been thrown out the league because we were far too strong,” recalls Charlie. “It was a fun time to be a supporter, except for a season when it was so one-sided it almost wasn’t worth watching.” 

Thanks to the generosity of Simon, the club went from the edge of disaster to National 1 in the blink of an eye, and there they’ve remained, consistently competing at the top end in the years since. Never one to seek publicity for his contributions, without which the club would certainly not be where it is today, Simon remains part of the committee and is fundamental to the success of the modern Rosslyn Park. 

Today’s game is another that confirms their comfort at this level. After an opening half overshadowed by an awful injury in a tackle for Rosslyn Park hooker Charlie Piper, a four-try haul from ex-Harlequin and England 7s flyer Charlie Walker secured a 48-22 victory. Park’s team sheet may have lacked experience in parts, but it’s not shy of talent, including the likes of club captain Arthur Ellis. His rugby story, like many others who ply their trade at this level, is one of missed opportunities, but his experience is crucial for Rosslyn at the start of a rebuilding phase. “I got an academy contract at Wasps when I left school and did that for two years,” he explains. “I went to the Dragons after that, but that didn’t go very well, and I got released at the end of the year. 

“At that point,” he concedes, “I’d almost given up really, but there was a guy called Steve Jones who was going from the Dragons to the Ospreys to join Steve Tandy. So I joined the Ospreys for three years while studying at Cardiff.” 

From almost giving up to playing with Dan Biggar, Alun Wyn Jones and Duncan Jones was an unexpected turnaround, proving to be a valuable experience for Arthur even if the opportunity was to end after only a handful of appearances.

Switching countries and tiers, he joined Championship frontrunners Ealing Trailfinders, but after three seasons his brother Hugo, captain at Rosslyn Park at the time, came calling. “I just wanted to play with my brother, so I joined,” says Arthur. “It’s a great London club in the place I grew up, and we got to play together for four or five years, which the parents loved of course.”

The route from full-time rugby to Rosslyn Park is well trodden. “When you are in full-time you get so consumed by it, that’s all you care about, and when you’re not playing much that can be really tough,” says Arthur. “Now rugby and the job work well together – if rugby’s not going great at least you can have some beers at work, and if work’s not going great you’ve got that rugby environment to fall back on. Park is the perfect place for that. Once you get a player in, there’s very few that leave.”

It’s a theme that’s come up over and over during our time at the club. Charlie, for instance, has served in almost every role at Rosslyn Park from press officer to chief ultra, watching his team home and away for forty years and missing no more than fifty games in all that time. “I think the greatest thing I’ve seen was our full-back John Graves running the length of the field out of defence against the Wellington side from New Zealand,” he recalls, “and the person he zoomed past was a young Inga Tuigamala.” 

And he’s not the only one to frequent the sidelines at The Rock; families have been coming here for decades, and today a crowd of almost five hundred have made it out on a winter’s evening. 

But when it comes to commitment to Park, it’s impossible to not mention the efforts of team manager and certified club legend Kojo Jecty. A surveyor by trade, Kojo has been with the first team since 1998. Now in his 26th season, he has missed just two games since his arrival. “One of them was a surprise birthday and one was a wedding. And it’s a balance – we’ve won one and we’ve lost one,” he says with a grin. 

Kojo is part of the furniture here at Rosslyn Park. Almost every person that passes by gives him a fond farewell as they leave, Kojo responding with equal delight to each; for all you can tell, he may have known them a day or a decade, but everyone here knows his face. How did his relationship with Rosslyn begin? “I played on this ground when I was a schoolboy, many moons ago. I got a conversion kick, over by that stand,” he says, pointing to the touchline that runs adjacent to the A205. It would be a few years before Kojo would return to the scene of his kick, a call from then DoR Rob Harding asking him to take on the manager’s role, as he now had ten years managing Harlequins Wanderers on his CV. 

In the quarter of a decade that’s followed, Kojo has watched generation after generation of players come through the Rosslyn ranks, growing and maturing in the club, becoming senior members and, in many cases, sticking around for the long term. “Henry Spencer played his 100th game today,” says Kojo. “We’ve had others, it’s at least five in my time. People come here and people stay, if it wasn’t a good club, people wouldn’t stay. And I’m just like one of the 100-cap players,” he says. Actually, with roughly thirty games a season, he’s closer to 750 .

His service to the club, in charge of the many behind-the-scenes tasks is an inspiration to the players and the staff around Rosslyn. “He’s an absolute legend of a bloke, he’s the kind of person you want to play for,” says Arthur. “He’s given up his time enough over that 25 years here, nobody can ever repay that.”

“He is Mr Rosslyn Park,” agrees Kieran. “It’s great to have him here, it wouldn’t be Rosslyn Park without him, the lads just all feel a bit happier when they walk in and see a big smiley face.”

For Fergus Farrell, Kojo’s fellow team manager, there’s only one word to describe him. “Legend. He’s taught me everything I know. He’s the reason I stayed at that club; I only came on loan for one game to help and then ended up staying. 

“I was at my old club Teddington for ten years, I never thought I’d leave. I miss it, I was twenty games off being the most capped player ever, but there’s just something about the people here. I drive down from Nottingham now for every game, it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive,” he says, in almost bewilderment at his own dedication.

He may have been the ever-present figure of the club’s recent history, but Kojo shakes off the Mr Rosslyn Park tag, instead taking a more philosophical view. “Like everything in a rugby club you borrow it, you’re here for the time. It was here before you, it’ll be here after you, you just have a period of time to leave it in a better place.” 

And now, in his 26th year, that time could be drawing to a close. This is likely Kojo’s final season as team manager for Rosslyn, although he admits that’s far from certain yet. “I’ve said [I’m retiring] more than once before. When there’s an old boys lunch, you’ll see faces who’ve been here for almost time immemorial, and they’ll say: ‘You’re going? Yeah, I thought I was stopping too’.” 

What is he most proud of from his time at Rosslyn Park? “I just hope I’ve made a difference in the time I’ve been here. That’s all you can hope for, isn’t it? You hope that whatever you’ve instigated can carry on after you’ve gone.”

Story by James Price

Pictures by Veronica Melkonian

This extract was taken from issue 24 of Rugby.
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