David Revell Bedell-Sivright

“When I go on to that field I see only the ball. Where it goes, I go, and should someone be in the road, that is their own lookout…”

It has been some time now since Scottish rugby produced a genuinely world-class player, one respected and feared by its opponents.  In David Revell Bedell-Sivright it had a player who was both.

Born on December 8th 1880 he spent his early life in the family home of North Cliff in North Queensferry, before being sent to Fettes College at the age of thirteen.  By nature a shy and sensitive boy; he was teased by his schoolmates. He found his release on the rugby field, his powerful physique barrelling through his opponents like a tank through a cornfield.

In 1898 he went up to Trinity College Cambridge to read Law. He played four times for Cambridge in the annual game against Oxford, and became its captain.  Inevitably he came to the notice of the Scottish selectors, making his debut for Scotland against Wales in Swansea on 27^th January 1900.

The Scots and the Welsh dominated rugby in the first decade of the 20th century.  Wales had developed a flowing game, passing from man to man until they made it over the line to score. The Scots built their game on forward power, their pack surging towards the opposition as a unit, dribbling the ball along the ground until they forced their way over for a try.

While the Scottish rugby establishment despised the Welsh game as inferior, it was results that counted.  In the first decade of the century Wales won five Triple Crowns.  Bedell-Sivright’s arrival marked a tilt in the balance of power, especially when the Scots had home ground advantage.

Scotland won the Triple Crown in 1901 and 1903 and again in 1907. Bedell-Sivright played in eight of the nine games during these three seasons. Scotland missed out on the Triple Crown in 1905, when he was out for the season due to injury. In 1909 he called it a day; Wales won all three home internationals.  More than a century after he retired Bedell-Sivright remains the only Scot to have played in three Triple Crown-winning teams. In that time only five other Scottish sides have beaten all three of the other home nations in the same season.

He would not have been big by today’s standards but he was powerfully built. But the essence of his game was total commitment, playing with a ferocity that took the breath away. He gave no quarter to opponents, and accepted fearsome physical punishment himself; an attitude that he carried into his other sporting passion of boxing.

Bedell-Sivright was a Scottish amateur champion heavyweight boxer.  He boxed just as he played rugby, swinging haymakers and ready to take a few hard shots in order to get in close enough to land his blows.

On top of his physical skills, he had the ability to inspire.  After touring South Africa with the British Lions in 1903 the English Football Union nominated him as Lions captain in 1904 at the age of twenty-three – the youngest man to this day to have been appointed captain of a British Lions touring squad.  The team won all fourteen of their matches in Australia.

However in their first match in New Zealand, he broke his leg and returned to Sydney to recuperate.  He spent some time as a jackaroo in the outback, but its attraction did not last. In June 1905 he returned to Scotland, matriculating at Edinburgh University to study medicine and returned to rugby.

He captained Edinburgh University and was invited to lead his country against New Zealand tourers. This game led to an incident that caused bitterness that lasted twenty years. Rumour had it that the tourists were on two shillings a day per man expenses.  SFU secretary James Aikman Smith and Bedell-Sivright went to their hotel to try to have the match called off.

New Zealand insisted on going ahead but the SFU went out of its way to make it an uncomfortable experience.  With no attempt to protect the surface from a November frost, the pitch was treacherous. New Zealand won 12-7, and took the ball as a souvenir.  The SRU sent an official to ask for it back. As a final insult New Zealand was not invited to the post-match banquet. It would be a generation before rugby relations between the two countries were restored. The All Blacks did not return to Scotland until the late 1920s.

This was not the first time that Bedell-Sivright had antagonised people in the southern hemisphere. In 1904, during a match in of Australia he led his team from the field in protest after the referee sent a British forward off for swearing. In his post-match interview he said that the referee had been incompetent, but his team had put as his decisions but drew the line when he questioned the honour of one of his players, who being a gentleman, would never have sworn.

He was a complex character, a mixture of opposites.  A quiet youngster who found self-expression in violent sports; a shy man who made no effort to hide from controversy. An intellectual who would spend twelve hours reading in his personal library, then cause mayhem on the rugby field. A tough heavyweight boxer with two degrees, who relaxed by playing the piano.

And a refined gentleman who knew how to party after a victory. On one occasion he got so drunk that he crash-tackled a cab horse in Princes Street, then settled down to sleep it off on the tramlines, bringing traffic to a standstill.  None of the policemen in attendance dared to stop him.

It was typical that when he qualified as a doctor he walked away from rugby to concentrate on his medical career. He had found something more important, it was as simple as that.

When the Great War broke out he enlisted in the Royal Navy, sailing for Gallipoli with the expeditionary force in April as a medical officer. There, they met ferocious resistance from Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish forces.  The months of pressure as a front-line doctor slowly eroded his health. Apart from the carnage on the battlefield there was the problem of disease among in the Mediterranean summer.

On September 3rd 1915 an exhausted Bedell-Sivright returned from a forward dressing station to his base.  He had been bitten by an insect and when the bite turned septic, he died of septicaemia.  The most feared forward in the history of rugby had been felled by the tiniest of opponents.

David Bedell-Sivright was buried at sea, somewhere in the Dardanelles. He is commemorated on the North Queensferry War Memorial.

More than ninety years after his death the Scottish Rugby Union established a Hall of Fame. Among the twelve inaugural inductees was Bedell-Sivright. A bronze trophy was presented to each inductee who was still alive, or given to the families of those who had passed on. No living descendent of Bedell-Sivright could be traced, so his trophy was given to Edinburgh University.

It was a poignant ending to the story of Scotland’s forgotten sporting hero.

Today, the Bedell-Sivright Scholarship Fund supports up to 5 Performance Rugby Scholarships (£500 to £2000 per year) to attract the best young talent in the UK to play and study at The University of Edinburgh.