Ken Gray Jersey Series, England Jersey #3, 1964

Ken Gray and All Blacks after the 1964 test against England.

• By Adam Julian

Ken Gray Jersey Series, England Jersey #3, 1964

The mystery began in 2019. Keryn Martin and Logan Ainsworth were preparing the walls of the Paremata-Plimmerton Rugby clubrooms for a significant refurbishment when they removed eight framed jerseys.

Seven of them bore the inscription “Presented by K Gray” and another black jersey was simply entitled “New Zealand Women’s Rugby” with no other detail.

This raised the question: Who wore the jerseys? And how could their stories inspire those at the club?

So began the ‘Ken Gray-Ericka Rere Legacy Project’ to acknowledge two champion Paremata-Plimmerton players and the whenua they played on.

Rere was the Hammerheads first Black Fern and started three games for New Zealand in the first Women’s Rugby World Cup in 1991.

Ken Gray ranks among the greatest All Black props of all time. Gray gifted eight of his Test rugby jerseys to the Paremata-Plimmerton Rugby Club in 1983.

Until 2025 the identities of those who wore the jerseys were unknown.

 +++++

DETAILS

Date: 4 January 1964

Fixture: All Blacks: 14 vs England: 0

Referee: Douglas McMahon (Scotland)

Venue: Twickenham, London

England Jersey #3, 1964: Nick Drake-Lee

++++++

TEAMS

All Blacks (1-15): Wilson Whineray, Dennis Young, Ken Gray, Allan Stewart, Colin Meads, Kelvin Tremain, John Graham, Brian Lochore, Kevin Briscoe, Bruce Watt, Ralph Caulton, Bluey Arnold, Paul Little, Malcolm Dick, Don Clarke

England (1-15): Nick Drake-Lee, Bret Godwin, Phil Judd, Mike Davis, John Owen, Victor Marriott, Budge Rogers, David Perry, Simon Clarke, Phil Horrocks-Taylor, Jim Roberts, Mike Weston, Roger Sangwin, Malcolm Phillips, John Willcox

+++++

THE MATCH

England suffered their biggest defeat since Twickenham opened fifty-four years earlier.

Against the reigning Five Nations champions, “the All Blacks pack had all played exceptionally well.”

Winger Ralph Caulton and lock Colin Meads scored tries with fullback Don Clarke kicking two penalties and a conversion.

Men in Black noted, “Gray made one long run which did not yield a try only because Roberts somehow knocked down the pass to Dick.”

Explaining the difference in propping roles Gray said.

“Loosehead is the passive role. It’s his job to look after the hooker and keep the scrum tight. The tighthead prop should be more vigorous. He usually tries to unsettle the opposition hooker.

A unique feature of Gray’s play was that he was a prop who jumped in the lineouts. He stood 6 ft 2.

“It’s no exaggeration to say I was confident of getting just about every ball thrown to the front of the lineout. We rather took them by surprise using a tall prop at No.2 who could jump.”

Don Clarke reflected, “The easiest Test of the tour, the match against England, was a peculiar delight and disappointment. We were pleased to win as we did, but some of us were surprised too that the English players we met earlier on the short tour of New Zealand had absorbed so little from those matches.”

The England jersey on display at Paremata-Plimmerton belongs to English prop Nick Drake-Lee.

He was rather overwhelmed by the fire of the All Blacks telling the Daily Express.

“Our white stripes highlight us in every lineout. We were unable to counteract their obstructive lineout wedge with a similar tactic because the referee could spot us so easily. He kept penalising us early on for lineout offenses. We just had to take it without retaliation.”

England conceded seven penalties in the lineouts in the first half an hour.

In Terry McLean’s account of the 1963/64 tour Willie Away, he reported Drake-Lee could be heard shouting “More fire in the mauls chaps, more fire in the mauls.”

+++++

NICK DRAKE-LEE

Nick Drake-Lee was born in Kettering, a market and industrial town in Northampton on April 7, 1942. He attended Downing College from Stonyhurst and read history.

Drake-Lee arrived at Cambridge University with a good reputation as a strong, mobile prop having played for the England Public Schools side. He was only a dozen stone.

In 1961 he helped the Cambridge pack overpower Oxford University 9-3 in the famous ‘Varsity Match.’ Cambridge was unbeaten in 14 games that season.

“In those days the Varsity match was the biggest game outside the internationals. We were victorious in my three years as a Blue and the 1961 side was packed full of internationals,” Drake-Lee recalled.

He was one of nine players from the 1961 team who went on to play international rugby – Geoff Frankcom, Mike Wade, Gordon Waddell, Trevor Wintle, Brian Thomas, John Owen, Roger Michaelson and John Brash were the others.

Drake-Lee made his England debut against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park on 19 January 1963, as one of six new caps in the visiting pack.

Referee Kevin Kelleher wanted to call off the game just before kick-off, but with 55,000 inside Cardiff Arms Park he was persuaded that it might be in his best interests to go ahead in the “Big Freeze.”

The temperature at kick-off time was -6 degrees, and both teams remained in the changing rooms during the playing of the anthems.

The game itself was won by England 13-6 with Mike Phillips and John Owen scoring tries for England and Richard Sharp kicking two conversions and a drop goal. Wales points came from a penalty by Graham Hodgson and a Dai Hayward try.

After the match, the teams returned to the changing rooms to find the pipes had burst and they had to go to the local swimming pool to shower. England would not beat Wales again in Cardiff until 1991.

“In four years, I’d gone from playing for Stonyhurst College to England, via Kettering RFC and Cambridge University, to win my first cap on a bitterly cold day in Cardiff. It was so cold that someone had to nip down to M&S to buy in the city centre on match day to buy extra vests and underwear for the three-quarters to wear,” Drake-Lee recalled.

“I found myself propping against an old friend, Kingsley Jones, who had also been my opponent when I played my first game for Cambridge against the Cardiff club. He gave me a real education in front-row play that day – literally so.

“After being given a good going over in the match, Kingsley and a few of the other Cardiff lads agreed to spend a bit of time teaching me and a few others the skills needed to be play prop in an impromptu, post-match training session.

“It was like a door being opened to a whole new world and I learned so much. He regretted it a little bit later on in the term when I gave him a hard time in the Steele-Bodger’s XV fixture.

“Against Ireland, I was hit in the face at the first scrum by three fists. The referees didn’t look after you in those days, you had to look after yourself.”

“As well as being the youngest England prop since WW2, I also held another, less well-known record. To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only player to have played in all three positions in the front row for my country – loose head, tight head and hooker. I filled in as hooker for 15 minutes against France in 1963 when Sam Hodgson left the field for stitches. Despite having around seven new players in our pack, we went on to win the Championship that year.”

A try scored by Drake-Lee in the 10-8 victory over Scotland in the Calcutta Cup went some way towards achieving that Championship though the try scored by British and Irish Lions first-five Richard Sharpe is regarded as one of the most famous at Twickenham. The Guardian reported.

“Maybe the defensive line is a trifle porous but there is no mistaking the gliding majesty of the blond-haired lead character. Three sidesteps, natural spatial awareness, startling pace: the Scots had absolutely no answer.”

Sharp’s own recollections are crystal clear: “It wasn’t easy to make breaks from set scrums because, in those days, the defence was allowed to line up level with the front-row and not be offside.

It was a major problem, so one of the solutions was to attempt a scissors or dummy scissors. We had a set scrum on the right and I ran across the field fairly flat. Mike Weston came behind me and I always say he made the try. I went to pass it to him; he made the defence hesitate and there was a gap.”

Drake-Lee played in Cambridge’s 16-11 win over the touring Canadians in 1962 and the 1963 defeat by Willson Whineray’s All Blacks.

In his three years at Cambridge, the Light Blue’s won 54 of their 76 games, drew seven, and were regarded as one of the best club sides in the country. More significantly, they won all three Varsity matches equalling the record in the fixture of four wins in a row.

On the club front, he played for Leicester (72 games between 1962-68), Manchester and Waterloo. He also played in a County Championship final with Lancashire. After hanging up his boots he didn’t walk away from rugby. He became a coach at his hometown club, Kettering, and became club President in 1986 while maintaining an accounting career. His son, Bill Drake-Lee, graduated through the Kettering ranks before following his father into the Leicester side for whom he played 85 games.

Drake-Lee died on 22 January 2021.

++++

DRAKE-LEE ENGLAND TEST CAPS

January 19, 1963: Wales, Cardiff Arms Park, 13-6

February 9, 1963: Ireland, Lansdowne Road, Dublin, 0-0

February 23, 1963: France, Twickenham, London, 6-5

March 16, 1963: Scotland, Twickenham, London, 10-8

January 4, 1964: New Zealand, Twickenham, London, 0-14

January 18, 1964: Wales, Twickenham, London, 6-6

February 8, 1964: Ireland, Twickenham, London, 5-18

January 16, 1965: Wales, Cardiff Arms Park, 14-3

References: Men In Black, Willie’s Army, Terry McLean, ESPN Scrum, England Rugby official websites, The Guardian

https://www.leicestertigers.com/news/obituary-former-front-rower-nick-drake-lee