One hundred seasons ago

One Hundred Seasons Ago

One hundred seasons ago, in 1908-09, an 18 year old Arts undergraduate, Roger Forrest Hughes, made his first appearance in University’s 3rd Grade side.  This was the first season that the Club had competed in the 3rd Grade competition.

Initially, the team did remarkably well, winning all its games up to the summer vacation in December, but it suffered from unavailibilities and withdrawals from then on and struggled to remain competitive during the second part of the season – a common lament for University lower grade sides until the last 20 years.

Distinguished names passed through this side during the season:

• Andy Watson, the future Antarctic explorer, scored 169 not out against Cumberland early in the season.
• A.D. Forbes batted without much success but in the first match of the following season, 1909-10, he scored 209, still the Club’s record individual score in 3rd Grade.
• Harold Stewart Utz captained the side, taking 43 wickets with his left arm slows.  He was a future Australian Davis Cup tennis player and founder of the merged legal firm of Clayton and Utz in 1920.
• Lisle Terrey was a future 1st Grade opening bowler in the Premiership side of 1909-10.
• Clive Single was a future NSW player, a survivor of the Great War and a much respected medical practitioner.
• Norman Broughton was killed in France in 1916.
• Robert Giltinan was a brother of J.J. Giltinan who had been a founder of Rugby League in Australia earlier in 1908.
• H.K. (Hugh Kingsley) Ward, after whom the Gymnasium, opened in 1967, situated between No 1 and No 2 ovals was named, was a future Olympic oarsman who represented Australia at the Stockholm Games in 1912.  He was later Professor of Bacteriology at Sydney University.

 

One of R.F. Hughes’s cousins, J.C. Hughes, a final year medical student, was playing the last of his five seasons in 1st Grade in 1908-09.  He had already represented Australia at Rugby in the Test matches against the All Blacks in 1907.  Roger Hughes batted steadily in 3rd Grade but with limited success, scoring 129 runs at 18.4.  He did, however, look one of the more confident batsmen in a side that struggled during and after the vacation.

Roger Hughes was to live only another eight years after making his debut for the Club.  He was one of eleven University cricketers to be killed in the Great War.

He had been born on 6 May 1890, the second son of Sir Thomas and Lady Louisa Hughes.  Sir Thomas Hughes was Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1902.  His secondary education was at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, where he won accolades for academic excellence (culminating in his being Dux of the College in 1907).  He was also a persuasive orator (winner of the Gold Medal for Senior Debate and the trophy for Oratory in 1907) and an athletic and versatile sportsman.  As an athlete, his best events were the 100 yards dash and the 120 yards hurdles race.  He won prizes for throwing the cricket ball and for kicking the football, played five-eight in the 1st XV and was a reliable middle order batsman in the 1st XI.

“Roger’s career at Riverview, and at the University, was a brilliant one.  It would have been hard to find a brighter or more winning personality. To his old College, he was loyal to the heart’s core”, wrote the editor of the College magazine, ‘Our Alma Mater’, in 1916.

He entered Sydney University in 1908 in the Faculty of Arts, studying Classics, and he was awarded his Bachelor of Arts in 1911.  He then studied Medicine, graduating in 1915.  During time as a student, Roger Hughes immersed himself in undergraduate life, participating in the University’s Debating and Drama activities and serving as Secretary for the University Union.  He played Hockey for the University and won his Blue in 1912 and continued to play Cricket until 1912-13 in the 2nd and 3rd Grades.  Very few lower grade scores or statistics survive in the Club’s records from this time so Hughes’s complete career is impossible to reconstruct.  It is known that he played 2nd Grade in 1910-11 and that he captained 3rd Grade in1912-13.  This was an era of astounding higher grade success for the Club.  1st Grade won three premierships
(1909-1910, 1911-1912 and 1913-1914) and 2nd Grade won the 1911-1912 Premiership.  Selection in 1st Grade had to be hard earned but the truth was that Roger Hughes wasn’t quite up to consistent selection in 1st Grade as a batsman.  His one innings in 2nd Grade in 1910-1911 resulted in a rather laboured duck and in 1911-1912 in 3rds, he scored only 52 runs from 7 innings.

After graduation, Dr Roger Hughes served as RMO at St Vincent’s Hospital where he was much admired.  Keen to use his medical knowledge in the AIF, he was desperate to enlist and was finally accepted in December 1915, initially appointed RMO Australian General Hospital, Randwick.

He sailed from Sydney on 8 August 1916 on the ‘Wiltshire’, and arrived at Plymouth on 13 October. 

Roger Hughes had been at the front for only five days when, while attending to a wounded man, he was hit by a shell that fractured both his legs and that killed his patient immediately.  Hughes was taken to 36 Casualty Clearing Station near Heilly.  His brother, Captain Geoffrey Hughes, was stationed with 10 squadron on an airfield at Choques, near Bethune, 60 miles north of Heilly, but he made the journey to be at his brother’s side in his final hours.  Geoffrey wrote to his father and mother:

“Roger received the Last Sacraments that afternoon and died as he had lived, a noble Catholic, strengthened and blessed by all the comforts of our Faith.”

He was laid to rest in a ceremony conducted by Father Prescott, in grave V1.a.4 Heilly Station Cemetery.  At his burial, his brother, Geoffrey, and a brother in law, Captain Austin Curtin, said prayers at the graveside.

Roger Hughes’s loss was felt keenly in Australia.  Such was the esteem in which the family was held that a Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney by Archbishop Kelly, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, assisted by many Jesuit priests who had taught Roger at Riverview.  Two of Roger’s cousins, John and James served the Mass.

Sir Thomas and Lady Hughes visited Roger’s grave in May 1923 during a European tour which included a visit to the grave at Faubourg D’Amiens Cemetery of another relation, Lieutenant Brendan Lane-Mullins, killed at Arras in June 1917.  Indeed, five soldiers all closely related to the Hughes family were killed in the war.

There are stained glass windows in memory of Roger Hughes and Brendan Lane-Mullins in St Canice’s church. 

Roger had married Eileen Maher on 2 March 1916 at St Canice’s Church in Elizabeth Bay (where he had been baptised) and their son, Peter Roger Forrest Hughes was born on 4 February 1917, only eight weeks after his father’s death.  The son emulated his father’s debating achievements at Riverview but the family was to be visited by extraordinary tragedy during the Second World War.  In 1942, on an operational flight with the RAAF, Roger Hughes junior, aged 25, was killed over Darwin.  Then, his mother, Eileen was later killed in a car accident on her way, in May 1946, to visit her son’s grave.

Geoffrey Hughes’ line of the family continued the famous surname and contributed significantly to Australian public life.  His three sons are Thomas Hughes QC, the eminent barrister and former politician, Geoffrey Hughes, a renowned solicitor, and Robert Hughes, an internationally distinguished art critic and author.

And one of Thomas Hughes’s daughters, Lucy, is married to the present Leader of the Federal Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull.

Roger Forrest Hughes deserves to be remembered one hundred years after making his club debut.