Carlisle Rugby Club

History

Opened Founded 8 October 1873

Founded

8 October 1873

At Warwick Road since

1895

England's first sevens

23 April 1921, won by Carlisle

Clubhouse

Opened October 1959, rebuilt after the 2005 flood

On 23 April 1921 the Warwick Road ground hosted the first sevens tournament played in England, and Carlisle won it, beating a Hawick B side 7-6 in the final. The club's own history says simply Hawick, and the wider record says the B team, the sort of detail a hundred years smooths over. The sevens game had crept south from the Border clubs where it began, at Melrose in 1883.

The club was already old by then. It was formed on 8 October 1873, forty-eight years before Carlisle United, as it enjoys pointing out, and played its first game at home against Langholm. The original jerseys were black, and a white Maltese cross was added in 1879; the black is long gone and the cross, now red, is still the emblem. Not to be confused with Creighton, the city's other rugby union club, founded in 1927: neighbours, and on occasion allies.

On the pitch it won the Cumberland Cup in 1886, 1908 and 1910, and then not again until 1961, partly because the club chose not to enter between the wars. Three England internationals have come out of it: C.E. Chapman in 1884, W.M.B. Nanson and J.R. Morgan in 1920. Warwick Road has been home since 1895.

The sevens claim needs one qualification, which the sevens historians make themselves. Tynedale had run a seven-a-side event as part of the Hexham Whitsuntide Sports as early as 1894, but it went ahead without official backing, so Carlisle's is counted the first proper English tournament. Percy Park at North Shields followed on 3 September 1921 with what is generally reckoned the first international sevens.

The ground grew round the club: the first grandstand in 1923, the clubhouse and changing rooms upgraded in the fifties, the present clubhouse opened in October 1959, more work in 1971, floodlights in 1974, and the grandstand renovated and reopened in 2007. The club's other national first was under lights, though not at home: in the 1950s five floodlit games were staged at Brunton Park between sides representing the North of England and the South of Scotland, reportedly the first floodlit rugby matches played in this country.

In January 2005 the Great Carlisle Flood put at least six feet of water through the clubhouse. Everything was ruined and the club was homeless for the rest of the season, playing home games at Langholm and Wigton while Creighton and Penrith took its other sides. A recovery committee had them back in a rebuilt clubhouse by that July. A decade later the Turf went under in Storm Desmond: Warwick Road and the Sands both sit on the low ground.

The floods took the club's past with them. Appealing for memories and memorabilia before its 150th anniversary season in 2023-24, it explained that two recent floods had destroyed many of its records, documents and archives, with only some believed to survive in the hands of a local archivist. The written history of a club founded in 1873 now rests largely on what its members can remember.

The clubhouse bar doubles as a functions and events venue, with what survives of the club's historical artefacts on display. George Graham, the former Scotland prop, coaches the first team.