Ask Steven: Did Bill Beaumont ever play prop for England?
John Griffiths
November 20, 2015
© Ian Walton/Getty Images


I read somewhere that Bill Beaumont once played prop for England in a Test, but all the records show him as appearing as a second-row lock in international matches. What's the truth? David Peters, England

Bill Beaumont was capped 34 times by England between 1975 and 1982.

His Test debut was against Ireland at Lansdowne Road in January 1975 when Roger Uttley, who had been named as lock for the match, had to withdraw from the originally chosen fifteen.

Uttley suffered a bizarre injury before the side travelled over to Dublin. While lunching with John Elders, one of the England selectors, he caught his breath eating a piece of apple pie and sent a suspect disc in his back into spasm.

Uttley returned in February for the remainder of the Five Nations season and Beaumont's next cap was as a replacement in the first Test of the Australian tour in May. He came on for skipper Tony Neary in Sydney but went straight into his usual position in the second-row, Uttley taking Neary's place as flanker in the number six shirt.

Beaumont then had a run of 32 successive England starts as a lock. However, for the second Test against Australia in May 1975 he was involved in the famous "Battle of Ballymore" - the match at Brisbane when fisticuffs broke out in the opening minutes of the game.

The Gloucester prop Mike Burton was sent off as a result -- the first England player to be dismissed in an international - and so Beaumont was forced to move up to tight-head prop for the last 77 minutes of the Test.

That was the big Fylde and Lancashire forward's only international experience as a prop and poor old Bill, it was said, couldn't stand up straight for about a fortnight afterwards.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

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