The Cordner-Eggleston Cup-a 21st century connection
The following article appeared in Great Scot (Issue 155 - Dec 2018), the Scotch College (Melb) Family Magazine. A more comprehensive account (below) is under construction.
This article features two images, one of Howie Japp and his father Tony and, in the background, the school (now non-existent) attended by Howie Japp’s great-great-great grandfather (and Thomas Henry Smith) in Carrickmacross, Ireland in the 1840s.
“They Change Their Sky, Not Their Soul”
When Howie Japp (Year 12 in 2018) ran out onto the Melbourne Grammar ground to play for Scotch in the 2018 Cordner-Eggleston Cup he may have known the story behind that famous match but had no inkling of his personal connection to this annual match and it’s place in Australian football’s “deep history”.
When Howie’s great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Gibson Henry, began life as a boarder at the Viscount Weymouth Grammar School in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, Ireland in midsummer 1845, he had no idea that fourteen years later his tall schoolmate, Thomas Henry Smith, would be one of the men to create the “game of our own”, Australian Rules Football.
Both Thomases already shared much. They were of the same age, religion (Protestant, Church of Ireland) and privileged social class for a start, but ahead of them lay journeys that would run parallel to the end.
They would share schooling and school sports (tennis, badminton, hockey, cricket, handball and possibly football/soccer), both would venture south to the same university (Trinity College Dublin), their adventurous spirits would take them both to the same distant and foreign land (Australia) where they would adopt the same town (Melbourne), pursue the same career (education) and, finally, venturing west, both men, Henry (Mt. Gambier) and Smith (Adelaide) would be buried in South Australia.
Gold fever lured Thomas Henry across the seas before he had completed his degree at Trinity. On arrival in Melbourne, like so many, he headed straight to the diggings. Having no success as a miner however he then had to fall back on his studies. In Malvern he taught school in his house and was an active member (later chairman) of the Gardiner Roads Board (forerunner to Malvern City Council). From 1870, in Haywood in the Western District and finally in Mumbannar still further west, he again taught school. In 1910, on letterhead of The Portland Club, he wrote home to a minister in Carrickmacross. He had seen his schoolmate Thomas Smith in Australia, ‘but not for many years’.
Appearing in the Argus newspaper of 6th Aug, 1858 a notice announced a ‘Grand Football Match’, ‘on this day’, between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar. Among the masters and students who ran out onto the field for Scotch at midday that Friday was Thomas Henry Smith, Classics Master at the college. Was his schoolmate Thomas Gibson Henry also at the Richmond Paddock that day? Did he watch “Football” Smith bustle and scrap and hack the legs of the Melbourne Grammar “men”? Quite possibly he did.
Five months later Smith met with a local celebrated wild sportsman, Tom Wills, and two sports journalists, all members of the Melbourne Cricket Club, in the Parade Hotel near the MCG. Together they wrote what would become the very first codified rules of Australian football.
“Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.” (They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)
This quote, from the ancient Roman lyric poet, Horace, heads the extraordinary account of his journey from Ireland to Melbourne in 1853 penned by Howie Japp’s great-great-great grandfather.