Stan Wickham (4 January 1877 – March 1960) was a pioneer

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player, a

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and national representative

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who captained the Australian national side on a number of occasions in the early 1900s. He was tour captain for the inaugural

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overseas tour, that to New Zealand in 1905.

Early life and club rugby

Born in

Parramatta, New South Wales Parramatta () is a suburb and major Central business district, commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney, located in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district on the ban ...

Wickham was schooled at Parramatta Marist Brothers followed by

Sydney Boys High School Sydney Boys High School (”SBHS”), otherwise known as The Sydney High School (“SHS”) or High, is a Education in Australia#Government schools, government-funded Single-sex school, single-sex Selective school (New South Wales), academically s ...

,http://www.shsobu.org.au/wp-content/uploads/sport.pdf graduating in 1889 where he learned his rugby. After school he played for the

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in 1893 & 1894 then the Wallaroo club side in Sydney in 1895 and 1896. He lived in Lucknow near

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from 1896 to 1899 and played rugby there, making representative Country sides for clashes against City in each of those years.Howell p23 In 1900 he returned to Sydney and commenced with the Western Suburbs DRUFC in its inaugural year of competition. He would play 87 first-grade games for the club.

Representative career

Wickham was first selected in a

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representative side in 1895 aged 19 and would go on to make 37 Waratah appearances in a state representative career than lasted till 1906. He made 24 state appearances in matches against

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. Howell cites his finest Waratahs game as an 1897 tour match against the visiting

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when he scored two tries and booted a conversion for a rare 22-8 New South Wales win over

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He first represented at the national level against New Zealand, in Sydney, on 15 August 1903. He made two Test appearances against Great Britain who toured Australia 1904 and then in 1905 he was selected for the

Wallabies A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and so ...

tour of New Zealand, the first overseas campaign by an Australian rugby side. He was one of fourteen New South Welshman, who with nine Queenslanders made up a twenty-five strong squad. It was a disappointing tour for the Wallabies who played seven games and won only the last three against Manawatu-Hawkes Bay, Wanganui-Taranaki and Auckland. Wickham played every match on tour and was top-scorer with eighteen points from two penalty goals and three goals from marks. In total he claimed five international rugby caps for Australia, four of them as captain.

Coach

Wickham had been two years retired by the date of the

1908–09 Australia rugby union tour of Britain The 1908–09 Australia rugby union tour of the British Isles was a collection of friendly rugby union games undertaken by the Australia national rugby union team against invitational and national teams from England and Wales, as well as severa ...

. New South Wales state selector James McMahon was tour manager and in those days the idea that anyone other than the captain would coach the side was frowned upon. McMahon was initially the only accompanying official but Howell writes that a public campaign resulted in Wickham also being included on the tour as Assistant Manager acting unofficially as coach.

Bibliography

* Collection (1995) ''Gordon Bray presents The Spirit of Rugby'', Harper Collins Publishers Sydney * Howell, Max (2005) ''Born to Lead - Wallaby Test Captains'', Celebrity Books, Auckland NZ * Zavos, Spiro (2000) ''The Golden Wallabies'', Penguin, Victoria

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wickham, Stan Australian rugby union players Australian rugby union captains Australia international rugby union players 1877 births 1960 deaths Rugby union players from Sydney Rugby union centres