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''Rugby Football Excursion'' is a 44-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was written in 1938 and first published in book form in MacNeice's poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). The poem recounts an excursion taken by MacNeice from London to Dublin, in order to watch a rugby football match at Lansdowne Road stadium. MacNeice does not specify the occasion, but internal evidence from the poem establishes the match as a rugby football international between Ireland and England on 12 February 1938; England won the match by 36 points to 14.〔 History of rugby union matches between England and Ireland〕 ==Background== Louis MacNeice, like his fellow Irish writer Samuel Beckett, took a keen interest in rugby football. MacNeice played rugby while a pupil at Sherborne Preparatory School and Marlborough College, and later enjoyed watching matches involving Ireland.〔 Jon Stallworthy: ''Louis MacNeice'', p. 238.〕 The Irish poet Conor O'Callaghan, reviewing the Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice in Poetry magazine, notes that MacNeice left Ireland for boarding school in England at the age of ten and never lived in Ireland again. "However, he always supported Ireland in international rugby matches with England".〔 Conor O'Callaghan: ''His Master's Voice'', Poetry magazine.〕 ''Rugby Football Excursion'' recounts an excursion taken by MacNeice from London to Dublin, in order to watch a rugby football match at Lansdowne Road stadium. The journey begins by train from Euston railway station: "Euston - the smell of soot and fish and petrol; Then in the train jogging and jogging..." The journey then continues by boat across the Irish Sea on the passenger vessel Hibernia, before arriving in Dublin: "Horse-cabs and outside cars - the ballyhoo for trippers - And College Park reposeful behind the railings;" (College Park is a cricket ground in the grounds of Trinity College, Dublin.) MacNeice then evokes the atmosphere at Lansdowne Road, where the rugby football match is to be played. MacNeice does not specify the actual occasion, but the details provided in the sixth stanza - "Eccentric scoring - Nicholson, Marshall and Unwin, / Replies by Bailey and Daly" - establish the match as a rugby football international between Ireland and England in the 1938 Home Nations Championship, played on 12 February 1938. England led 23-0 at half-time but Ireland improved during the second half, managing to score four tries (the last of which was scored by Maurice Daly, making his first and only appearance for Ireland).〔http://www.cliftonrfchistory.co.uk/internationals/ireland/daly/daly.htm〕 England won the match by 36 points to 14, with tries by (among others) Basil Nicholson, Robert Marshall and Jimmy Unwin. Pathé News made a newsreel of this match.〔http://www.britishpathe.com/video/rugby-international-ireland-v-england-lner〕 The newsreel shows the English and Irish teams running onto the pitch, watched by a huge crowd, followed by various shots of the match in progress. After the match, as MacNeice recounts, he had "tea and toast with Fellows and Bishops" in a Regency room overlooking St Stephen's Green, before taking "a walk through Dublin down the great / Grey streets broad and straight and drowned in twilight". The poem ends with MacNeice leaving Dublin, taking the boat from Dun Laoghaire back across the Irish Sea to England. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rugby Football Excursion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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