By Kevin Coughlan

The photograph of a Brixham team in freshly laundered shirts and proudly polished boots on a sunny afternoon in the first full season after the Second World War is a picture of hope and enthusiasm.
Their grins capture the mood in 1946-47. The committeemen are looking cheerful too, not least 77-year-old Life Member and club president Henry Smardon MBE under his well-worn fedora.
Yet there is another story caught by the photographer’s lens, not that those present could have known. The overlapping lives of three individuals in the picture span the entire 150 years of the club’s existence to date.
Smardon was six years old when the Brixham club played its very first fixtures in the autumn of 1875 and few if any people in Brixham’s history have contributed more to the club and indeed the town.
Seated in front of him with the match ball is 39-year-old Jimmy Merchant, regarded by his contemporaries and many others since as the most gifted and accomplished player ever to wear the Brixham jersey. He had broken into the first team in 1924 as a 16-year-old stand-off and at his peak could hold his own against the legendary Springbok captain Bennie Osler.
Sitting cross-legged on the grass on the far right, is the third character in this tale, looking a tad sheepish in the presence of these great men. But that young lad, Phil Davies, is now Brixham’s oldest ex-player, about to celebrate his 98th birthday and rightfully honoured as a precious connection to people and events nearly 80 years ago. Also in the picture is his father, William ‘Jack’ Davies (standing, second left), who was chairman of the grounds committee and ran a fish-and-chip shop at 64 Bolton Street.
Fortunately, Phil is blessed with a vivid memory of those days and recalls making his debut as a teenage wing forward in that team, captained from fly-half by Merchant.
“It must have been in 1947,” he says. “I was in the reserves and we were having a practice one night. Jimmy was there as well. He must have noticed me because the next Saturday I was in the first team. And there I stayed.
“I think he picked me at wing forward over some of the others because I was faster and younger. And if the other team heeled the ball at a scrum I was to go straight in and tackle the scrum-half.”
Phil added: “Jimmy was nearly 40 then but he still had a beautiful sidestep. He was small but no-one could catch him. He was a good kicker too but of course no-one could kick those heavy leather balls as far as they do now.”
Was Merchant the best player that the club produced? “Well, he was the best player I’ve seen in a Brixham shirt,” said Phil. “There was another player they used talk about too, called Campbell, but he wasn’t playing in my day. They reckoned he was fantastic.”
The old-timers were referring to Theo Campbell, a Royal Navy centre threequarter who led Brixham’s 1922 Devon Senior Cup-winning team while based at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Before Campbell departed later that year for a tour of duty on HMS Vindictive on the China Station, a 15-year-old Merchant enjoyed early success as captain of the National School Old Boys team, lifting the Waycott Cup.
James Browning Merchant had been born in Brixham on 27 April 1907 to James and Mary Ann Merchant, living in Mount Pleasant Road. When he was four years old, his father was a labourer in the ‘ice works’ serving the fish quay. It was at the National School in Bolton Street that the son was introduced to rugby football by his schoolmaster, Jack Couch.
After leaving school the slightly built 14-year-old dallied with soccer in 1922-23 before committing his obvious ball-playing talents to rugby, cutting his teeth first in Brixham’s reserves and then breaking into the first XV as a 17-year-old in October 1924. By the time Campbell returned in 1925, resuming the captaincy, the young prodigy was unquestionably the club’s first choice fly-half.
Spectators at the first home fixture of the 1925-26 season saw a 72-3 rout of Sidmouth, the highest score ever recorded on the Brixham ground until Crediton were hammered 75-3 at Great New Park a year later. On 12 December 1925 Brixham beat Torquay Athletic 15-nil, with Campbell and Merchant again prominent.
Newton Abbot were the opponents in a semi-final of the Devon Senior Cup in February 1927, a 3-3 draw in front of a crowd of 5,000 at Torquay’s Recreation Ground. Merchant, still only 19, played “an excellent game” and kicked Brixham’s goal from a mark. However, the replay a fortnight later was lost 3-nil after extra time, with Brixham reduced to 14 men early in the second half following an injury to right wing Syms.

An insight into Brixham’s winning tactics In
the 15-nil defeat of Torquay Athletic in 1925.
Torquay Times 18 Dec 1925

Merchant had achieved an astonishing run of 97 consecutive appearances by the close of the 1926-27 season but a hammering of Kingsteignton proved to be his last game in a Brixham shirt for two years. The Fishermen had traditionally been regarded as little more than a ‘feeder nursery’ by the major clubs in Devon, who also exerted heavy influence on selection for the county side. County selection was a closed shop in all but name.Understandably, that gravitational pull proved irresistible for Merchant and he joined Plymouth Albion. He was not the only Brixham player to depart that summer as another Devon county hopeful, J Blackmore, joined Torquay Athletic and Clifford Pearce went to Paignton. James Skedgel, whose ‘thrustful running’ with Merchant had been a feature of Brixham’s back play, also moved to Torquay in October 1927.
A ten-year £400 mortgage from the RFU had enabled the purchase of Great New Park for £600 in 1922 plus a much-needed grandstand. But solvency was uncomfortably dependent on successful cup runs, as Philip Wills relates (Brixham RFC: A New History 1905-1939). Entertainment Tax (2d in every shilling) had to paid on tickets sold too, a sore point among smaller gate-taking clubs.
Against a background of high unemployment and poverty throughout the land, gate receipts were plummeting to the point where the very existence of the Brixham club was being questioned. A concerned Jimmy Merchant assembled a star-studded Plymouth XV at the start of the 1928-29 season for a fundraising match at his home town club.
After spending two seasons at Albion he was back playing for Brixham against Torquay in early October 1931. Six weeks later he lined up for Devon & Cornwall against the formidable South African tourists, making their first visit to Great Britain and Ireland since the 1912-1913 season.

Jimmy Merchant in Brixham
kit during the 1931-32 season

Merchant was named in local newspapers as representing ‘Brixham & Plymouth Albion’ when 14,000 eager spectators crammed into Devonport Services’ Rectory Field on Wednesday 18 November. The Springboks had revised their original selection overnight, naming tour captain Osler opposite Merchant at stand-off half as they responded to a shock 30-21 defeat to Leicestershire & East Midlands the previous Saturday.
Benjamin Louwrens Osler was a supreme match-winner and master tactician, playing 17 consecutive Tests from 1924 to 1933 as he defined the role of the touch-finding, drop-kicking fly-half. To many observers (possibly his own threequarters too), he resorted to the boot too readily on that tour but 24-year-old Merchant must have relished the opportunity to test himself against the very best.
The Counties were reduced to 14 men very early on after Barnstaple wing George Bell went off with a knee injury, not returning until the second half. There were no replacements in those days so with Redruth’s Clifford Triniman moving out to the wing, the home side packed down in 3-2-2 formation. Although on the back foot in the scrum, they were superior in loose play.  In fact it was against the run of play that Osler, spurning the boot for once, broke down the right touchline from near half-way and found his Western Province ‘eighthman’ André McDonald in support for the try. Kicking from a heavy, rain-soaked pitch, Osler’s conversion attempt was wide.

Merchant praised for his ‘shadowing’
role against Osler in the Western Morning
News report next day. (British Newspaper Archive)

Bell’s reappearance after half-time seemed to inspire his teammates, who forced the tourists on to the defensive. Merchant was twice brought down close to the line, taking a painful blow to the knee for his trouble.
Five minutes from the end, the Brixham man made another thrust for the line off a short pass from a scrum. Although he was engulfed by the Bok pack, the ball was laid back for the captain, Edward Stanbury, to touch down. Redruth full-back Roy Jennings was no more successful than Osler with his conversion though and the match ended with honours even at 3-3.
The Springboks went on to win all 12 of their remaining matches, including a Grand Slam against the four home nations, and finished with a record of P26, W23, D2 and L1. Just three days later, Merchant was selected by Plymouth Albion for a fixture at Torquay, but he threw in his lot with Brixham as the 1931-32 season progressed. Notably, he helped the Fishermen lift the Devon Senior Cup, defeating holders Paignton 9-nil in the final at Torquay. That Tiverton and Honiton were the only other clubs to enter took some of the shine off the achievement but there was more to celebrate that summer when Bernard Astley’s generosity secured the Great New Park ground as the club’s permanent home, rent and rates free.
After two seasons in Brixham colours, Merchant joined the ranks of Torquay Athletic, where he formed a most effective partnership with former Wales scrum-half and captain Bobby Delahay. Not only did he fend off competition for his county place, but he was captain of Devon for three seasons. By 1939 Merchant had amassed a record-breaking 52 appearances for the county. Away from rugby, he had set up in business as a master builder and was married to Florence Annie Skedgel, sister of his former teammate, James. Home was in Greenswood Road, just down the hill from Astley Park.
At a London club, Merchant might well have earned an England cap – the closest he had got was non-travelling reserve for the final trial in the winter of 1928-29 – but when his country eventually came calling, it was to take up arms. As a paratrooper with the 1st Airborne Division, he saw action in North Africa at the end of 1942 and at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944. On being demobilised in 1946, he returned to married life with Florence in Brixham and the housebuilding and home decorating supplies business he had established with Len Bubeer, a club official.
After offering to help get the rugby club up and running again, Merchant found there was no lack of enthusiasm, but rationing ensured that jerseys, shorts, socks, boots and other essentials, including laundry soap, were in short supply. When Phil Davies’s boots fell to bits after a playing on a waterlogged pitch at Bideford he struggled to find enough coupons for a replacement pair.
Phil, whose first home as a married man in Cudhill Road was built by Merchant and Bubeer, recalls Merchant as “a very nice bloke, quite placid. After matches, he enjoyed a drink with us in the Conservative Club in Bolton Street. He was a very good snooker player, and cricketer too.”
Other characters who came together to re-form the club are still vivid in his memory: “Ray Gove had played with Jimmy before the war and was our best forward, a great player.” Gove, a Lance-Corporal in the Devonshire Regiment, had been reported missing at Dunkirk in 1940. He had been wounded and was later found to be a prisoner of war at Stalag VIIIB 344 in Poland.
Phil added: “In that team also was John Braddick who played on the wing for Devon. He was well built, short and stocky, and you’d have a hell of a job to tackle him. On the other wing was Bill Foot, whose father was a referee. Walter Jackson was at centre and we had a postman from Paignton too, Ernie Lane. There was Maurice ‘Mofie’ Andrews and Ted Caunter Snr. John Elliott, centre or full-back, was the eldest of three rugby-playing brothers and worked in the dockyard at Devonport.
“Wilf Coysh had been a good soccer player but when he went to work for Bubeer & Merchant they persuaded him to play rugby. He also played for Torquay and I think he captained Devon a couple of times. Bob Dart at prop was a good player too. Charlie Gregory was the hooker.” Off the field, ex-Army PE instructor Sid Lemmy was their physiotherapist and trainer, while local boot repairer Jack Fast looked after the balls. “He used to give us chewing gum as we ran out on the field and then took the flag as touch judge,” recalled Phil

Phil Davies, Brixham’s oldest
ex-player at 98, holding a postcard
sent in 1947 informing of his
selection for a first XV match at Bideford.

“We had a fair old following, keen to watch rugby again after the war. There was an old grandstand, a bit like a barn and inside was one big bath, the water heated from a boiler. If your team was second to play that day, you’d often be sitting in mud rather than water! At half-time we’d get half a lemon or a piece of orange.
At the end of the game, Mr Simmons used to bring up a jug of tea. That’s all we had, no beer or anything like that. But it’s a fantastic club now, with the clubhouse and everything.”
,Phil had enjoyed an early introduction to rugby, thanks to his dad: “Before the war, to get me out of my mother’s hair, he used to take me up the club on a Saturday afternoon for a kick-about.” 
After two years at South Devon Technical College he began a five-year apprenticeship from 1943 as a fitter and turner with S H Partridge & Sons’ motor and marine works in King Street. Since 1940 the South Devon coastal towns had been regularly attacked by ‘tip and run’ Luftwaffe raiders who would arrive at low level without warning, as Phil knew all too well.
“A few of us lads used to go up to Astley Park on a Sunday evening, hop over the fence and throw a ball about. One night these Messerschmitts came over and we dived for cover. And I think I was about 13 or 14 when they bombed an off-licence down by the Quay and there were several killed. I went down, helping the Salvation Army, giving out tea to people.”
The casualties that day had been a widow, Mrs Ellen Preston, her daughter Stella (50), son Frank (48) and 14-year-old Geoffrey Hill, who was on his first day of fire-watching duty, 19 May 1941. He was going to their aid when a parachute mine exploded. A year later, Phil’s sister’s husband, Garnet Tucker, was killed when his fishing boat was strafed in the Outer Harbour, near the breakwater.
During his apprenticeship, Phil worked on motor torpedo boats and motor gunboats in Upham’s shipyard, which had been requisitioned by the Admiralty. With that experience, he qualified as a marine engineer in Plymouth and went on to serve 38 years on tankers in the merchant service with Esso, Eagle Oil and Everard’s, retiring at 60 in 1987. Apart from an occasional appearance while home on leave, Phil’s rugby career ended in 1949 – as did that of Jimmy Merchant whose immense contribution to rugby in Brixham and the county was recognised with a special farewell match against a Devon XV at Astley Park on 29 April.