Before the likes of the Squidge Brothers, Huw Griffin, or even the aptly titled Rugby Nause, there was Arthur Conan Doyle.

Thank you for reading! The Rugby History Project is able to keep going thanks to the support of the readers (aka you!). If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription, or if you’d like to leave a one-time tip, please click here.

---

Rugby Nause

[ruhg-bee naw-z]

A person who is an obsessive fan of the sport of rugby union to the point they could be considered an expert of the game. They may have a distinct special interest in an element of the sport such as statistics, its history, or a specific in-game feature such as line-outs or scrums. Their obsession may lead to them being deemed boring, irritating, and/or annoying by others due to their ability to shoehorn rugby into any conversation.

---

Andrew Nolan, better known by his social media handle Rugby Nause, has done wonders for the reputation of rugby nauses worldwide. Once upon a time, a nause would spend their time receiving sighs in the club bar whilst they waxed lyrically about the benefits of shortened line-outs or the demise of the drop goal. In 2026, nauses are able to share their opinions and thoughts with other nauses on various social media platforms, or even their own website¹; however, at the turn of the twentieth century, one of the most well-known authors in the world was able to use his fiction writing as an outlet for his nause tendencies.

---

---

Arthur Conan Doyle was born Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle², on the 22nd May 1859 in Edinburgh to parents of Irish descent. Whilst his paternal grandfather had been a successful cartoonist, Doyle’s nuclear family struggled financially due to his father’s alcoholism. With a wealthy extended family and middle-class connections, Doyle was able to attend Stonyhurst College, a Catholic public school in Lancashire³. It was at Stonyhurst that Doyle first played football. Stonyhurst played a rugby football-like game; like many public schools, they had adapted the laws prior to codification. Doyle reflected on his love of rugby, and the specific code played at Stonyhurst, in his autobiography Memories and Adventures, published in 1924.

‘If boxing is the finest single man sport, I think that Rugby football is the best collective one. Strength, courage, speed and resource are great qualities to include in a single game. I have always wished that it had come more my way in life, but my football was ruined, as many a man’s is, by the fact that at my old school they played a hybrid game peculiar to the place, with excellent points of its own, but unfitting the youngster for any other. All these local freak games, wall games, Winchester games, and so on are national misfortunes, for while our youths are wasting their energies upon them — those precious early energies which make the instinctive players — the young South African or New Zealander is brought up on the real universal Rugby, and so comes over to pluck a few more laurel leaves out of our depleted wreath. In Australia I have seen in Victoria a hybrid, though excellent game of their own, but they have had the sense in other parts to fall into line, and are already taking the same high position which they hold in other branches of sport. I hope that our headmasters will follow the same course.’

-Doyle, Memories and Adventures.⁴

Despite deeming himself to not be as good of a player as he could’ve been, Doyle did play for the University of Edinburgh’s School of Medicine several times during his time as a student. During the 1870s, it was not uncommon for established university sides such as Edinburgh’s medical school to be made up of internationally capped players, so Doyle’s appearances as a forward for the side are more impressive than he made them out to be. Doyle certainly continued to watch live rugby after graduating, with it being reported in the Hampshire Post that Doyle was in attendance at a Southseas Victoria game in 1888 which resulted in one H. C. Brown receiving severe lacerations on his leg. As a medical doctor, Doyle was able to tend to the player.

---

---

Beyond rugby, and rugby-like games, Doyle was an avid sportsman. Cricket and Association Football seemed to be his preferred pastimes after leaving university, with him playing cricket for Marlyebone Cricket Club and soccer for Portsmouth AFC⁵. He was also known to enjoy golf, skiing, rifle shooting, and cycling. His love of sport resulted in an entire chapter in his autobiography being devoted to the subject.

‘As one grows old one looks back at one’s career in sport as a thing completed. Yet I have at least held on to it as long as I could, for I played a hard match of Association football at forty-four, and I played cricket for ten years more. I have never specialized, and have therefore been a second-rater in all things. I have made up for it by being an all-rounder, and have had, I dare say, as much fun out of sport as many an adept. It would be odd if a man could try as many games as I for so many years without having some interesting experiences or forming a few opinions which would bear recording and discussion.’

-Doyle, Memories and Adventures.⁶.

---

---

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first notable piece of fiction at the age of 27⁷. A Study in Scarlet initially struggled to find a publisher, finally being accepted by Ward Lock & Co., although it wouldn’t be published until over a year later. The 1887 publication of the novel introduced the world to consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his flatmate, Dr. John Watson. Over the course of four decades, Doyle wrote and published 56 short stories and 4 full-length novels, known to fans as the Canon, involving the duo. Whilst the sheer volume of the Canon is astounding, it is simply a fraction of Doyle’s total output. With over 200 short stories, 22 novels, 14 plays, and a selection of non-fiction books, Doyle was one of the most prolific writers of all time. Whilst the Canon is a cornerstone of detective fiction, writing in general was an outlet for Doyle to share his knowledge of his own hobbies and interests.

Whilst there are references to other aspects of Doyle’s real life in his fiction, with Holmes himself being based on one of Doyle’s university lecturers, Joseph Bell, sport, specifically rugby, has some of the most gratuitous and self-serving mentions. There are four stories which mention rugby in some form across his bibliography⁸.

The Firm of Girdlestone was serialised⁹ in 25 parts in The People newspaper between October 1889 and April 1890, and published in a bound copy shortly thereafter. As a serialised novel, readers on the morning of the 17th November 1889 may have been confused and slightly amused when an entire chapter was devoted to a fictionalised version of the 1877 Home Nations match between Scotland and England. Chapter seven, titled England versus Scotland¹⁰, is rather irrelevant to the plot of the novel, but it does feature one of the leading characters, Tom Dimsdale, as a Scotland player. Dimsdale ends up as the Scottish hero, as he kicks the final drop goal to win the game, and the tournament, although he does break his collarbone in the process. The Firm of Girdlestone features perhaps the most gratuitous mention of rugby in Doyle’s bibliography; notably, it is the only mention in one of his pieces of fiction that sits outside of the Sherlock Holmes Canon.

---

Doyle had originally killed off the character of Sherlock Holmes in 1893 in the story The Final Chapter. Doyle had become bored with the Holmes stories and felt they were preventing him from writing more serious literature; killing off Sherlock seemed the easiest way out. Less than a decade later, Doyle would return to writing Holmes stories with The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was set two years before The Final Chapter, and in 1903, public pressure led to Sherlock Holmes’ death being revealed to be a hoax. Doyle was facing extreme financial pressure at the time, as his wife Louisa was suffering from tuberculosis, so it is perhaps not surprising he returned to writing such a lucrative character.

In 1904, Doyle once again utilised his love of rugby in his work with the release of two Sherlock Holmes short stories featuring the sport. The first, The Adventure of the Three Students, was published in June 1904 in The Strand Magazine. The story follows the investigation of a ransacking of a lecturer’s office, presumably by a student wishing to cheat on an upcoming exam. One of the lead suspects is a student known only by his surname, Gilchrist. Gilchrist is noted as being a member of the rugby and cricket teams by the lecturer, and Watson describes him as being welcoming during their investigation. It is later discovered, however, that Gilchrist is responsible for the deed, with Holmes deducing that only a man of Gilchrist’s height would’ve been capable of viewing the contents of the printer’s proofs. Gilchrist informs his lecturer that he will not be sitting the exam as he has decided to move to South Africa to join the Rhodesian Police¹¹.

---

---

Whilst chapter seven of The Firm of Girdlestone is the most detailed account of rugby in Doyle’s bibliography, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter is the Doyle story most well known for its rugby-related content. Published in The Strand in August 1904, the Missing Three-Quarter follows Holmes’ investigation into the disappearance of a University of Cambridge winger. It is made clear throughout the text that Holmes himself has no knowledge of rugby or even sport; this is first evidenced in the opening few paragraphs when he struggles to decipher the following telegram:

“Please await me. Terrible misfortune.
Right wing three-quarter missing; indispensable to-morrow.
— Overton.”

-Doyle, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.¹²

Cyril Overton is described as being a large man who fills the doorway of 221B Baker Street. Initial confusion and miscommunication stall the first few pages, as Overton assumes that a man such as Holmes must know of him. It’s revealed that Overton was previously in the English National Team as a reserve and is the University of Cambridge Varsity captain¹³. Overton tells Holmes that his friend and teammate Godfrey Staunton is missing, having last been seen in the team hotel looking distressed. Staunton is described as being key to his team, with an incredible rugby pedigree.

---

“Great Scot!” cried the athlete. “Why, I was first reserve for England against Wales, and I’ve skippered the ’Varsity all this year. But that’s nothing! I didn’t think there was a soul in England who didn’t know Godfrey Staunton, the crack threequarter, Cambridge, Blackheath, and five Internationals. Good Lord! Mr. Holmes, where have you lived?”
Holmes laughed at the young giant’s naive astonishment.
“You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton, a sweeter and healthier one. My ramifications stretch out into many sections of society, but never, I am happy to say, into amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England. However, your unexpected visit this morning shows me that even in that world of fresh air and fair play there may be work for me to do; so now, my good sir, I beg you to sit down and to tell me slowly and quietly exactly what it is that has occurred, and how you desire that I should help you.”

-Doyle, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.¹⁴

---

---

The Missing Three-Quarter demonstrates Doyle’s love of rugby pretty well; his inability to not praise the then amateur nature of rugby even through the dialogue of Holmes is notable. However, the actual plot of the story, which involves tracking down Godfrey Staunton via telegrams Staunton had exchanged with a doctor. Interestingly, Doyle chose to include tuberculosis as a central theme of the story, the illness from which his then wife was dying from.

Both The Adventure of the Three Students and The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter were later published within the anthology The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905. Doyle would only mention rugby once more in the Canon, when a prospective client drops into a conversation that Watson had played for Blackheath when he had played for Richmond in the 1924 story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire ¹⁵. It is slightly odd that this fact had never been mentioned before, especially as in the Missing Three-Quarter the aforementioned three-quarter is said to have played at the club. However, it does highlight how rugby was used as a form of social networking in middle-class Victorian Britain.

---

---

None of Doyle’s rugby-focused works are particularly well known or celebrated, at least in comparison to classics such as The Hound of the Baskervilles or A Scandal in Bohemia. Few adaptations have been made of the four stories, especially in film. Whilst no film version of The Missing Three-Quarter has ever been made, references to The Three Students were made in a 2019 episode of the American television show Elementary¹⁶, and an adaptation of The Sussex Vampire was made by Grenada Television in 1993¹⁷. Non-Holmes story The Firm of Girdlestone was adapted in 1958 by the BBC; however, it was difficult to find a copy online to check if the infamous rugby scenes were included¹⁸. Recently, both The Three Students and The Missing Three-Quarters have been adapted as a part of the Sherlock & Co podcast, although the producers of the show chose to replace rugby with gym bros and soccer respectively, and utilise the voice acting abilities of former soccer players Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer.

---

Rugby was not the only sport that Doyle wrote about; even if you exclude the sports only mentioned in his non-fiction writing, he still managed to squeeze in mentions of tennis, archery, ballooning, motorsports, cycling, horseriding, shooting, skiing and golf into his fiction. He also included boxing heavily in his fiction writing, including the sport in twelve of his stories.

Whilst Doyle enjoyed team and non-contact sports, he considered boxing to be the peak of athleticism. Whilst he described himself as ‘a fair average amateur’¹⁹, he nonetheless recounts various examples of incidents where he sparred with near-strangers as a part of a Victorian middle-class bonding ritual. However, he also decried the manner he felt boxing was falling to during the 1920s.

‘Better that our sports should be a little too rough than that we should run a risk of effeminacy. But the ring outlasted its time. It was ruined by the villainous mobs who cared nothing for the chivalry of sport or the traditions of British fair play as compared with the money gain which the contest might bring. Their blackguardism drove out the good men—the men who really did uphold the ancient standards, and so the whole institution passed into rottenness and decay. But now the glove contests carried on under the discipline of the National Sporting or other clubs perpetuate the noble old sport without a possibility of the more evil elements creeping into it once more. An exhibition of hardihood without brutality, of good-humoured courage without savagery, of skill without trickery, is, I think, the very highest which sport can give. People may smile at the mittens, but a twenty-round contest with four-ounce gloves is quite as punishing an ordeal as one could wish to endure. There is as little room for a coward as in the rougher days of old, and the standard of endurance is probably as high as in the average prize-fight.’

-Doyle, Memories and Adventures.²⁰

The inclusion of sport in so much of Doyle’s work is a reflection of his education and standing in society. Christian Musculinity was a focus of British public schooling, and the importance of sport, especially team sports such as rugby and cricket, carried through to adulthood. Doyle’s writing reflected the middle-class society in which he was raised and in which he operated; introductions through referencing the sporting clubs to which someone belonged would have been completely normal and an accepted facet of middle-class life in Britain at the time. In fact, one of the major attractions of sporting clubs were the connections they could grant you. With old boys networks becoming less of a factor in society, and the professionalisation of sport, it is not surprising that these references have largely been dropped from Holmes adaptations in the 21st Century.

---

---

As a self-described rugby nause, I thought an investigation into the first ever rugby nause would be a fun little article. I’ve tried not to give away too many unnecessary details in case you wish to read any of the texts; they are all now in the public domain, so free PDF copies are widely available. I have linked them in my references section.

If you would like more regular updates, please check out my Instagram, Facebook,   Twitter,   and/or Bluesky.  You can also catch me podding with WRRAP or with Women’s Rugby Treehouse somewhat regularly this summer.

An audio version of this post is also available in all good podcasting locations, and video versions are now available on YouTube and Spotify. As always, references are below.

-Hattie

---

Thanks for reading The Rugby History Project! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. If you would like to help support the project financially, you can find the details here.

---

1. At least I’m self-aware. ↩︎
2. Arthur Ignatius Conan were his given names, with Doyle being the family name. Whilst he later dropped the name Ignatius, he used his middle name Conan in his pen name. ↩︎
3. Stonyhursts history is incredibly interesting having been founded in Flanders by Catholic families who had fled England during a period of anti-Catholic feeling. The school moved to England in the late 1700’s. ↩︎
4. Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (Little, Brown, and Company, 1924) <https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66991/pg66991-images.html>. ↩︎
5. Portsmouth AFC was a precursor to the modern EFL side Portsmouth FC. ↩︎
6. Doyle, Memories and Adventures. ↩︎
7. The Narrative of John Smith was written several years before A Study in Scarlet but remained unpublished until 2011. ↩︎
8. Using my terrible maths, this is about 1.5% of his total work. ↩︎
9. Published in segments over time in a magazine or newspaper. ↩︎
10. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Firm of Girdlestone (Chatto and Windus, 1890) <https://web.seducoahuila.gob.mx/biblioweb/upload/the_firm_of_girdlestone.pdf>. ↩︎
11. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Three Students (George Newnes Ltd, 1904) <https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/2-sided/miss.pdf>. ↩︎
12. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (Georges Newnes, Ltd., 1904) <https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/2-sided/miss.pdf>. ↩︎
13. Doyle, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter. ↩︎
14. Doyle, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter. ↩︎
15. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire: A New Sherlock Holmes Story (John Murray, 1924) <https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/suss.pdf>. ↩︎
16. Elementary is an incredibly loose adaptation of the Canon. In season 7 episode 9, On the Scent, a student jumps out of a window to avoid being caught cheating in a reference to the story. ↩︎
17. The Sherlock Holmes episode The Last Vampyre is a loose adaptation of the story, with no mentions of rugby. ↩︎
18. It is not unlikely that a copy simply does not exist, as it was once commonplace for television broadcasters to clear their archives for reasons such as saving space or to reuse the physical materials such as tape. ↩︎
19. Doyle, Memories and Adventures. ↩︎
20. Doyle, Memories and Adventures. ↩︎