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About The Play

 

 

Author and historian Ed Harris explains what inspired the play:

 

The London Irish Rifles were awarded ‘the honour’ of leading the attack at Loos. The regiment did so following a football kicked ahead of the charge by rifleman Frank Edwards who had determined that if he were to die then it would doing what he loved most; playing football.

Frank was inspired by stories of games of football played during the 1914 Christmas Truce between British and German troops in No Man’s Land. Viewed as a near mutiny by British High Command, the act of taking a football to the front line was thereafter tantamount to treason. But Frank broke the rules and survived to become known as the Footballer of Loos. Frank’s audacious act in turn inspired a young captain of the East Surrey’s regiment to do likewise on the first day of the Somme where he was killed.

Billie Neville was born in Twickenham and Frank Edwards died there. Thus was born The Twickenham Museum’s series of World War One commemorative events on the theme Football at the Front. A key element of this series is the play The Greater Game based on the true events leading up to and following the ill-fated Battle of Loos in a world dominated by press and propaganda, class and politics and power.

The Greater Game is a correlation of sport and war in their attraction to young men prepared to play the game and kill or be killed. It is an object lesson in man’s inability to learn the lessons of the past. The Battle of Loos is the forgotten battle of the Great War and its story needs to be told. It is also a personal story in so far as Frank Edwards was my wife’s grandfather. He died in the house where I now write these words in the hope of doing him and his comrades justice.

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