WITH Worcester Rugby Football Club – sorry, Worcester Warriors these days – just embarked on another campaign in the professional era, a remarkable discovery has been made harking back to a time when the club’s fortunes were rather different.

Down in deepest Hampshire, the daughter of one of WRFC’s most remarkable characters has uncovered five notebooks that will become family treasures, valuable research documents for rugby historians and of particular interest to followers of Worcestershire rugby.

Ernest Beddard Jackson, who was a pupil of the King’s School in Worcester during in the early 1930s, was an incredibly strong prop forward and a leading club player for more than four decades.

He gained national recognition and some notoriety during a playing career that extended to almost 1,000 games. After a long and full life, he died in December 2008 at the age of 90.

Recently his daughter Barbara Wells was cleaning her car and found the small hard-backed notebooks hidden in a storage compartment of the vehicle.

She said: “We only clean the car for weddings, christenings and funerals and we haven’t had any of those for quite a while.”

The notebooks may have found their way into the compartment when Barbara and her husband Richard removed property from her father’s home in the village of Lower Wield, near Alton, Hampshire, after his death. Their pages record every aspect of each and every rugby fixture Jacko – as he became known – played in: the names of scorers, injuries sustained, sevens tournaments, representative games and tour matches.

The information is all the more fascinating considering that at the age of five, having survived double pneumonia and a major lung operation, EB Jackson was told he would never engage in sports of any kind.

Determined to prove the doctors wrong he played his first game of competitive rugby for King’s School in October 1933. Within a year he had been invited to a trial for the Public Schools XV before joining Worcester Rugby Club in 1935. Jacko made his 1st XV debut against Gloucester United, made one appearance for the county and, in the final full season before the Second World War, was everpresent in the Worcester side.

Jacko was an explosives and demolition expert during the war and played his last wartime game early in 1941. He pulled on his boots again in September 1947 when he turned out for Rolls Royce against Coventry. He clocked up game after game until he logged his 500th fixture in his notebook in September 1954.

His working career was in farming and estate management and this took him first to Anglesey, North Wales, and then on to a 2,000-acre estate in Derbyshire. He captained Derby Rugby Club for eight of the 11 seasons he played for them and made 37 appearances for Derbyshire over a nine-year period. He became a regular in the Notts, Lincs and Derby side and, on December 22, 1952, received notice from the Rugby Football Union secretary that he had been selected as a reserve for England’s game against The Rest at Twickenham, the first of four England call-ups.

In 1954 Jacko made national newspaper headlines by forcing a referee to change a decision which contravened one of the laws of the game. The referee saw him cross the try line and signalled a try but the bearded prop whispered in the referee’s ear, admitting he hadn’t grounded the ball and forcing the referee to reverse his decision. A prolific place kicker, he scored his 1,000th point in Derby’s game against Old Millhillians.

Jacko played his final game for Derby in 1958 before an estate owner invited him to manage the Brown Candover estate near Basingstoke, Hampshire. Within weeks he made his debut for Winchester, the 715th game of his playing career. He was determined that his career would top 1,000 games and went close to realising his dream.

On October 16, 1966 Jacko turned out for Winchester at Guildford – game number 951 – but severely damaged his right knee and was admitted to Guildford Hospital for major surgery. His fifth and final rugby notebook chronicles in large red letters “END RUGBY”.

John Smith, now media officer at Winchester Rugby Club, but founder chairman of Droitwich Rugby Club when he was PE teacher at Witton Middle School, and a player with more than 100 appearances for Worcester RFC’s 1st XV, said: “Rugby football was just one aspect of EB Jackson’s life.

Jacko was also a highly respected farmer and land agent, a leading official in the NFU. He participated in country sports, played cricket, squash and basketball and was very involved in the life of his local church. He also contributed articles regularly to national newspapers and periodicals.

“After his death a dozen or more personal diaries were found chronicle his farming, social and private life, but the five notebooks provide a remarkable insight into his passion for rugby. Jacko was of another era, one of the last bastions of the Corinthian spirit and a man whose monumental achievements are fondly remembered, not only in Worcestershire, but in rugby clubs across the country.”

● John Smith has transcribed the entire contents of the notebooks and his book Come On Winch, a history of Winchester Rugby Club, which is available through Amazon, refers at length to EB Jackson and his remarkable achievements.