James Huggan

James Huggan
Birth nameJames Laidlaw Huggan
Date of birth(1888-10-11)11 October 1888
Place of birthJedburgh, Scotland
Date of death16 September 1914(1914-09-16) (aged 25)
Place of deathAisne. France
Rugby union career
Position(s) Wing
Amateur team(s)
Years Team Apps (Points)
Jed-Forest ()
– Edinburgh University ()
– London Scottish ()
Provincial / State sides
Years Team Apps (Points)
1910 South of Scotland ()
International career
Years Team Apps (Points)
1914 Scotland 1 (9)

James Laidlaw Huggan (11 October 1888 – 16 September 1914) was a Scotland rugby union player. He was killed in World War I[1] at the First Battle of the Aisne.[2]

Early life

James Huggan was born in Jedburgh on 11 October 1888.[3] He was educated at Darlington Grammar School before reading medicine at the University of Edinburgh.[3]

Rugby Union career

Amateur career

Huggan played for Jed-Forest. On moving to Edinburgh University to study he then played for Edinburgh University.

He then moved to play for London Scottish.

Provincial career

He played for the South of Scotland in 1910.[4]

International career

He had taken part in the last rugby international before the war, the Calcutta Cup match at Inverleith (Edinburgh) in March 1914, scoring three tries in the game.[2]

Military career

Memorial to the 133 rugby players killed in the Great War, at Fromelles

Huggan was a lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards.[3] He is commemorated at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre memorial.[5] He died two days after Ronald Simson, another Scottish player, who was the first rugby international to die in the conflict, and who was also at the Aisne.[2]

Huggan is among the 133 names of rugby players killed in the Great War on the memorial at Fromelles in north France.

References

  1. ^ Bath, p. 109
  2. ^ a b c "An entire team wiped out by the Great War". The Scotsman. 6 November 2009. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  3. ^ a b c Clutterbuck, L. A. (2002). The Bond of Sacrifice: A Biographical Record of all British Officers who fell in the Great War. Vol. 1. Navy and Military Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-1843422259.
  4. ^ https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000164/19101212/102/0006 – via British Newspaper Archive. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  5. ^ "Casualty". cwgc.org. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
  • Bath, Richard (ed.) The Scotland Rugby Miscellany (Vision Sports Publishing Ltd, 2007 ISBN 1-905326-24-6)


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