Incoming RFU President granted asylum as a young man
When the incoming RFU President, Rob Udwin, arrived in London from his native South Africa, he was a 17-year-old deferring his South Africa Defence Force conscription to study in the UK.
It was the year of the Soweto uprising, when black schoolchildren protested in the streets of the townships against being taught in Afrikaans, the "language of the oppressor". As some 20,000 students took part in the protests, they were met with fierce police brutality, and many were shot and killed in this key event in the fight against apartheid.
Rob fled to England knowing that “People I was at school with were being sent into townships in police uniform armed with rifles. Conscripts were told to suppress insurrection and I wanted no part of it. A black friend had also been gunned down and killed at a police checkpoint. It was a terrible time."
Theatrical impresario father
Born in 1959 to South African born parents, Rob’s father, Hymie Udwin, was a respected theatrical impresario with a tendency to sometimes unwisely invest in his own productions. “After one production bombed, we had to sell our house and move into a flat,” he recalls.
Rob Udwin will begin his presidency on 1 August.
His parents and sister followed Rob to the UK a year later, where “My dad fulfilled his lifetime ambition to work in the West End. He’d produced Ipi Tombi and brought it to the UK, going on to produce the likes of Children of a Lesser God and They’re Playing our Song with Tom Conti and Gemma Craven.”
After Rob’s student visa ran out, both he and the rest of his family faced deportation. Rob applied for and was refused British residency and had deportation papers served. He lodged an unsuccessful appeal and was again served with deportation papers. A third appeal in front of a Home-Office tribunal was successful, and Rob was granted political asylum on the grounds that he would refuse to do his two years in the Army in South Africa, and would be jailed.
“I spent 10 years travelling on a United Nations Displaced Persons Travel Document, having surrendered my South African passport on the granting of asylum,” he recalls. He finally became a British Citizen in 1993, as did his family three years later three years later.
Welcomed by rugby
Rob had attended and played rugby in state schools, Parkhurst Primary and Parktown Boys High School in Johannesburg. He arrived in London and, living alone a room in Cricklewood, set about cramming for A levels. With no friends in London, he joined Wasps FC in early 1977 and played for the lower XVs for two seasons.
“Everyone was so welcoming and it gave me friends and a social life,” he says. “That’s rugby, wherever you are in the world, wherever you come from, you walk into a rugby club and you’re among friends.”
Udwin (back row, fourth from right) during his playing days at the Entertainers.
Having gained a place to study for a degree in zoology at Manchester University, he again found friends and enjoyment of sport playing in the second row for Manchester University Rugby Club, his team losing to Durham in the semi-finals of the Universities Athletic Union (UAU) in 1981. “I made so many friends through rugby, many of whom are my friends today – 45 years later.”
Having joined Manchester Rugby Club, “a club with a great fixture list and the chance to enjoy the best quality rugby I played.” He moved back to London, travelling up to Manchester every week to play.
“I returned to Wasps, this time mostly as 2nd XV player with aspirations to get into the 1st XV regularly. Wasps is a great club, and I loved my time there, but these were amateur days and I was forging a career which made finding the time to devote to that level of rugby difficult, so I decided to move to a more junior club.
I spent a season at Hampstead Rugby Club, before moving to West London and joining Chiswick – then the Old Meadonians. I played over 200 games for the club before I hung up my boots in my mid-30s. I also played for a Sunday team, the Entertainers. Both Chiswick and the Entertainers were great touring clubs, and I went on many of those. So many great experiences, and so many good friends.”
After graduating, Rob worked for his dad’s theatre ticket agency in London. “It was the first to sell tickets over the phone by credit card! The company was bought by Keith Prowse, I went with it and by the time I was 30 I was a member of the senior management team, running the theatre ticket agency, one of the company’s five divisions.”
In 1991 Rob started his own consultancy, ran the ticketing for the Ryder Cup at the Belfry in 1993 and the ticketing operation at the Farnborough Airshow every two years for two decades, among many other projects.
He then started to work for a computer software development business in West London called Metafour. Having bought shares in the business, he became a part owner and, having married and still living in West London, with three children and six years between them, and a busy job, he still found time to become first Hon Sec, and then Chairman of Old Meadonians, while still playing for the club. He oversaw the transition from an old boys’ club to an open club, with a name change to Chiswick RFC.
Giving back
Rob took up the role of Discipline Secretary for Middlesex CRFU in 1992 while still playing, was a member of the Middlesex Management Committee, a selector for the County XV, then Chairman of Selectors, Assistant Manager and Manager. He also served on numerous committees and working groups before, in 2001, being elected to the RFU Council by the Middlesex clubs and then serving on the RFU Board.
He became Chair of the Community Rugby Standing Committee in 2008 and led the transition to the Community Game Board, serving on many other committees, task groups and working groups in 20 years as a Council Member. He was a trustee of both the Injured Players Foundation and the Rugby Football Foundation and RFU representative on Rugby Europe from 2014 to 2023.
Giving back to the sport that welcomed him has always been important and he is retiring from full time employment with Metafour to take up the role of RFU President. It is a role that means a huge amount to him.
“I plan to use my personal story – that of a foreign born, state school educated, political refugee - to demonstrate that rugby is for everyone, regardless of background or origin. It is who you are that really matters, not what you are – and I hope my story reinforces what we all know about how inclusive our sport is and should be.”
