John Ainsworth 'Jack' Spoors (1 July 1886 - 19 March 1963) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 international, rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 back who played club rugby for Bristol

Bristol Rugby

Bristol Rugby is a rugby union club based in Bristol, England. The club currently plays in the RFU Championship and competes in the British and Irish Cup. They rely in large part on the many junior rugby clubs in the region, particularly those from 'the Combination'...

. Although he was never capped for England

England national rugby union team

The England national rugby union team represents England in rugby union. They compete in the annual Six Nations Championship with France, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and Wales. They have won this championship on 26 occasions, 12 times winning the Grand Slam, making them the most successful team in...

 he was selected for the British Isles

British and Irish Lions

The British and Irish Lions is a rugby union team made up of players from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales...

 in their 1910 tour of South Africa

1910 British Lions tour to South Africa

The 1910 British Isles tour to South Africa was the eighth tour by a British Isles team and the fourth to South Africa. It is retrospectively classed as one of the British Lions tours, as the Lions naming convention was not adopted until 1950. As well as South Africa, the tour included a game in...

, playing in all three Test matches and ending the tour as the team's top scorer.

Rugby career

Spoors was educated at Colston's School a private school in Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

. He joined Bristol Rugby Club during 1903/04 season playing for the second XV, and in the following season he made his first team debut in a match against Cardiff

Cardiff RFC

Cardiff Rugby Football Club is a rugby union football club based in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. The club was founded in 1876 and played their first few matches at Sophia Gardens, but soon relocated to Cardiff Arms Park where they have been based ever since...

. By 1905 he was a regular in the first team and that year he faced the first touring New Zealand team.

Described as a wing with a deceptive turn of pace and the ability to side-step and swerve whilst running at speed, Spoors was chosen at county level for Gloucestershire. During the 1909/10 season, while still with Bristol, Spoors was selected to trial for the England national team. He played in all three trials that season, playing on the winning team each time and scoring three tries. Despite his success in the trials, the England selectors failed to choose Spoors prefering instead to choose the entire Harlequins backs for the opening game of the 1910 Five Nations Championship

1910 Five Nations Championship

The 1910 Five Nations Championship was the first series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship following the inclusion of France into the Home Nations Championship. Including the previous Home Nations Championships, this was the twenty-eighth series of the annual northern hemisphere rugby...

.