Fran Cotton's role in rugby's most iconic image revealed

England legend Fran Cotton will forever be famous for the picture taken of him covered from head to toe in mud on the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand in 1977.

However, the prop turned sports clothing entrepreneur has revealed that he played a significant role in arguably the most iconic rugby image of them all: Nelson Mandela presenting the Webb Ellis Cup to Francois Pienaar while wearing the Springbok No.6 jersey.

Interviewed in the next issue of the glossy quarterly publication, Rugby Journal, Cotton talks about his life in and outside of rugby, including how Cotton Traders, the company he founded with former team-mate Steve Smith, helped to make that magical moment happen.

“What people never knew was that the shirt Nelson Mandela wore for the final was a Cotton Traders shirt,” he said.

“The president’s office phoned Cotton Traders to say ‘the President would like to wear a Springbok shirt for the game’. But they said it must be the captain’s shirt; it had to have the captain’s number on it.

“So we had to fly him out a Springbok shirt that he could wear for the final. So that was pretty iconic.”

Mandela’s gesture was a defining moment in the evolution of the Rainbow Nation, at a time when rugby was also undergoing a massive transformation.

The 1995 World Cup was the last tournament before the game went professional, a status bestowed upon Cotton well before the IRB officially declared the game ‘open’.

“I wrote an autobiography and Bob Weighill, the secretary of the Rugby Football Union, said, ‘What are you doing with the
royalties?” he recalled.

“I said, ‘Well, they’re in my bank account’. He said, I couldn’t do that, otherwise you’re professional, so I said, ‘Unfortunately, I’m going to have to be a professional then. Because it was £20,000, which doesn’t sound a lot, but in those days, it was a lot, particularly if you’d just got married.”

Read the full 4,000-word Fran Cotton interview in the new issue of coffee-table print quarterly Rugby Journal, available to order now by clicking here >>