curmudgeon
I wuz that guest - I agree with point the reverse engineering the Bowdlerized versions.

Gareth - the skipper was probably circumspect - after. The point about rugby songs is they are first and foremost rugby songs but Eric Illot was playing detective and knew what he was on about - and if he was near enough that's as good as it gets. As long as the provenance is documented, there is little harm. Less than passing-off a yer own song as trad. And there are enough of suspected examples, starting with Robbie Burns (or maybe Henry VIII even) - some perpetrators are still with us.