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Abstract
Historians have traditionally viewed sport in Australia as a vehicle for nationalist sentiment. This paper explores the history of Australian rugby union and its relationship with Britain in the first half of the twentieth century to argue against that assumption that sporting rivalry automatically means national rivalry at a cultural or political level. It suggests that the reality is much more complex and that, for rugby union at least, Australians were far more deferential to Britain than has hitherto been believed.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Council of Australian State Libraries for providing me with a fellowship in 2004 during which much of the research for this paper was carried out.
Notes
1. C.L.R James, Beyond a boundary (London, 1963); Stephen Alomes, A nation at last? The changing character of Australian nationalism 1880–1988, (NSW, 1988), p. 16; Richard Cashman, Sport in the national imagination: Australian sport in the Federation decades, (Sydney, 2002), p. 15; W.F. Mandle, ‘Cricket and Australian nationalism in the nineteenth century’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 59 (4) (1973), pp. 225–46; John Rickard ‘Imagining the unimaginable?’ Australian Historical Studies, 116 (2001), pp. 128–131. A critique of Mandle can be found in K.S. Inglis, ‘Imperial cricket: Test matches between Australia and England, 1877–1900’, in Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan, eds, Sport in history: The making of modern sporting history (St Lucia, 1979), pp. 149–79.
2. The quote is from W.F. Mandle, Going it alone. Australia's national identity in the twentieth century (Melbourne, 1978), p. 23, and is perhaps the clearest expression of this idea. For Bodyline, see Ric Sissons and Brian Stoddart, Cricket and empire: The 1932–33 Bodyline tour of Australia (London, 1984).
3. Deryck M. Schreuder and Stuart Ward, eds, Australia's empire (Oxford, 2008). See also Neville Meaney's ‘Britishness and Australia: Some reflections’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31 (2) (2003), p. 122–35 and Stuart Ward, Australia and the British embrace: The demise of the imperial ideal (Melbourne, 2001). The March 2005 issue of the Journal of Australian Politics and History, 51 (1) is also a collection of articles dealing with similar issues.
4. See Tony Collins ‘Australian nationalism and working-class Britishness: The case of rugby league football’, History Compass, 3 (142) (2005), pp. 1–19.
5. For the origins of rugby in Australia see Tom Hickie They ran with the ball (Melbourne, 1993) pp. 120–9. The influence of Rugby School on Victorian rules is highlighted in G.M. Hibbins, ‘The Cambridge connection: The English origins of Australian rules football’, in J.A. Mangan, ed., The cultural bond. Sport, empire, society (London, 1993), pp. 108–127.
6. J.C. Davis, Official souvenir – English team of rugby football players (Sydney, 1904), p. 3.
7. G.R. Hill quoted in Rugby football: A weekly record of the game, 17 Nov. 1923, p. 273.
8. Matthew Mullineux's views are reported in great detail in the Australian Field, 26 Aug. 1899.
9. Brisbane Courier, 29 June 1899.
10. H.M. Moran, Viewless winds. Being the recollections and digressions of an Australian surgeon (London, 1939), p. 46
11. Sydney Morning Herald, 7 July 1904.
12. Hamish Stuart quoted in Greg Ryan, ‘A lack of esprit de corps’: The 1908 Wallaby tour of Britain’, Sporting Traditions, 17 (1) (2000), p. 45.
13. James McMahon in Referee, 31 Mar. 1909.
14. Anon., The sporting English? A commentary by a ‘Man in the Street’ (Sydney, undated, c.1933), p. 18, pamphlet in Box 379, ES Marks Collection, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
15. Moran, Viewless winds, pp. 29, 69.
16. See Chris Cunneen, ‘The rugby war. The early history of rugby league in NSW, 1907–1915’, in Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan, eds, Sport in History (Queensland, 1979), p. 303.
17. Times, 22 Mar. 1919.
18. For example, the encouragement of Maori involvement by the New Zealand Rugby Union ‘had as much to do with countering the perceived negative of rugby league than with any positive desire to advance the Maori game’, according to Greg Ryan, ‘The paradox of Maori rugby’, in Greg Ryan, ed., Tackling rugby myths (Otago, 2005), p. 103. On Australian rugby league and its relationship to Britain, see Collins ‘Australian nationalism and working-class Britishness’, pp. 1–19.
19. Murray Phillips, ‘Football, class and war: The rugby codes in New South Wales 1907–18’, in John Nauright and Timothy J.L. Chandler, eds, Making men: Rugby and masculine identity (London, 1996), pp. 158–80. Michael McKernan. ‘Sport, war and Australia’, in Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan, eds, Sport in History (Brisbane, 1979), p. 3
20. Manly District Rugby Union Football Club (RUFC), 10th Annual Report and Balance Sheet for Season 1915, p. 3.
21. NSW Rugby Union, Annual Report 1915, p. 3.
22. NSWRU, Annual Report 1916, p. 3.
23. Eastern Suburbs District Football Club (FC), 16th Annual Report and Balance Sheet 1915–19, p. 3.
24. See, for example, a letter from ‘An Old International’, in Times, 30 Dec. 1918, p. 12
25. Referee, 11 May 1921.
26. Athletic News, 5 Feb. 1919.
27. RFU committee minutes, 17 Oct. 1919. NSWRU management committee minutes, 29 Mar. 1920. NSWRU Annual Report 1920, p. 3.
28. International Board minutes, 19 Mar. and 23 July 1920. See also NSWRU Annual Report 1921, p. 3.
29. Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book 1914–1919 & official handbook, 1919–1920 (Leeds, 1920), p. 272. See also Tony Collins ‘English rugby union and the First World War’, The Historical Journal, 45 (4) (2002), pp. 797–817.
30. John Hughes, ‘Stands rugger yet’, Referee, 5 Jan. 1921.
31. See, for example, the first issue of Rugby News, 5 May 1923, p. 2.
32. For the contrasting zealotry of the RFU's rulemakers, see Tony Collins, ‘The ambiguities of amateurism: English rugby in the Edwardian era’ in Sport in History, 26 (3) (2006), pp. 390–411.
33. IB minutes, 14 Mar. 1924 and 22 Oct. 1926.
34. IB minutes, 30 Nov. 1923, 14 Mar., 11 Oct. 1924; Times, 13 Dec. 1924.
35. NSWRU, Rugby Annual 1927 (Sydney, 1927), p. 21.
36. Letter from S.F Coopper to A.E. Neilson, 2 Jan. 1931 (RFU Archives, Twickenham). The idea of removing the dispensation had been raised as early as 1929, see IB minutes, 15 Mar. 1929.
37. IB minutes, 29 July 1931. NSWRU Annual Report, 1931, p. 3. The RFU agreed to restore the ‘dispensation’ on kicking directly into touch to counter rugby league's appeal, see RFU committee minutes, 20 Mar. 1936. The IB eventually brought in the ‘dispensation’ for the entire game in 1968.
38. Rugby News, 9 May 1931, p. 3.
39. IB minutes 19 Mar. 1926. NSWRU council minutes, 21 June 1926; NSW Rugby Annual 1927, p. 11.
40. See Rugby News, 14 May 1927, p. 4 for the regulations.
41. E.G. Shaw and A.C. Wallace, Report of the tour of the NSWRU representative team The Waratahs 1927–28, 27 Mar. 1928, pp. 6, 9.
42. Rugby News, 16 July 1927, p. 3.
43. Rugby News, 12 May 1937, p. 17.
44. E.G. Shaw and A.C. Wallace, Report, p. 8.
45. E.G. Shaw and A.C. Wallace, Report, p. 18.
46. For Queensland, see Ian Diehm, Red, red, red. The story of Queensland rugby (NSW, 1997), pp. 43–47 and Rugby News, 12 May 1928, p. 15. For Melbourne, see June Senyard, The ties that bind. A history of sport at the University of Melbourne (Petersham, 2004), p. 134.
47. ‘Editorial’, Rugby News, 12 May 1928, p. 4.
48. RFU New Zealand and Australia tour committee minutes, 7 Dec. 1929.
49. F.D. Prentice ‘Australasia 1930’, in HBT Wakelam, ed., The game goes on (London 1954), p. 154.
50. NSWRU council minutes, 28 May, 16 June and 16 July 1930.
51. NSWRU management committee report, 15 October 1930, p. 3.
52. W.F. Matthews, Manager's Report of the Australian Rugby Union Team's Tour 1939 to the Presidents of the Australian Rugby Unions, undated, un-paginated MSS, Australian Rugby Union archives, Sydney. I am grateful for the help of Australian Rugby Union (ARU) archivist Judy MacArthur for her help locating these materials.
53. Referee, 29 June 1939. W.F. Matthews, Report of 1939 Australian Rugby Union's Tour of Great Britain undated diary MSS, entry for 5 Sept. 1939. ARU archives, Sydney.
54. IB minutes, 19 Mar. 1948. The dispensations were once again allowed in 1951, see IB minutes 17 Mar. 1951.
55. Quoted in Chris Harte, A history of Australian cricket (London, 1993), p. 348.
56. Cashman, Sport in the national imagination, p. 57.
57. Letter reprinted in Rugby News, 3 Sept. 1927.