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Abstract
The history of Rugby union football in Queensland, Australia, officially began in 1882, when the first formal game was played. The match was played, as an addendum, to a game of Melbourne rules football between teams from the Brisbane Football Club and the Wallaroos (both primarily played the Victorian game) on 27 May 1882, in the same year Queensland and New South Wales contested the first intercolonial matches. Seven years later Queensland had hosted two international touring teams, the pan-Britannic team and the New Zealand Natives, and Rugby had become the premier football code in Queensland, usurping the previously dominant Australian football code. This historiographical analysis, drawing largely from the reflections and data from the newspapers of the time, offers insights into the contemporary rugby culture, sporting ethos and the administration of the sport in Queensland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The contests generated displays of parochial support, some ambivalent colonial loyalties and illustrated a pragmatic and unfettered attitude to the game's management in the colonies. Both tours symbolised matters beyond sport and each was beset with controversies stemming from social and racial issues that were of considerable historical moment and in many ways are still not reconciled.
Notes
1. J.R. Forbes, ‘When Brisbane Rules met Sydney Rugby’, Rugby News, 13 July 1963, 4–6.
2. Ibid.
3. In this paper, Australian Rules football, as it is now called, will often be referred to using contemporary nomenclature, such as, ‘Melbourne rules’, ‘Victorian rules’ or ‘the Victorian or Australian game’.
4. Dunstan, Sports, 217.
5. See Blainey, A Game of Our Own, passim.
6. Horton, ‘Football, Identity, Place’, 1344–1349.
7. The Queenslander, 25 August 1875, 4.
8. Horton, ‘Football, Identity, Place’, 1350.
9. Forbes, J.R. ‘When Brisbane Rules met Sydney Rugby.’ Rugby News, 13 July 1963.
10. Horton, ‘Football, Identity, Place’, 1349–1350.
11. In 1884, several leading players in Queensland also played in the Queensland's intercolonial Australian Rules team; however, by 1888, the level of interchange at all levels was almost completely non-existent.
12. See Horton, ‘Football, Identity, Place’, 1355–1361, for an account of the battle for ‘football supremacy’ in Brisbane in the late 1880s.
13. For an excellent full account of the tour, particularly of the Australian Rules games and insights into the motivation of the three entrepreneur sponsors, James Lillywhite, Arthur Shrewsbury and Alfred Shaw, see Williamson, Football's Forgotten Tour.
14. The IRFB is considered to be the precursor to the International Rugby Board (IRB) that now controls the game globally.
15. Marshall, Football: The Rugby Union Game, 499–503.
16. Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players, 150–155.
17. Marshall, Football: The Rugby Union Game, 202.
18. See New Zealand Rugby Annual 1932 for a further discussion of this incident.
19. See Collins, Rugby's Great Split, for a full analysis of the events leading up to the split in rugby in England in 1895.
20. The 1888 Pan-Britannic Rugby Touring Party: Full Backs: J.T. Haslam (Yorkshire & Batley), A. Paul (Lancashire & Swinton); Three-quarter backs: H.C. Speakman (Cheshire & Runcorn), Dr. D.H. Brooks (Durham & Edinburgh University), J. Anderton (Lancashire & Salford), A.E. Stoddart (Middlesex & England); Half backs: W. Bumby (Lancashire & Swinton), J. Nolan (Rochedale Hornets), W. Burnett (Roxburgh County & Hawick). Forwards: R.L. Seddon (Capt., Lancashire & Swinton), C. Mathews (Yorkshire & Bramley), S. Williams (Lancashire & Salford), T. Banks (Lancashire & Swinton), H. Eagles (Lancashire & Swinton), A.G. Stuart (Yorkshire & Dewsbury), W.H. Thomas (Cambridge University & Wales), T. Kent (Lancashire & Salford), A.P. Pinketh (Douglas, Isle Of Man Club), R. Barnett (Edinburgh Country & Hawick), A.J. Lang (Roxburgh Country & Hawick), Dr. D.J. Smith (Edinburgh University Corinthians & Scotland), J.P. Clowes (Yorkshire & Halifax) (non-playing member). [Queensland Rugby Union Annual, 1899, 92.]
21. Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players, 152.
22. Owen, History of the Rugby Football Union, 256. See also Williamson, Football's Forgotten Tour.
23. See Queensland Rugby Union Annual, 1899, 92–4.
24. ‘English Footballers and the Australian Game’, Melbourne Daily Telegraph, 30 July 1888 in, The Brisbane Courier, 16 August 1888.
25. Ibid. The recording of this initial pan-Britannic team's tour has provided historians with many contradictorily accounts. Many results and compilation of results do not cross reference. See Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 68.
26. Horton, ‘Rugby Union Football and its Role in the Socio-Cultural Development of Queensland’, 120.
27. See Harte, A History of Australian Cricket, passim.
28. Horton, ‘Rugby Union Football and its Role in the Socio-Cultural Development of Queensland’, 125–127.
29. This terminology was somewhat ironic in light of the growing connotation of the ‘Northern Rugby Union’ in England in the late 1880s. The Queenslanders adopted this nomenclature to match their new rivals in NSW who played under the banner of the Southern Rugby Football Union, ‘Southern’ as a southern branch of the Rugby Football Union in England, which was the ‘head office of rugby in the ‘North’. NSW and Queensland both dropped the directional epithet in 1892, just in time for Queensland to avoid any further association with the English ‘Northern Rugby Union’ – which ran the new professional rugby code in 1895.
30. The Brisbane Courier, 7 April 1888.
31. Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players, 145–164.
32. Owen, History of the Rugby Football Union, 256.
33. The exact financial arrangements for the tour of 1888 by the ‘English’ team were revealed in the Minutes of the 1889 Annual General Meeting of the Northern Rugby Union. The ‘Englishmen’ took away, ‘£600 in hard cash’ after also having all their expenses paid during their stay in Queensland (See Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 385–386).
34. Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game for Gentlemen’, 148.
35. The Brisbane Courier, 7 April 1888.
36. Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 360.
37. Ibid., 360–361.
38. Ibid., 361–365.
39. The Brisbane Courier, 25 August 1888.
40. The Brisbane Courier, 27 August 1888.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. See Collins, Rugby's Great Split, 136–141, for an overview of the development the laws, methods of play and the points system and the influence antipodean approaches of the 1890s-1900s had on the development of the game.
44. Ibid.
45. Fifty Years of Football – Jubilee Publication of the Queensland Rugby Union 1932, 9.
46. See Williamson, Football's Forgotten Tour, passim.
47. In the early 1880s, only 52.1% of population of Brisbane were Australian born. By 1891, this had only risen by 65.5%. The population had, however, risen during this period by 174.1%, with the vast majority of immigrants settling in Brisbane (88.2%) were from the United Kingdom (Lawson, Brisbane, in the 1890s, 19).
48. The Brisbane Courier, 22 August 1888.
49. See Horton, ‘Rugby Union Football in Australian Society’, 970–971.
50. Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 382.
51. The Queenslander, 20 April 1889.
52. Ibid.
53. The New Zealand Referee, 20 July 1888, cited in Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 11–21.
54. ‘New Zealand Natives’ rugby tour of 1888–9. http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/the-new-zealand-natives-rugby-tour/nz-natives-rugby-tour (accessed 20 November 2011).
55. The Brisbane Courier, 18 April 1889.
56. The Brisbane Courier, 24 June 1889.
57. Horton, ‘Rugby Union Football in Australian Society’, 68.
58. See Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, for a definitive overview of the New Zealand Natives' tour.
59. Northern Miner, Charters Towers - 4 January 1915, cited in, ‘Henry Collinge Speakman’, The Rugby History Society. http://therugbyhistorysociety.co.uk/speakman.html (accessed 23 December 2011).
60. The Brisbane Courier, 15 July 1889.
61. Ibid.
62. Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 401.
63. For a consideration of the violent nature of village sports, see Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players 23; Guttmann, From Ritual to Record, 57 and Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 24.
64. The Brisbane Courier, 15 July 1889.
65. Ryan illustrates that throughout the British leg of the tour the Natives' team was continually treated in a paternalistic and patronising manner by the British press, consistent with the stereotypical attitudes of the era. However, he suggests that this ‘was someway removed from the prejudices of scientific racism and the antipathy which marked many aspects of British racial policy in the contexts of sport was not able to provide a mediating influence' (Ryan, ‘Handsome Physiognomy and Blameless Physiques’, 79).
66. Ibid.
67. Queensland Rugby Union Annual, 1899, 94.
68. The Brisbane Courier, 15 July 1889.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. Queensland was comprehensively defeated in the first match, so much so, that the closeness of the return match led to some serious accusations being made against members of the Natives team.
73. Darling Downs Gazette, 17 July 1889.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Toowoomba Chronicle, 17 July 1889.
77. Queensland Rugby Union Annual, 1899, 97–98.
78. Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 107.
79. Ibid.
80. The Brisbane Courier, 22 July 1889.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 111.
87. The Otago Witness, 8 August 1889, 27, cited in Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 111.
88. Eyton, Rugby Football Past and Present, 85.
89. Ibid., cited in Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 111.
90. Queensland Rugby Union Annual, 1899, 96–97.
91. See Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 111–113.
92. See Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks, 111. In his comments, he refers to Speakman as Charles, not his more familiar name, ‘Harry’. He was in fact named Henry Collinge Speakman.
93. The Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1889.
94. Horton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football in Queensland’, 445.
95. Ibid., 446.