Regional rugby

The history of the Mid Canterbury Rugby Union is closely linked to that of Canterbury and South Canterbury. Football was first played in Christchurch as early as 1854. Its rough and tumble soon struck a chord with the tough men who lived in Canterbury’s rural hinterland. Rugby as we know it today did not exist and clubs emerged playing ad-hoc rules and styles. One week they’d play Association football, the next a form of rugby or even the Victorian Rules game that was popular with Australians. Sometimes it was an amalgam of all three, made up on the day with few limits on team size.

When efforts were made to standardise the playing of football in New Zealand, the form of the game associated with Rugby School was seen as the most desirable. In 1876 the grandly named Kindersley Camilo Montague Lewin, who had played the Rugbeian game in England, persuaded the fledgling Christchurch Football Club to adopt it. Keen to head off Victorian Rules Lewin, the father of Canterbury rugby, set about organising the country’s first union of rugby clubs. He found a willing partner in Timaru’s George Hamersley, a former England rugby international who had set up two clubs. Their collaboration led to the formation in 1879 of the Canterbury Rugby Union, which stretched from Rangiora in the north to Timaru in the south.