NZHistory, New Zealand history online - rugby

NZRFU injunction cartoon

Public protests and calls for the 1985 All Black tour of South Africa to be cancelled fell on deaf ears at rugby union HQ. In May, Auckland lawyers and ‘grass roots rugby players’ Patrick Finnegan and Philip Recordon took the New Zealand Rugby Football Union to court. Arguing that it was in breach of its constitution, which promised to ‘promote, foster and develop the game’, they sought an injunction to stop the tour proceeding. This was not initially granted, but the plaintiffs were granted leave to test an aspect of their case in the High Court. On 13 July Justice Casey granted an interim injunction in favour of the plaintiffs. With the All Blacks due to leave within days, the NZRFU had no option but to cancel the tour.

The controversy stirred up memories and divisions formed during the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand. The sequel to the injunction was the 1986 Cavaliers rugby tour of South Africa.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: DCDL-0024929
Cartoon by James Robert Lynch

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

1980s

cartoon

rugby

south africa

Ernest Asher

Ernest Asher began playing rugby in Tauranga, going on to become a representative. In 1908, he joined his brother Albert in forming a team of Māori players to tour Australia. Upon their arrival in Sydney, the New South Wales Rugby Football League encouraged them to switch codes on the spot.

Ernest Asher would go on to tour Australia in an all-Māori rugby league team in 1909, and then join the New Zealand league team against England in 1910. He made another tour of Australia with the national team in 1913. During this period, he and Albert helped to form the City Rovers League Club in Auckland.

Upon retirement, Ernest saw great success as a manager, selector and administrator. In 1956 he managed the New Zealand Maori Rugby League team in Australia. He also served as secretary of the New Zealand Maori Rugby Board for nearly 60 years.

Outside of rugby and league, Ernest Asher was well known in weightlifting circles, and was a member of the Auckland Hairdressers’ Assistants Union. He was a hairdresser for 50 years.

By Robin C. McConnell; adapted by Patrick Whatman

Read full biography of Ernie Asher (DNZB)

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Albert Asher

Albert Asher was an international in rugby union and rugby league, as well as working for years as a fireman.

Having been a rugby player in Tauranga in his teenage years, Albert Asher was engaged by the Parnell Rugby Club to live and play with them. He soon began playing for Auckland, and was a member of the first Auckland team to win the Ranfurly Shield in 1902.

In 1903 he joined the New Zealand team that toured Australia. He scored 17 tries on the trip, a record for an Australian tour which stood for 54 years. The next year, whilst working as a fireman, he sustained a severe leg injury which would keep him out of rugby for two seasons, including the All Blacks tour of England in 1905.

In 1908, together with his brother Ernest, he formed a Maori team to tour Australia, accompanied by tribal leaders. Upon the team’s arrival in Sydney, they were greeted by New South Wales Rugby League officials, who convinced them to change codes immediately. Until 1913, Albert Asher was a New Zealand representative at rugby league, and he and Ernest established the City Rovers League Club.

Upon retirement from rugby, Albert Asher held a range of occupations, including farmer, gas stoker, railwayman, labourer and clerk, and for 20 years he kept the grounds at Carlaw Park. He was still popular among autograph hunters well into his 80s.

By Robin C. McConnell; adapted by Patrick Whatman

Read full biography of Albert Asher (DNZB)

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Albert and Ernest Asher

Albert (top) and Ernest Asher were prominent Māori rugby union and rugby league players during the 1900s and 1910s. The brothers were members of the first Māori rugby league team to tour Australia in 1908 and later played for New Zealand.

Credit:

Max Smith, Champion Blokes, Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, Christchurch, 1964

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

First game of rugby played in NZ

Around 200 people were on hand at Nelson’s Botanic Reserve to watch a new version of rugby football brought to New Zealand by Charles Monro. Nelson College played the Nelson Football Club, with 18 players on each side. The ‘town’ team, sporting ‘street clothes’, won the match 2-0.

The term football was used to cover many versions of a team game in which a ball was kicked. Charles Monro had been sent to Christ’s College at Finchley in England to complete his schooling. While there he played the version of football associated with Rugby School. On his return to Nelson, Monro suggested that the local football club give Rugby rules a go.

The report of the match in the Colonist noted the key differences from the traditional versions of football:

Now some player runs with it [the ball], and a general scrimmage ensues; it is all shove, pull, rush, and roll about in a confused mass till ‘down’ is cried, and away the ball goes again till perchance it gets in touch or caught.

Later that year Monro organised a game between Nelson and Wellington and over the next few years rugby clubs sprang up across the colony. In 1879 the first provincial unions were formed in Canterbury and Wellington to administer and control the playing of rugby in their region. These were followed by a number of other unions, and in 1892 a New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) was formed to administer the game around the country.

Geoffrey Alley

Geoffrey Alley was an All Black lock and a farmer, and then became involved in adult education and library services. He became New Zealand’s first national librarian.

Geoffrey Alley left school in 1921, to manage a Southland farm. During this time his aptitude for rugby flourished, and in 1926 he was selected for the All Black tour of Australia, and then again for the 1928 tour of South Africa. It was in the scrum that his imposing physical strength proved valuable.

Alley graduated BA in education from Canterbury College in 1929, followed by an MA with first-class honours in 1932. It was during this period that he began extending library resources to the country, in a van carrying books. In 1937, following his continued work with rural education, Prime Minister Peter Fraser was convinced that a Country Library Service was needed, and appointed Alley as its head.

In 1945, the Country Library Service became the National Library Service, and Alley its director. For a decade, Alley also served as honorary secretary to the New Zealand Library Association. It wasn’t until 1963 that the decision was made to establish a national library, with Alley at the helm. In this role, he is said to have been determined and persistent, if somewhat difficult.

Geoffrey Alley was made a fellow of the NZLA in 1955. He was known to hate references to his All Black career, yet he continued to attend reunions with his former team-mates, and publicly endorsed the ‘No Maoris, no tour’ campaign for South Africa in 1960.

By W.J. McEldowney; adapted by Patrick Whatman

Read full biography of Geoffrey Alley (DNZB)

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Labour government cancels Springbok rugby tour

Prime Minister Norman Kirk informed the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) that the government saw ‘no alternative’ to a ‘postponement’ of the planned tour by the South African Springboks. This decision followed advice from the Police that if the tour went ahead it would ‘engender the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known’,

During the 1972 election campaign, Kirk (then leader of the Opposition) had promised not to interfere with the tour. After Labour won office, he attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the NZRFU to withdraw its invitation to the Springboks. At the same time he negotiated with anti-tour activists and groups. While he was aware of the likely fallout from the decision to postpone – there was strong public support for the tour – Kirk argued that he would be ‘failing in his duty’ if he didn’t ‘accept the criticism and do what [he] believed to be right … the Government was elected to govern’. Those who believed that ‘sports and politics don’t mix’ never forgave him. The National Party exploited Kirk’s changed stance during the 1975 election campaign, and it undoubtedly contributed to Labour’s crushing defeat.

New National Party leader Robert Muldoon stressed that his government would welcome a Springbok team to New Zealand, ‘even if there were threats of violence and civil strife’. The events of 1981, when the Springboks finally toured, made good this pledge – at a high cost to New Zealand society.

Image: 1973 Springbok Tour cartoon

Anti-apartheid protest, 1970

Scenes like this are strongly associated with the protests surrounding the 1981 Springbok tour. But many people actively opposed earlier sporting contact with South Africa. Here anti-apartheid demonstrators are held back by police in the grounds of Parliament as the 1970 All Black team leaves after a parliamentary farewell. This was the first tour of South Africa for which Māori were selected. The catch was that they were classified as ‘honorary whites’ for the duration.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: EP/1970/2531/24
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

tags:

First British rugby team to play in NZ

The first British rugby team to tour New Zealand played its first match, against Otago at the Caledonian Ground in South Dunedin. A crowd of nearly 10,000 turned up on an unusually warm Saturday afternoon. The blues of Otago drew first blood with a dropped goal, but the red, white and blues soon responded with a try. Behind 3–1 at halftime, the visitors were expected to tire. Instead they played ‘harder and rougher’, combining well to score two dropped goals and a try and win the match 8–3. They took no harm from the subsequent banqueting, winning a return fixture on Wednesday 4–3 thanks to a try from a solo run two minutes from full-time. With a half-holiday being observed in Dunedin, the crowd was nearly as large as that for the first match.

The tourists had arrived at Port Chalmers on the steamship Kaikoura on Sunday 22 April. Unlike later British Lions teams, this was not a full-strength side: only three of the 21 players (one of whom seems to have been on the tour mainly as a touch judge and after-dinner speaker) had represented one of the four home unions. The (English) Rugby Football Union (RFU) refused to sanction the privately organised tour, which it saw as a commercial enterprise that rendered the players professionals – a cardinal sin in the eyes of upper-class administrators. Rugby unions in Australasia, however, had no scruples about welcoming sportsmen from Home in an ‘exuberantly hearty manner’.

The RFU had banned one tourist for accepting a £15 clothing allowance. He would have been well turned out, as this was equivalent to $3000 in 2013. The others were required to sign affidavits stating that they would not benefit financially from the enterprise. Their sincerity was never put to the test: the tour’s promoters lost nearly £1000 ($200,000) on the venture. The team’s weekly expenses in Australia were said to be at least £400 ($80,000), and their hosts in Victoria were ‘grasping’ in their financial demands. On the other side of the ledger, the promoters received £710 ($144,000) as their share of the gate money from the four matches they played in Dunedin.

After their first visit to Dunedin, the British team travelled north to Christchurch by train. After four more victories, a 3-all ‘tie’ with Wellington and losses to Taranaki and Auckland which they blamed on ‘generous hospitality’, they sailed to Australia in late May. They played 35 matches across the ditch (winning just six of 19 under Australian rules, but losing none under Rugby rules) before returning to New Zealand in September for another 10 matches. As there was as yet no colony-wide rugby union, they did not meet a representative New Zealand team. An under-strength South Island XV whose forwards ‘played with very little combination’ was defeated twice. Three of the tourists stayed on in New Zealand after the tour; two found work in Wellington and joined the Poneke Football Club.

Image: Headline from this newspaper article (PapersPast)

1956 rugby ball and John Minto helmet from Te Papa

Simon Morton looks at the connection between two items from the Te Papa collection: the rugby ball used in the deciding test of the 1956 Springbok tour and 1981 anti-apartheid protester John Minto’s helmet.

Tales from Te Papa, episode 4. Video supplied via YouTube by Te Papa.

Reddit Twitter Facebook Google StumbleUpon

Media Group:

video

NZ history:

1981 Springbok tour

The 1950s

Video thumbnail:

Video URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNtml7NqXU

tags:

protest

rugby

springboks