HISTORY REPEATING Current pandemic resembles flu-ravaged 1919 season
RUGBY league has seen it all.
COVID- 19 isn’t the first pandemic to threaten the game.
The Warriors aren’t the first New Zealand rugby league side to be stranded in Australia under strict quarantine laws.
But today, as the coronavirus threatens to infect the NRL, officials have never been so concerned for the future of the game.
Fortunately, rugby league is resilient.
The Spanish flu spread from the battlegrounds of Western Europe over to Australia in 1919.
It killed more than 50 million people worldwide, infected 40 per cent of Australia’s population and took the lives of 15,000 Australians.
And footy was not immune. Immortal Dally Messenger contracted the deadly virus that took the life of his wife Annie Maud Macaulay in June 1919. Pioneer international dual- coder, Kangaroo and Wallaby Jack “Towser” Barnett, also fell to the flu.
Like today, people wore face masks, large public events were cancelled and strict quarantine laws were introduced.
Like today, the New Zealand rugby league team was stranded Down Under, quarantined in Sydney before its 11-match match tour of Australia.
Like today, the government considered closing all football grounds to slow down the spread of the influenza outbreak. But remember, rugby league is a resilient game.
“There was a full competition and Australia ended up touring New Zealand later in the year, so it (Spanish flu) didn’t stop them playing the game,” rugby league historian Ian Collis said.
“Australia back then tended shake it off and get on with it.
“But remember, we were coming off the back of the Great War. It’s that Aussie way, you just get on with it.”
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May 1919, approximately fans attended a clash between the Magpies and South Sydney at Sydney Showground.
Two weeks later, barracked for eventual premiership winners Balmain or Souths at the SCG.
Even during wartime, Australians had a thirst for rugby league.
“A lot of people thought it ( rugby league) was really important for the morale of the public, to keep their minds away from the wars that were written about every day in the papers,” rugby league historian David Middleton said.
“There was a huge argument that players should be enlisting, but it was a working- class game, so many players were working in essential industries required for war effort.
“A lot of them didn’t enlist, but a lot of them did.”
Players shuffled in and out of teams as they battled for Australia’s freedom.
“Soldiers those would turn up and days on leave all of a sudden they’d be playing,” Collis said.
“Conversely, players would be missed because they had to go and fight overseas.”
Today, rugby league has confronted with its greatest lenge — COVID-19.
The fast-moving virus threatens to disrupt the competition and bankrupt for good a game that has evolved a great deal since 1919.
“Rugby league has always been renowned as being incredibly resilient,” Middleton said.
“So many things have come along to challenge it over the years, but it’s always risen above it.
‘The threat today is so much worse. The fabric and future of the game is seriously threatened by what’s unfolding.” been chal