Cradle of New Zealand rugby
May 14 marked the 150th anniversary of New Zealand’s first rugby match, played in 1870 between Nelson College and Nelson Town. Tim Newman reports.
One hundred and fifty years ago the seeds of a national obsession were planted at the Nelson Botanical Gardens.
Eighteen men from the Nelson Football Club and 18 boys from Nelson College met at 2pm on Saturday May 14, 1870 for the first game of rugby ever played in New Zealand.
At the time, the significance of the occasion was not realised.
Football of various codes had been played throughout the colony since the early days of European settlement, with the College and Town players having met the year before to play a hybrid Soccer/Australian Rules game.
The Nelson Football Club (known then simply as the ‘‘Town Club’’) had been set up in 1868 by 19-year-old Robert Tennent, and for the first two years had organised matches played under its own hybrid football rules.
The innovation in 1870 was the introduction of the Rugby School rules, made at the behest of another 19-yearold, Charles Monro.
At the age of 16 Monro had left home to travel to England in 1867, to continue his education at Christ’s College in London.
After playing rugby for the school’s 2nd XV, he returned to New Zealand armed with four Gilbert rugby balls and a copy of the 1869 Rugby rulebook.
Joining the Nelson Football Club on his return, he persuaded the club members to try out the new rules, and the first match of the 1870 season was organised between the club and Nelson College.
The new game in town
Accounts of the game were recorded in three papers of the day: The Nelson Evening Mail, The Nelson Examiner, and The Colonist.
While the Nelson Evening Mail only reported a short brief on the event (following a long editorial lamenting the dysfunctional nature of the Nelson Provincial Council), both the and wrote an extensive match report on the game – with the article written by an ‘‘enthusiastic’’ participant in the match.
About 200 people turned out on a cloudy afternoon at the Botanics, the field decorated ‘‘with a fair sprinkling of ladies, and a goodly number of the opposite sex’’.
In the fixture from the previous year, it had taken three afternoons for the match to be concluded, with Nelson Town coming out on top.
It was generally agreed the College looked the part in comparison to their town counterparts, remarking the school had ‘‘sent a capital eighteen to the ground, and they looked very well in their tightfitting shirts and blue caps.’’
With no set uniform the Town didn’t scrub up quite as well, although the reported they ‘‘were decidedly an improvement on last year’’.
After winning the toss, College kicked off, and the first game of rugby in New Zealand was under way.
‘‘And now, what was comparative silence and inactivity, is suddenly converted into a rushing, noisy, shouting crew, and as the ball is kicked off the game commences in earnest,’’
reported.
‘‘Now some player runs with it, 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.’’
While College had the better of the early exchanges, the size and strength of the Town Club began to tell, and the first try, or ‘touch down’ was scored by the Town Club.
In the original rules of the game no points were awarded for a try, with a touch down allowing the scoring team the opportunity to try for a goal/conversion.
Club captain Albert Drew had the honour of scoring the first points in the game, kicking the goal before the College players were able to charge at him.
Although it was not much recognisable to the modern game of rugby, there were certainly glimpses there of what it would one day become.
‘‘Again the silence is broken with the usual cries of encouragement or yells, of ‘‘off side’’, ‘‘touch it down,’’ ‘‘gott’’,
reported.
‘‘The whole field seems in a rapid move, in first one and then another direction, or engaged in a scrimmage, or a long run, or waiting eagerly for the ball to be thrown in from ‘‘touch’’, while some unfortunate may be seen hopping temporarily to the rear to repair damages.’’
reported the match was decided that same afternoon with Town coming out on top by 2-0. ‘‘The College played well, and made a hard fight of it, determined not to give up, but at last a sudden rush by (Charles) Monro and Clark decided the matter, the latter managing to kick a goal.
‘‘It was not expected that the game would be finished in one afternoon, but so it happened, and there being several lookers-on anxious to play, a fresh game was started, and continued until all had had enough of football for one afternoon.’’
The growth of rugby
Rugby historian Alan Turley said that after 1870 the game began to spread ‘‘like fire in the pig fern’’.
In places like Nelson winter sports were virtually unheard of, and organised team sports like cricket often happened ad-hoc.
‘‘You had young men coming off the goldfields, and pioneer farm labourers who were looking for something to do – if they didn’t box there wasn’t much going for them.’’
Turley said in contrast to Great Britain, where the game was mainly the domain of the upper class, rugby developed within a far more egalitarian society and rugby players were soon rubbing shoulders with team-mates from all walks of life.
‘‘In New Zealand it was truly a classless game, the butcher’s boy would play and fraternise with the local doctor, the town youths would play with the local policeman.’’
Later in 1870, Monro crossed Cook Strait with a contingent of Nelsonians to play a game against a Wellington team – with the Wellington Rugby Club being formed the next year in 1871.
In 1872 Wanganui formed its first club, while the Auckland Club made the switch from soccer to rugby rules in 1873.
By the end of the decade, rugby clubs had been formed throughout the length and breadth of the country, and from 1879 provincial unions began to form – with Canterbury and Wellington the first.
More clubs and unions were formed in the 1880s, and touring teams from New South Wales and Great Britain made their way to New Zealand in 1882 and 1888.
Turley said by 1890 ‘‘rugby had come of age in New Zealand’’.
With 700 active clubs and 16 major unions it was the dominant winter code (ahead of Association and Australian Rules Football) and in 1892 the New Zealand Rugby Football Union officially came into being.
More information about the anniversary and history of rugby in New Zealand can be found at the Nelson Provincial Museum’s online exhibition, at nelsonmuseum.co.nz/ rugby150.