Brendan Gallagher tells the tale of the Lions’ first official tour to NZ
Brendan Gallagher looks at the characters of the first Lions team to tour New Zealand in 1904
The Lions were still a freewheeling, not wholly formed, concept in 1904 when a British team again called in on New Zealand at the end of another Australian tour. It started out as an Anglo/Wales XV organised by the RFU and they were often referred to as the English tour party. But it also included two Irishman from Malone FC and two Kiwi medical students from Guys Hospital. Just to complete a confused picture the party was captained by one of Scotland’s greatest ever players David Bedell-Sivright.
It was also the last time New Zealand was ever considered as an ‘extra’ tagged onto or interwoven into an Australia tour.The rugby in Australia, where they went unbeaten, was a picnic compared with the opposition they encountered across the Tasman. From this point onwards a match against New Zealand became Rugby’s Everest although that was occasionally disputed by the Springboks.
The tour party boasted a group of glittering Welsh backs in Rhys Gabe Fred Jowett, Willie Llewellyn, Teddy Morgan, Percy Bush and Tommy Vile but struggled badly to assemble forwards of the necessary calibre and the RFU felt obliged to place an advert in the Times.
“Before making the final selection of players from the names before them the committee wishes to give other players, in the new circumstances, an opportunity of sending in their names if the wish to undertake the trip.” Even after that call to arms nine of the 13 forwards who travelled were uncapped.
All went well in Australia with 14 wins in 14 matches, including three comprehensive Test victories – but as feared they were found wanting up front once they encountered the colder, wetter conditions of New Zealand while a serious leg injury to Bedell-Sivright in their opening game in New Zealand ruled him out of the rest of the tour.
Bedell-Sivright was a formidable character. A product of Fettes and Cambridge University, he became a surgeon after completing his medical studies but sport was his priority until he retired at the age of 27. A Scottish Amateur Boxing champion, he remains to this day the only Scot to be everpresent in three successful Triple Crown campaigns. He also toured with the 1903 Lions in South Africa playing in all the first 12 games on Tour before getting injured, so his experience was extensive.
Known to enjoy a tipple he once tackled a carthorse in Princes Street after a celebratory run and reportedly slept for an hour on the City tram track because no police officer would volunteer to wake him up. Bedell-Sivright was to die of septicaemia at Gallipoli in 1915 after an insect bite while ashore treating wounded soldiers.
Bedell-Sivright’s nickname throughout his career was “Darkie” probably on account of his dark moods and utter ruthlessness on the pitch. In EHD Sewell’s Internationals Roll of Honour on Rugby’s war dead in 1919 he wrote:
“Who was the hardest forward who ever played International football? Sivright would get most votes if the voting was confined to players, and probably so in any event.” Welsh commentator Townsend Collins, although acknowledging that Bedell-Sivright was one of the world’s great forwards, added the caveat, “He seemed to me to lack completely the chivalry which sets a crown on the great footballer.” A hard case for sure.
If their skipper was the Lions biggest ‘character’ others weren’t far behind. Blair Swannell was a back-row forward of volcanic temperament, more of which anon, while the star-studded contingent of Welsh backs was spearheaded by Teddy Morgan, another medic. Morgan was a Welsh wing in the classic fashion who scored 14 tries in 16 internationals for Wales while London Welsh colleague Willie Llewellyn was another star turn.
Cardiff’s Percy Bush meanwhile was the first in a long line of mercurial Welsh fly-halves who have pulled the strings on various Lions tour and was in stunning form in Australia, but even he suffered in New Zealand. Scrum-half Tommy Vile, originally from Pill Harries and Newport, was yet another London Welsh, an extravagantly gifted scrumhalf and one of the first proponents of the reverse pass.
The build up to the first ever Lions Test against New Zealand was massive. In fact it was much more than a mere rugby match, it was milestone event in the history of a young nation. Although a New Zealand team had hosted sides from New South Wales and Queensland, it was the first time a national New Zealand side wearing the soon-to-become famous shirts had played an international game of rugby on home soil. It was a day of celebration, a forging of New Zealand’s national identity and that was reflected in the 20,000 crowd at Wellington, a huge gathering for those times.
As for the rugby itself, victory over the ‘mother country’ and originators of the modern game was an early warning that New Zealand would quickly assume superpower status and their 9-3 victory was a rude wake-up call for a side that had marched through Australia unbeaten.
The Lions, fit and match-hardened after two months of rugby in Australia, defended well in the first half to keep the score to 3-3 with a penalty apiece by William Wallace and Harding, but showed the strain after the break when local boy Duncan McGregor ran in for two tries. More heroic defence prevented further breaches but it was McGregor the crowd hoisted onto their shoulders after the final whistle.
The Lions, especially in the absence of the injured Bedell-Sivright up front, lacked the pack to exert any control which rendered their dangerous back division redundant, a story that was to repeated throughout most of the century that followed with the notable exception of 1971.
You look in some awe at the 1904 All Blacks side, which consisted of the nucleus of the 1905 Originals which made such a big impression when they toured Europe the following year.
Billy Stead, a bootmaker from down south in Invercargill, was the great early thinker and tactician of the time, and immediately after that 1905 tour was the main author of The Complete Ruby Footballer. Dave Gallaher helped with diagrams and chapters on Auckland rugby but Stead was the genius mind behind the seminal coaching book of the 20th century.
So that was the calibre of the man captaining New Zealand that day – but there were others. Gallaher was already in the process of inventing wing forward play, the so-called Rover who would detach himself from the pack when they scrummed using just a two man front-row. He was also to become the captain in 1905 and, after retirement, joined up at the age of 41 to fight in World War 1 where he perished in 1917 at Passchendaele.
Centre Eric Harper was the New Zealand 440 yard hurdles and 880 yards champion and was another to die in WW1, in Palestine, while forward Bill Glenn won an MC and returned to become the first All Black to become a
member of the New Zealand Parliament. Wing William Wallace was so quick his nickname was Carbine – after New Zealand’s quickest racehorse of the time – while Charlie ‘Bronco’ Seeling became a noted Rugby League professional with Wigan. Seeling was known for his spectacular diving tackles, launching himself full length at opponents like a missile.
The Lions found life on tour in New Zeeland hard going after that Test defeat and four days later drew 0-0 in New Plymouth, arriving there jaded after a disrupted 17-hour train journey.The return trip to Auckland was impossible after the railway line has been washed away by a landslip so they travelled by boat to Auckland and encountered a near hurricane force storm.
In a pretty sorry state, Auckland sent them packing 13-0. Then, as the postmatch wine flowed, a touristy day out at the springs in Rotorua two days later somehow morphed into a full-scale match against New Zealand Maori.The Maori, many playing without boots or socks, won 8-6 against a battered Lions in what Rhys Gabe later described as the toughest game of his career.
It was time, high time, to go home and the long voyage offered plenty of thinking time to digest the lessons. New Zealand were now the team to beat and the Welsh contingent in particular were thoughtful. Forearmed, just over a year later the bones of that Lions back division mustered in Welsh colours for one of the most controversial Tests in history when the 1905 All Blacks suffered their only defeat, 3-0, at Cardiff Arms Park.