32 Mark Nicholls [1921-1930] CAPS 10
Until Dan Carter’s emergence, Mark Nicholls was at the forefront of consideration for the honour of New Zealand’s greatest five-eighths.
He was the ‘organiser’ of the backline on the Invincibles tour of Britain, Ireland and France in 1924-25 forming a formidable partnership with Bert Cooke, as Stead and Hunter had been so dominant in 1905.
Nicholls, from Wellington, had transferred to Auckland before the tour, and playing for the Grafton club had seen a player of potential in the lower grades, Cooke, and promoted him to play alongside him in the senior side. The rest is history. Cooke went on to score 23 tries and attributed them all to Nicholls’ prompt assessments in games.
One prominent man of British rugby, Rowe Harding of Wales and Lions fame, rated Nicholls and Cooke as the outstanding backs of the Invincibles. “To these two men, and to scientific methods, the All Blacks owed their overwhelming superiority over the sides they played,” he said.
It was a measure of Nicholls’ ability that in one of the great controversies of the New Zealand game he was unwanted in the first three tests of the 1928 trek to South Africa.
Called in for the fourth test, he made all the difference to play a superb game, kicking 10 points in New Zealand’s series-equalling 13-5 win.
It was his game craft that secured key wins in the 1930 test series over the touring Lions with a cross-kick, in the manner performed by New Zealand five-eighths today, to wing Fred Lucas setting up a key try to ensure New Zealand would at least tie the series. It proved his last test as he was ruled out of the fourth due to injury.
Nicholls was, like Stead, a significant writer on the game, and he was a key campaigner in New Zealand dropping the 2-3-2 scrum, well before 1930 Lions manager ‘Bim’ Baxter got in on the act.
He helped write a book on the 1928 tour and later selected both Wellington and All Blacks teams.