It was 150 years ago today that the footy teams began to play
IN the beginning there was . . . rugby.
Today marks 150 years since the first recorded game of rugby in Dunedin took place, between a team from Otago Boys’ High School and a University team at the South Recreation Ground (now known as The Oval).
It was rugby but not as we would recognise it. For a start they called it football and it certainly was not a game of two halves.
They started at 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon and hit the pause button at 6pm that September 9 evening.
The game resumed the following Saturday and after almost another three hours of play the game finished in a 11 draw.
What a spectacle. And as it turns out the Otago Daily Times recorded the event for prosperity.
Had the newspaper known how big the game would become they might not have buried it so deep.
Here is how the first scoring action was described in the brief article on the Monday.
‘‘After a contest of about half an hour the ball was kicked through the goal of the University by Mr Reid (expupil). The goal was won mainly through the University men not having properly defended it.’’
Former Otago Boys’ teacher Brian Panting wrote in his unpublished history titled It’s Only a Game, or is it??? ‘‘it is inconceivable that a number of boys came together without kicking something, and it may safely be assumed that there was some form of the game in existence before the year 1871’’.
‘‘But as this is to be a dependable record, it will be necessary to neglect the mythical and deal with the actual.’’
George Thomson captained the school team that day. He was a teacher at the school and is credited with introducing rugby to Otago.
A second game was played that year between a combined cricket clubs team and a combined UniversityOtago Boys’ team.
In the book The Pride of the
Southern Rebels, the author Sean O’Hagan wrote the ‘‘fanatics from among the 1871 players met in a boarding house near Pelichet Bay and founded the Dunedin Football Club.’’
Just to put the 1871 fixture into wider context, the Otago Rugby Football Union was founded 10 years later in 1881 and the New Zealand Rugby Football Union — now NZ Rugby — another 11 years later in 1892.
The first recognised game of rugby played in New Zealand took place on May 14, 1870 between a Nelson College side and the Nelson Football Club.