Rugby comes to Hamilton

Today we think little of watching international sport ‘live’, as it occurs, via satellite. In earlier eras coverage was rather delayed.

On September 15 1905, Hamiltonians had, for likely the first time ever, the opportunity to enjoy footage of a game of rugby some 13 months after it had been played.

The occasion was a fundraiser for a proposed technical school.

Cooper’s Biograph Company offered a travelling programme, combining live entertainment with short films.

A matinee in the Hamilton Town Hall was followed by an evening show at the same venue.

The headline act — ‘‘bound to attract attention’’, in the words of the Waikato Times — was ‘‘a reproduction of the great football match, Britain v New Zealand’’.

The game in question was only the second played by a team that was not yet known as the ‘All Blacks’.

It had taken place at Wellington’s Athletic Park on August 13, 1904.

The composite opposition, forerunners of the British Lions, had earlier toured Australia, where they were unbeaten and had enjoyed similar success against two regional sides in the South Island.

It is unclear how much of the game was captured or from what vantage.

New Zealand won 9-3, with Duncan McGregor scoring two tries to Britain’s none.

The 20,000 strong crowd invaded the field at the match’s end, carrying the Wellington winger off, shoulder-high.

Britain enjoyed no further success on tour, drawing their next game before going down to Auckland and then, informally, to a Maori XV in Rotorua.

Other documentary shorts in the

programme included images of the then on-going Russo-Japanese War — described as ‘‘very fine and realistic’’ in contemporary publicity but as likely to be re-enactments as not — together with footage of an American circus.

Running 13 minutes, the longest narrative film screened was an adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first released in the USA just over two years earlier.

The live performers who balanced out the show included the baritone singer Mr Kindley; a ‘‘ventriloquial performer of very decided ability’’, a certain Professor Sheldon and Miss Lyllie Sheldon, ‘‘a brilliant serio-comic, ballad and coon singer and child impersonator’’.