The Ten-Seconds Flyer: Harold Horder

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

For much of the 20th century, whenever talk invariably came around to the question of who was the most dazzling footballer of all time, the name Harold Horder loomed large in rugby league lore.

On the 1919 Kangaroos tour of New Zealand, Horder, playing on the wing, was in his football prime, smack-bang in the middle of his stellar career that would eventually notch-up an astounding strike-rate of 239 tries from 194 matches (including club games for South Sydney and North Sydney).

A “ten-second runner”, Horder left tacklers catching the air in his wake – he was long gone.

In the first three Tests of the series Horder snared try-doubles, claimed a hat-trick in the fourth Test, and had a hand in countless other team tries for the Kangaroos. Australia won the series 3-1.

One standout solo try was a Horder-classic, coming early in the first Test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington: “Horder made a great run – racing at his top and swerving magnificently, he beat man after man, until he had passed seven, and then streaked for the line, scoring a try amidst tremendous enthusiasm.”

After the Test series was over, one old-time NZer wrote of the flyer: “Horder is all that we have been led to expect, and takes rank as a great player under any standard. He gets up speed faster than any player I have ever seen.”

The writer went on to speculate how Horder would have gone against the greatest rugby teams of New Zealand’s past of union and league. Reaching back to the 1880s, he concluded that “Personally, I think he would survive the test with credit.”