Papa Bear Taunted Kangaroo

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

George Halas "Papa Bear" Chicago Bears founder and coach

Few men, if any, loom larger in the history of American football than George Halas. He founded and coached the Chicago Bears, and was a permanent fixture in the NFL - from the formation of the league in 1920, and then right through its first 50 years.

Halas was "Mr Everything" and "Papa Bear".

In Australia, we had Harry Sunderland. He was chief organiser of the Queensland Rugby League, especially in the recovery years just after the first World War.

He borrowed money under his own name to finance the building of grandstands at Brisbane's Davies Park, so that the QRL could offer fans comfort, and charge them a decent fee to fund the league.

In 1923 and '24 Sunderland set up a club competition in Melbourne, and formed a Victorian team that played against England and Queensland.

Sunderland, always promoting some new scheme that would take rugby league to new heights, was forever getting under the skin of the Australian and NSW officials that ran the game from Sydney.

The 1933-34 Kangaroos Harry Sunderland sits in 2nd row from the front, fourth from the left.

No one knows how it came about, but Halas and Sunderland began exchanging letters with each other.

When Sunderland became team manager for the 1933 Kangaroos (the Australian rugby league team) for their tour to England, he quickly realised that travelling via the USA offered a rare opportunity.

What if the Kangaroos could play a game against an American football team?

So he wrote to Halas.

It wasn't as far fetched as it might sound. Both football codes had evolved from 19th century rugby, and still had much in common then, and arguably still do today [read more].

Sunderland was very keen on the prospects of the game against Halas' men when the Kangaroos arrived in California after their Pacific voyage, and he apparently attended a gridiron match in San Francisco to gauge first-hand how close the codes were.

Convinced there was enough common ground, he again wrote to Halas.

Though both men remained positive, the Bears-Kangaroos match never eventuated.

A letter recently found in Sydney uncovered this long forgotten story, and offers up a tantalising glimpse of what might of been.

Letter from George Halas to Harry Sunderland. An undated newspaper cutting recently found in Sydney, appears to have come from The Sydney Mail in the mid-1930s.

Written by Halas to Sunderland after he arrived in the States, it reveals that the two men had planned for the Chicago Bears and the Australian Kangaroos to meet in a "half and half" cross-code football match at the World's Fair, held in Chicago in September 1933.

In the letter Halas guarantees to put his top NFL championship winning Bears team on the field, including now NFL "Hall of Famers" Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski.

"If, in your opinion," Halas writes, "there is enough similarity between your rugby and our football game to allow us to stage a contest whereby one-half of the game would be played under your rules and the second half played according to our football rules, I believe we could play you."

However, after that, it all came to nought.

It seems that Halas' never heard from Sunderland again. Presumably demands on getting the team to England and start their matches took precedence.

In his final letter to Sunderland, Halas appears to almost lament that the match did not come to fruition.

Always with a keen mind to find the extra edge for his Bears, Halas perhaps thought that watching the Kangaroos would suggest some new play he could introduce to gridiron.

In 1939 the Chicago Tribune (October 6) mentioned that the Bears "fancy passing plays were fashioned by coach George Halas after he watched a couple of rugby teams of this district execute a series of trick laterals." One can only wonder what the 1933 Kangaroos would have shown him!

Remarkably, while Sunderland missed out on helping pioneer rugby league in the USA, within weeks of the Kangaroos arriving in England he was busy organising the first rugby league game in France. The Kangaroos played against England's Lions at Stade Pershing in Paris on December 31, 1933.