THIS IS THE TRUE HISTORY OF RUGBY LEAGUE

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

The NSWRL's first matches (August 1907) were played using rugby union rules.

It is great to see so much football history being discussed at the moment.

One article is This is the True History of League (SMH 18/3/08) by rugby union writer Spiro Zavos.

He writes about the birth of rugby league in Australia, and what is the "true history".

Unfortunately, in terms of "revelations", there is nothing historically new at all. Some of the conclusions though are somewhat astray.

Rugby league clubs used their district sporting colours and nicknames - so did NSW and Queensland - our cricket and league NSW teams are both called "the Blues".

The inference is the League's Centenary ought to have been 2007. The article itself states the 1907 NSWRL matches against the All Golds used RU rules - the first 13-a-side rugby league game was in 1908.

Yes rugby in Australia was in a boom period - we all know that!

While the profits found their way to highly-paid officials, none of the windfall was shared with the largely working class footballers.

When injured and unable to work, or away on a tour, footballers had to pay their own way. They had no superannuation, no medical insurance, labourers wages, families to support, a life expectancy of little over 50.

Their hands were their tools - playing rugby without any fair financial reward from their toil, and the ever-present risk of injury, was seen to them, and to many Sydneysiders, as paltry treatment given the rugby boom.

Led by Messenger, the son of a professional rower, the players revolted.

Giltinan, far from being a Packer (World Series Cricket) or Murdoch (Super League), personally borrowed £2,000 to finance the first Kangaroo tour and was ultimately bankrupted by it.

Somewhat perplexing is the suggestion that Giltinan "devised the split" and an the inference that he had hopes of rugby league becoming a worldwide football code (not withstanding that rugby wasn't at the time, and isn't today, a football code with a global presence).

I disagree with the writer saying that the 1908 rugby league clubs are not new - they clearly were. What wasn't new in 1908 were the districts themselves (colours/boundaries).

I think he is implying the NSWRL should have come up with its own different geographical districts and colours, rather than copying the boundaries/colours of the RU's scheme.

This suggestion though overlooks that the district boundaries and colours were established with cricket in 1893, followed defined NSW state and local government electorate boundaries, and weren't owned by the RU club any more than the NSW cricket team or the NSW Waratahs own sky blue, or any Australian team owns green and gold.

Re the Rabbitohs story - George Ball claimed that the "Rabbitohs" name came from the old South Sydney RU club. Others all refer to The Depression period as the beginning.

I've not yet come across ONE newspaper example of the word "Rabbitoh" pre WW2. There was a Souths game (c.1911) where someone let rabbits on the playing field before a club match. The 1908 Wallabies originally had the nickname "Rabbits" before they left Sydney, and their boater hats had red and green bands.

Based on SG Ball's comment, "Rabbitoh" does pre-date rugby league...however, I would argue that it applies to the district, and could well have applied to all sporting clubs within the district.

Easts were only referred to as the "stripes" or the "tri-colours", but not "Roosters". I have seen newspaper mentions of "Bluebags" (Newtown), "Magpies" (Wests), "Shoremen" (Norths), "Dirty Reds" (Glebe) and "Watersiders" (Balmain) all before WW1. But not "Rabbitohs", nor "Roosters".

In regard to the article overall - I would refute that the NSWRU was on good terms with every other RU body around the globe, and that the hopes of the amateur code for its international scope to flourish were stymied by rugby league's emergence.

The amateur purists knew the best means to keep the prospect of professionalism out of rugby was to not chase gate-money in the first place - to keep the state/national Union in debt, rather than building a sizeable (and enviable) bank balance. A message particularly well understood by the Scotish and Irish Unions, and a lesson lost on the officials of the NSWRU.

The NZRU were very upset at the NSWRU - while the All Blacks coming to Sydney had greatly contributed to the NSWRU's finances, every time the British came to Aust (1899 and 1904) the NSWRU demanded money from the NZRU to off-set the lost income from Sydney matches while the Brits were over in NZ. Unable to reach agreement in 1899, the NZrs didn't even get a visit from the Brits.

"Seems that the money is over there and the football is here. If they will send us some of their money, we will send some of our football" NZ Evening Post, 14 May 1904.

The 1905 NZrs went to Britain on their own instead of as "Australasia" (i.e. the reverse of "Great Britain" combining to come south). Despite their treatment of the NZRU in 1899 and 1904, the NSWRU was absolutely stunned when news broke that the NZrs had been negotiating directly with the RFU for the 1905 UK tour, and had by-passed and ignored the NSWRU i.e. combining to tour as "Australasia".

Zavos also omitted to point out that while "There was also an invitation on the table for Australia to tour the UK in 1908", the "UK" only included England and Wales.

The Scots and the Irish were in open revolt with the English RFU and Wales over their stance on travelling allowances to players, and declined to participate in a British RU team that toured New Zealand and NSW in mid-1908, and dashed all hopes in South Africa for a Lions visit there in 1909. "So much difficulty had been experienced in the organisation of the Anglo-Welsh side sent to Australasia that a team for South Africa may not be considered for some time." Otago Witness, 4 November 1908.

Scotland and Ireland also refused outright to play the Wallabies on their 1908 "UK" tour, citing the NSWRU's rapidly growing bank balances as the VERY reason that colonial rugby was about to fall to professional rugby. Any wonder that after the experiences of that tour and the mood in "world" rugby, half the Wallabies jumped to rugby league.

"..inviting the Springboks to tour Australia" is a very long way from a tour actually happening, particularly given that the South Africans had already rejected the NSWRU over the preceding few years. Indeed, even the NZRU had little luck with the Springboks, with the only tours pre-WW2 coming in 1921 and 1937. In an earlier letter the secretary of the South African Rugby Football Board pointed out the obvious problem "that owing to the fact that the seasons in New Zealand and South Africa covered the same period, it would always be difficult to arrange a visit."Evening Post, 2 April 1912.

Is anyone seriously suggesting that rugby could have kept hold of NSW and Queensland until it finally turned professional in 1995? The emergence of professional league gave rugby somewhere to hide for 90 years - if it hadn't, we'd all be Australian rules fans.

I could go on for days.... if you're interested in the above issues, you should grab a copy of Pioneers of Rugby League.

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