Centenary reflections : 100 years of Rugby League in Australia

192 Pages·2008·4.326 MB·English

by  Carr, Andy, Moore, Andrew

Centenary Reflections
100 years of
rugby league in
australia
edited by
Andrew Moore
and Andy Carr
www.sporthistory.org
assh
STUDIES 25
Australian Society for Sports History
Centenary Reflections:
100 years of rugby league in australia
ASSH Studies No. 25
Editors Tara Magdalinski
University College Dublin
Lionel Frost
Editor, ASSH Bulletin
Monash University
Editor, ASSH Website
Editor, Sporting Traditions
email: [email protected]
email: [email protected]
Rob Hess
Victoria University
Reviews Editor, Sporting Traditions
Interim Editor, ASSH Studies
email: [email protected]
Editorial Review Board
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney • Stephen Alomes, Deakin University
• Douglas Booth, University of Waikato • Ross Booth, Monash University • Richard
Cashman, University of Technology, Sydney • Braham Dabscheck, University
of Melbourne • John Deane, Victoria University • Tom Dunning, University of
Tasmania • Lynn Embrey, Edith Cowan University • Warwick Franks, Charles
Sturt University • Sam Ham, University of Idaho • Roy Hay, Deakin University •
Ed Jaggard, Edith Cowan University • Ian Jobling, University of Queensland
• Andrew Moore, University of Western Sydney • Bill Murray, La Trobe University
• John Nauright, George Mason University • John O’Hara, University of Western
Sydney • Vicky Paraschak, University of Windsor • Murray Phillips, University
of Queensland • Greg Ryan, Lincoln University • June Senyard, University of
Melbourne • Clare S. Simpson, Lincoln University • Bob Stewart, Victoria University
• Brian Stoddart, La Trobe University • Wray Vamplew, Stirling University •
Patricia Vertinsky, University of British Columbia • Ian Warren, Deakin University
• Bernard Whimpress, Adelaide Oval Museum • Dwight Zakus, Griffith University.
ASSH is online at www.sporthistory.org
Back issues of ASSH Studies are available at www.la84foundation.org
Published by the Australian Society for Sports History Incorporated
Melbourne, Australia.
© The Australian Society for Sports History 2008
ISBN 978-0-9804815-2-5
Front cover image: Tinted photograph of Clive Churchill, taken from cover of
E. E. Christensen’s Official Rugby League Year Book, 1950.
Back cover image: Andrew Moore (left) and Andy Carr. Courtesy: Joe Coelho.
Layout and design: Level Playing Field graphic design <[email protected]>
Printing: On Demand at www.on-demand.com.au
table of contents
iii
Series Editor's Introduction
.................................... v
Acknowledgements
..........................................vi
List of Acronyms
........................................... vii
CHAPTER ONE: Interpreting 100 Years of Rugby League .............. 1
Andrew Moore
CHAPTER TWO: ‘Oh Error, Ill-Conceived’: The Amateur Sports
Federation of New South Wales, Rugby League and Amateur Athletics
.. 9
Erik Nielsen
CHAPTER THREE: Messing about in Boots: A Journey through
Rugby League
............................................. 25
Ian Heads
CHAPTER FOUR: Twilight of the Idols ........................... 35
Lindsay Barrett
CHAPTER FIVE: Riding the Deadwood Stage: Reflections on Place,
Identity and the National Rugby League
......................... 45
John Low
CHAPTER SIX: The Gladiators: The Making of a Myth .............. 55
Guy Hansen
CHAPTER SEVEN: Black Stars on a White Background: 100 Years of
Rugby League in the Bundjalung Nation
......................... 65
Bob Moore
CHAPTER EIGHT: Rugby League on the Big River: Class, Commerce
and Community along the Clarence
............................ 81
Rodney Noonan
CHAPTER NINE: Rugby League’s Indigenous Pioneers: Aboriginal
Sportsmen in South Sydney before World War II
.................. 95
Charles Little
CHAPTER TEN: South Sydney’s Fight to Play: A Clash of New and Old . 110
James Connor
iv
CHAPTER ELEVEN: City Money and the Boys from the Bush:
Country Rugby League in New South Wales — A Political Economy
of Immiseration
........................................... 127
Drew Cottle
CHAPTER TWELVE: Suburban Footballers of Pacific Islander
Ancestry: The Changing Face of Rugby League in Greater Western
Sydney
.................................................. 141
Chris Valiotis
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Tutty Case .......................... 157
Braham Dabscheck
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Alex Buzo and Norfs: With Thanks and in
Appreciation
............................................. 169
Andrew Moore
List of Contributors
........................................ 182
series editor's introduction
v
This volume of ASSH Studies marks the fourth book in a quartet of anthologies
devoted to football codes in Australia. Editors Tim Hogan (Reading the Game:
An Annotated Guide to the Literature and Films of Australian Rules Football), Bill
Murray and Roy Hay (The World Game Downunder) and Mary Bushby and
Thomas V. Hickie (Rugby History: The Remaking of the Class Game) are now
joined by Andrew Moore and Andy Carr with Centenary Reflections: 100 Years of
Rugby League in Australia. This recent upsurge in scholarship not only reflects
the strong growth of football studies as a discipline both in and outside the
academy, but it denotes the way in which Australia’s sporting landscape is
characterised by a unique and diverse set of football communities.
The Australian Society for Sports History extends its appreciation to all
the contributors in this volume, and it congratulates Andrew Moore and Andy
Carr for undertaking the arduous and time-consuming task of arranging for
the necessary peer-review and editing of the manuscripts contained herein.
Rob Hess,
Interim ASSH Studies Editor
School of Human Movement, Recreation and Performance
Centre for Ageing, Rehabilitation, Exercise and Sport
Victoria University
acknowledgements
vi
In preparing this book for publication we have incurred a number of debts.
Part of a broader event, the Centenary Conference of Rugby League in
Australia, held at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, on 7-8 November 2008,
the project has been driven by the Tom Brock Bequest Committee, a sub-
group of the Australian Society for Sports History (ASSH). Thus we would
like to thank fellow members of the Brock committee, namely Daryl Adair,
Richard Cashman, Imke Fischer, Kaz Kazim, Brian McIntyre and Terry
Williams, for their input, as well as Sean Brawley who was particularly helpful
in providing editorial advice. From the ASSH Publications Committee we are
grateful to Rob Hess and Tara Magdalinski for their support. We also wish
to thank those people who provided images (and/or permissions to publish
images) for this volume. Their contribution is specifically acknowledged
alongside the relevant images. Level Playing Field Graphic Design performed
its usual high standard of professional duties in designing this particular
volume of ASSH Studies.
As full-time workers we needed sponsorship from various parties to engage
the services of a conference officer and editorial assistant. Karen (‘Go the
Mighty Dragons’) Entwistle filled this role admirably. Professor David Rowe,
director of the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western
Sydney, was a generous supporter of our endeavours. So was Colin Love AO,
chairman of the Australian Rugby League; Craddock Morton, Peter Stanley
and Guy Hansen from the National Museum of Australia; Dawn Casey, Peter
Cox and Fiona Bennett from the Powerhouse Museum and Tony Collins from
Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. As co-sponsors of the
conference and this publication we are indebted to them all and the Tom
Brock Bequest Committee is proud to be linked with such significant cultural
institutions in commemorating such an important event in the social history
of sport in Australia.
Andrew Moore
University of Western Sydney
and
Andy Carr
State Library of New South Wales
list of acronyms
vii
AAUA Amateur Athletic Union of Australasia
ALP Australian Labor Party
ASFNSW Amateur Sporting Federation of New South Wales
CRRL Clarence River Rugby League
CRRU Clarence River Rugby Union
MCC Marylebone Cricket Club [United Kingdom]
NRL National Rugby League
NSW New South Wales
NSWAAA New South Wales Amateur Athletic Association
NSWRL New South Wales Rugby League
NSWRU New South Wales Rugby Union
QRL Queensland Rugby League
RFL Rugby Football League [United Kingdom]
RFU Rugby Football Union [United Kingdom]
RRDRFL Richmond River District Rugby Football League
UCRL Upper Clarence Rugby League
VFA Victorian Football Association [Australian Rules football]
VFL Victorian Football League [Australian Rules football]


Chapter One
Interpreting 100 Years
of Rugby League
Andrew Moore
In the history of any institution, life or sport, 100 years is a significant
landmark. Since the pioneers of the New South Wales Rugby League
(NSWRL) met in Bateman’s Hotel, in the city of Sydney on 8 August 1907
and planned a breakaway rugby competition which had its first game at
Birchgrove Oval on 20 April 1908, Australia suffered two catastrophic
world wars and a massive Depression. The rhythms of rugby league and its
internal controversies formed the background to these epochal events. As
the cataclysm of the Great War of 1914–18 reaped its grim harvest on the
lives of Australian soldiers and their families, rugby league conducted its own
ASSH Studies 25, pp. –0.
Published by the Australian Society for Sports History, Melbourne, 2008.
 asshSTUDIES 5
dispute about the propriety of sport being organised in war-time while for the
first time the Balmain Rugby League Football Club asserted its credentials
as a rugby league powerhouse. When the Great Depression hit Australia in
the early 1930s and rugby league clubs became important institutions for
alleviating hardship in working-class communities, Western Suburbs won
their first premiership in 1930 while in 1931 South Sydney won their sixth
title in seven years. In 1942, the year a Japanese invasion seemed imminent,
Canterbury-Bankstown were premiers while war-time shortages caused clubs
to jettison striped jumpers. For the first time St George adopted their club’s
iconic white guernsey with red vee.
Between 1908 and 2008 changes in the social structure and economic
base of Australia have been momentous. In 1908 Australia’s was primarily
a pastoral economy with only a small element of industrialisation. Even the
opening of the Broken Hill Proprietary steel plant at Newcastle was seven
years in the future. Assisted by protectionist policies, Australia’s labour
movement was strong and assertive. The famous Harvester judgment of 1907
guaranteed a living wage. Though the nation’s reputation for being a ‘workers’
paradise’ can be exaggerated, in many respects Australia led the world as a
social laboratory. The brilliant French scholar, Albert Metin visited in 1899
and pronounced that the Australian colonies had implemented socialisme sans
doctrine (socialism without doctrine) in terms of welfare state measures such
as factory, labour, land and pension legislation.
One hundred years later, Australia is almost unrecognisable. After
progressing through industrialisation to a service economy where national
wealth is largely derived from exporting coal and iron ore to China,
Australian trade unionism is fragile and many of the nation’s pretensions
to being a leading social democracy have been eroded. Popular culture
has become more diverse and Americanised such that it is a tribute to the
resilience of rugby league as a cultural form that only the emphasis some
commentators attach to the first syllable of ‘offence’ and ‘defence’ carries an
American twang.
Rugby league put down strong roots in New South Wales and Queensland.
A more attractive spectacle than rugby union, more fluent and speedy, less
impeded by scrummaging and lineouts, by 1913 it had supplanted rugby union
in popularity with spectators. Variegated and contradictory, professionalism
necessarily embraced the entrepreneurial acumen of the likes of J. J. Giltinan,
a salesman cum manufacturer’s agent, but in cultural terms the game
was imbued with a bed rock of ideas about solidarity and collectivism that
encapsulated aspects of the broader working-class culture of Australia during
the 1900s. Working men created rugby league. As NSWRL secretary Horrie
Miller philosophised in 1921, rugby league was ‘the working man’s game ... not
a caste game’.1 League’s connections with the Catholic school system and the