Our Hockey's International Status

Auckland hockey played at Buckland’s Paddock, One Tree Hill, developed very rapidly. A Canterbury touring team in 1903 planned to go as far north as Wanganui, but the handful of Auckland enthusiasts audaciously guaranteed £ 15 towards their additional expenses if they would go north to play Auckland. They did so, and won by two goals to one. Three years later an Auckland hockey team made a pioneer tour as far south as Invercargill, and in 1907 an Otago team visited Auckland. Strangely enough, no Otago team has done so since. The progress of hockey was at times phenomenal. At other times the game seemed to stand still. By 1897 in Christchurch, when the famous old Kaiapoi Club sustained its first defeat (at the hands of Christchurch), there were both Thurs­day and Saturday competitions in Christchurch. By 1903 the game has so advanced that it was possible to play an inter-island match at Christchurch, the game ending in a draw with no score to either side. By 1908 when the first matches were played for the New Zealand Hockey Shield (this had been awarded to Auckland the previous year on the strength of seven victories in representatives matches in seven successive weeks), the game was well enough entrenched to justify talk of a visit to Australia by a New Zealand team, and of an invitation to an English team to visit New Zealand.

In 1923 a team went to Australia. After that first inter-island match in 1903, no other was played until 1914. Even now these fixtures are irregular.

The English tour, discussed as far back as 1908, has not eventuated yet. Still there can be no question of the progress the game has made, and the visits of three great Indian teams—the world’s finest exponents of hockey — have given it con­siderable stimulus. The first of these visits was that of the Indian Army team in 1926. In that year and again in 1935, New Zealand enthusiasts were able to study the play of the incomparable Dhyan Chand. In 1938 came another Indian team, that of the Prince of Manavadar. In all three tours the Indian teams have been beaten only twice — by New Zealand in the second test in 1926 and by Auckland in 1938. Manawatu drew with the first Indian team in 1926, and New Zealand also had a draw with that team.

At present Auckland holds the New Zealand Hockey Shield, having put up a record in resisting twenty-four successive challenges since winning it from Canterbury in 1931. It had been intended to offer the Shield for competition at a Centennial tournament at Auckland in 1940, but the war has caused this project to be shelved.

RUGBY League, played by teams of thirteen instead of the Union game’s fifteen, and differing from it in a more tolerant attitude towards professionalism, as well as in certain modifications designed to promote a more spectacular type of play, has been established in New Zealand for thirty years, and claims a large share of public interest.

The first New Zealand League team was promoted in 1907 by A. H. Baskerville, of Wellington, who relied on the reputation of the successful Rugby Union ‘All Blacks’ of 1905 to assure his ‘All Golds’ of sufficiently good attendances to justify a professional tour of England. His optimism was justified. The team, consisting entirely of Rugby Union players with no previous experience of League (among them G. W. Smith, W. Johnston, and W. H. Mackrell of the 1905 All Blacks) played thirty-four matches, won eighteen of them, and made a profit of £ 5,641, each player receiving a ‘bonus’ of £ 120. On its return steps were taken to organise the game in New Zealand. Baskerville unfortunately had died in Brisbane of pneumonia on the way back to New Zealand, but other enthusiasts were found, including the late D. W. McLean, of Devonport, Auckland, who is now regarded as the real pioneer of the League game in New Zealand.