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In 1908 Auckland met Wellington at Victoria
Park, Auckland, in the first
inter-provincial League match, but it was not until July 1909,
that A. E. Glover, M.P., took the chair at a meeting
from which the Auckland Rugby League emerged. A match against
Taranaki was played that year, and in 1910 Auckland embarked on a
southern tour. League was started then, or shortly afterwards, in
several other districts, including
Southland, Hawke’s Bay, Nelson,
Marlborough, Wanganui,
Wellington, and Canterbury, but in
some of them it has never flourished. In the meantime
Maori teams and New Zealand teams crossed
the Tasman. The first Maori team,
privately organised in 1908, met with financial difficulties. The
second in 1909 was more successful. Our teams were welcomed in
Australia, the 1911 tour yielding a profit of £1,188, which encouraged
further development. In 1910 a British
team played four matches in
New Zealand, playing the first League ‘test’ match against a team which
included F. Jackson, a member of
Harding’s Anglo-Welsh Rugby Union team of 1909, and the father of
the Rugby Union All Black forward, Everard Jackson.
New
Zealanders were also included in Australian
teams in this period, four of them, C. Savory, A. R. H. Francis, G.
Gillett, and F. H. Woodward playing for Australia in 1911. The
disqualification of Savory a year or two later by the Auckland Rugby
League resulted in a serious rift between that body and the New Zealand
League Council, which suspended the Auckland League and impounded its
books and property. Savory, from whose misdemeanour this historic
dispute arose, was killed on Gallipoli. |
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a study in expressions in a
Rugby League match at Auckland when Richmond played Sydney's Eastern
Suburbs team.
The
first New Zealand league team in 1907. This team made a successful
tour of England.
The all Blacks League team of
1911, which toured Australia.
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