HISTORY OF RUGBY IN NSW
written by Sean Fagan
The Sydney Gazette and the Sydney Monitor reported in the late winter of 1829 that soldiers from the George’s Square Barracks were playing football games amongst themselves in their down time.
The Sydney Monitor account refers to football being a game “much played in Leicestershire” – somewhat significant given that the town of Rugby and its famed school are in the neighbouring Warwickshire county.
Traditional English folk football was played in Sydney through the 1830s to the mid-1860s, as part of the bill-of-fare at festivals and holiday celebrations.
In a letter to The Sydney Herald in 1832 (30 July edition) a writer called for police action as: “Last Sunday, during Devine Service, a large batch of youngsters were eagerly engaged in playing at football on Hyde Park. Have they no power to prevent the disgraceful pitched battles that take place weekly in the neighbourhood.”
In 1840 a football contest of some form took place on Hyde Park as part of celebrations marking the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birthday (May 24). The Sydney Herald recorded: “There was also a game of football attempted which also gave rise to sundry scuffles and broken shins to boot.”
A year later a wide debate erupted about what activities ought to be permitted on Sundays. After he had banned recreational shooting on Sundays the Governor of NSW, Sir George Gipps, openly declared that he would swiftly ban any other amusement, “even football”, if it became such a Sunday nuisance that it began to impact on “the religious feeling of the community” (The Sydney Gazette, 10 June 1841).
In May 1846 on ‘Her Majesty’s Birthday’ anniversary day, a bill of ‘military amusements’ concluded with a night football match between ‘the grenadier and light companies’.
Though Sydney was the first settlement in the Australian colonies, by the middle part of the 19th century it had been usurped by Melbourne in terms of both population and economic power. Consequently, the movement towards organised football clubs lingered well behind the Victorian capital and the formation of the Melbourne FC in 1859.
However, some informal football appears to have been played, with a letter-writer to The Sydney Morning Herald (5 Dec. 1860) momentarily digressing from political matters to mention “…for the bare fun of the thing, the manhood of the colony will have a kick at the football.”
In Guardians of the Game, John G Mulford notes that in the 1850s workers at Sydney’s substantial ship yards in Mort’s Bay (Balmain) are likely to have played some form of traditional football against the crews of visiting ships.
Newspaper reports throughout the period of 1862-69 refer to football being played as part of public celebration days, picnics held by associations, volunteer groups and company’s for their staff, as well as traditional holiday community gatherings (such as on Easter Monday and Boxing Day), along with open days granted at the various private estates and mansions peppered throughout the city and nearby reaches (accessed via boat or rail).
Advertisements for steamer-ferry excursions from Circular Quay and Woolloomoollo Bay to various popular sites along the Sydney Harbour foreshore often included the playing of football (many “for which prizes are guaranteed to be given”) as amongst the day’s attractions on offer.
The Balmoral Gardens picnic ground at Middle Harbour was particularly popular, and The Sydney Morning Herald reported in 1864 (Saturday, Feb 27) of “football creating the most amusement from the number and variety of collisions”.
In Guardians of the Game the author details the commencement of rugby football in the city’s schools in the early 1860s.
Intriguingly, in its publications of 1859-60 and 1862-63, Sydney’s Albert Cricket Club reproduced in full the laws of football from Rugby School. While no evidence of any formalised football (outside of the schools) in NSW has been found in this period, the publishing of the rules suggests some interest existed.
Blessed with warmer weather than Melbourne, Sydney enjoyed a ten-month cricket season, while rowing and sailing thrived on the harbour, bays and rivers. This left football with only July and August to carve out a brief existence free of competing sports.
The first football clubs established in Sydney between 1865 and 1869—of which there were but three—adopted what today would be regarded as Australian rules football, or a modified form of it, from Melbourne. Similarly, students at Newington College, guided by a former Geelong FC player, took up the code for their in-house matches. Given that Sydney University played these open clubs between 1865 and 1868, and reportedly met Newington in 1869, it is highly unlikely the University stood alone in adopting rugby rules.
Indeed, the clearest indicator of their code comes from an 1867 report describing a “strange combination of Rugby and other rules,” noting that “to the uninitiated, the Sydney University cum Rugby Rules are most confusing.” This suggests the Varsity had adopted its own hybrid rules, blending its own preferences with select elements of rugby; however, the early Australian rules code could just as easily fit that description.
By 1868–1869, local interest in football had declined so close to extinction that only four—possibly five—games were recorded, excluding University in-house matches (there are no records of these). In 1868, Sydney FC played two games, one of which was against the University. In 1869, two matches were played under improvised, mixed rules between the University and the crew of the visiting British naval ship, HMS Rosario.
The other potential game is recorded in many sources as an 1869 contest between the University and Newington, supposedly played under rugby rules. However, because this account relies entirely on a brief 1930 newspaper mention, it remains far more likely—as noted above—that the match was actually played under a form of Australian rules.
Although late-1860s newspaper columnists frequently criticised local matches as “not genuine football” due to their “Rugby” elements, this does not verify that the games they were witnessing were rugby football. Instead, they were likely observing the emerging Australian rules code, which at the time (and today) incorporated rugby-style features such as catching and running with the ball. Frustrated by these handling elements, critics instead championed soccer, urging clubs to “play under those of the English Football Association or the joint Oxford and Cambridge Rules, both of which are decidedly superior and much more comprehensible.”
That there existed an underlying love for Rugby in the NSW capital is evidenced by Bell’s Life in Sydney (17 April 1869) publishing a full report of a thrilling match between London’s now famous Richmond FC and Rugby School, that included Arthur G. Guillemard and Algernon Rutter, freely regaling in the oddities and specialties (‘drop’, ‘try’, ‘touch down’) only those familiar with the code would understand.
The Wallaroo FC was formed in 1870 to play “according to the Rugby rules” by William ‘Monty’ Arnold with his older brother Richard. Its initial impact was modest but indicated permanency, with the city hosting 11 matches through 1870-71.
From 1872 onwards there was a rapid growth in the formation of rugby football clubs and schools. The increase in interest in football coincided with the population of Sydney rising by almost half – from 96,000 in the mid 1860s to just under 138,000 in 1871 – as the city began on the path towards overtaking Melbourne.
New gentlemen’s membership clubs and school teams competed against each other, notably The King’s School (playing on the Parramatta Domain), along with St. Leonards, Lyndhurst College, Camden College, Sydney Grammar School, Waratah FC, Balmain, Calder House (school at Redfern), Newington College and a handful of others.
In rural NSW the first country clubs were founded at West Maitland and Goulburn in 1872, with others at Bathurst, Mudgee, Murrurundi, Cooma, Singleton, Dubbo, Queanbeyan, Yass, Newcastle, Wollongong (‘Illawarra FC’) and Tenterfield known to have been formed and playing Rugby by 1879 (given the relative size and remoteness of some of these towns, it is probable many more regional centres will be found to have established a club around this time).
Having football played under the patronage of the schools (their teams were usually formed on a “past and present” basis) also provided a solution to the problem of the lack of playing fields in Sydney.
Credit must also be given to the leaders of the Wallaroos, who negotiated with the City Council and gained agreement for the use of Moore Park fields, within which the Sydney Cricket Ground and Sydney Football Stadium now stand, and the NSW Waratahs offices and training fields are located.
Lingering arguments over the differences in the playing rules followed by each club or school reached a head by 1874.
The Wallaroo club proposed a football conference of all teams to decide on a codified set of playing rules – unsurprisingly the Wallaroo members pushed for the adoption of Rugby rules, without any alteration. The initiative succeeded, and the Southern Rugby Football Union (later re-named as the NSWRU) was founded, adopting the English RFU’s laws.
In 1877 the NSWRU had thirteen member clubs from the twenty-three known to be playing rugby football in the colony: Balmain, Bathurst, Burwood, Camden College, Goulburn, Grammar School, King’s School, Maitland, Newington College, Oaklands, University, Wallaroo and Waratah.
To tighten its grip on the rugby game and the growth of rival codes, the Union adopted a rule that its clubs could only play other member clubs – proposed matches against ‘non-subscribing’ clubs had to receive prior approval.
During the 1877 season the Waratah FC met Melbourne’s Carlton FC in two matches (one under each set of rules) in Sydney, in attempt to showcase the attributes of both codes in the hope of forging a football unification between the two colonies.
The NSWRU stood firmly against the plan, rejecting all calls to amend the playing laws of rugby that would have brought football in NSW closer to that being played in Victoria. Shortly afterwards, the Waratah FC and other similarly-minded clubs founded an Australian rules football association in Sydney.
“Observer’s Sydney Items” in The Maitland Mercury, 11 June 1881:
“Football is all the rage here now. We have numerous clubs in Sydney, and three different styles of game are played, viz.: the Rugby game, the Victorian game, and the English Association game. The first named is liked by far the best….The Wallaroo, Redfern, University, Balmain, Sydney, East Sydney, Burwood, St. Leonards, Parramatta, Glenhead, Newington, Stanmore, King’s School, and Grammar School teams are looked upon as our best, whilst the four first named are classed A1.”
The NSW Rugby team (later called Waratahs) played its first inter-colonial games in 1882, against Queensland (later called ‘The Reds’), before making a tour of New Zealand. The NZrs visited NSW in 1884, and a British team toured Australia and New Zealand in 1888.
The exchange of visits led to the continued growth of Rugby, and by the 1890s the code firmly had hold of the colony, thwarting attempts by Australian rules and “British Association” (soccer) to gain the ascendancy.
In July 1907 a crowd of 52,000 filled the SCG to over-flowing to watch a game between NSW and the New Zealand All Blacks. The attendance was the largest of any “football” game held to date in Australia, rivalled the scale of the USA’s Harvard-Yale game, and was only bettered by the English (soccer) FA Cup Final.
However, it was this financial and popular success that ultimately led to a rift in NSW Rugby that split the code along the amateur v professional ideals (rugby league).
© Sean Fagan
*The contention that Sydney University club was not formed until August 1865 (i.e. after the Sydney and Australian FCs) is set out in They Ran With the Ball by Tom Hickie (page 43) and Guardians of the Game by John Mulford (page 11).
References.
Sean Fagan, The Rugby Rebellion
Thomas Hickie, They Ran With The Ball
Geoff Armstrong, The Father of Australian Rugby?
NSWRU / ARU archives
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