Rugby in the Colony of New South Wales

Sean Fagan - ColonialRugby.com.au

The Sydney Gazette and the Sydney Monitor reported in the late winter of 1829 of soldiers at the Hyde Park barracks amusing themselves most days by playing football.

James 'Bunty' McMahon - played for New South Wales and Randwick during the late 1880s and 1890s. Source: The Rugby Rebellion

Intriguingly, 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.

The football though played in Sydney through the 1830s-1850s was traditional folk football, which was a usual feature of English festivals and holiday celebrations.

Sydney was the first settlement in the Australian colonies, however 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.

Conducting its inaugural meeting in 1865, the Sydney FC holds the honour of being the NSW colony's first football club.

The first 'inter-club' match took place between Sydney FC and a team placed in the field by the Australian Cricket Club. Held in Sydney's Hyde Park on June 17, 1865, Sydney FC were victors by one goal to nil.

Two months later, students at the University of Sydney are recorded playing matches against each other, seemingly in preparation for a match against Sydney FC held on August 19.

It has been thought that University formed a football club in 1863 or '64, however, there is no documented evidence to confirm this. Newspaper reports record no matches amongst the University students or inter-club matches until after the arrival of Sydney FC in the winter of 1865.

This appears to be supported by comments made by Richard Teece in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1907, where he recalls taking part in the formation of Sydney's first football club '42 years ago'. Teece was referring to the Sydney FC team, which is reported in The Sydney Mail of June 10, 1865 to have been formed after meetings on May 30 and June 7.

None of the matches were held entirely under the rules of Rugby School, though its underlying principles and features were followed. The Sydney Mail reported in 1874 that Sydney football in the 1860s was a time when "each club had its own rules."

In 1866 a move to introduce 'Victorian rules' (later called Australian rules) to Sydney seems to have caused a rift between the clubs. It ultimately only left the University, and a team placed in the field by the Military and Civil Cricket Club, playing any football at all (which was primarily based on rugby rules).

All the matches at this time (a total of four in 1867) were played on the University Oval and were umpired by John Jackson Calvert. Calvert was well versed in the various forms of football in England, particularly the rules of the Rugby School. He had attended Oxford University and his father was a professor at Cambridge University. Calvert was a well known man in Sydney, a member of the NSW parliament and one of the colony's cricket selectors for matches against Victoria.

Club football was momentarily revived in early July 1868 with the founding of a new Sydney FC. The Sydney Mail noted (July 4) that the club had twenty playing members, and that the enthusiasm to form the club had been triggered by the growing interest for football clubs in Melbourne. It proved to be a "false dawn" for the sport in Sydney, and only four matches are known to have been played at all during 1868-69.

The largest obstacles to growth in the sport were a lack of grounds on which football could be played - the four matches of 1868-69 were held at the Victoria Barracks, the Domain and the University ground - and the rules, with ongoing disputes and lack of agreement on what form of football ought to be observed.

With warmer weather than Melbourne, cricket in Sydney continued to enjoy a 10-month long season, leaving football just July and August in which to live a brief existence.

The Wallaroo FC was formed in 1870 to play "according to the rugby rules" by William 'Monty' Arnold with his older brother Richard. It's initial impact was minimal, with the city again hosting 11 matches in 1870-71. It was also at this time that schoolboy football began at the King's School and Newington College.

From 1872 onwards saw a rapid growth in the formation of football clubs. The increase in interest in football coincided with the population of Sydney increasing by almost half by 1871 (from 96,000 in the mid 1860s to just under 138,000) as the city began on the path towards overtaking Melbourne.

New gentlemen's clubs and private 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, Newington College and a handful of others.

Having football played under the patronage of the schools 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 now stands.

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 (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 colony of New South Wales. To tighten its grip on the rugby game, 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 cross-code matches 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 and bring football in NSW closer to that being played in Victoria. Shortly afterwards, the Waratah FC and other similarly-minded clubs founded an Australian football association in Sydney.

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).

References.
Sean Fagan, The Rugby Rebellion
Thomas Hickie, They Ran With The Ball
The Sydney Morning Herald
NSWRU / ARU archives
Keyword related: NSW Waratahs Rugby

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