Sean Fagan

The origins of teams using a war-cry in rugby can be traced back to the beginnings of rugby in the 1800s.

The Rugby Schoolhouse team wore a large skull and crossbone badge on their jerseys. This led to football teams with the moniker being referred to as the 'bearers of mortality', and more popularly, 'The Pirates'.

The idea that rugby teams were going into battle was readily adopted. Many rugby clubs in the 1880s and 1890s, including in NSW and New Zealand, adopted the Pirates (or Buccaneers) name.

This 'battle' theme was to form an integral part of the New Zealand Native team that toured England and Australia in 1888/89. The tour was as much about entertainment as it was about rugby, with the promoters keen to make money from the team's appearances. At functions and before their matches, The Native team dressed in Maori costume and performed hakas to the crowds.

By the start of the 20th century, New Zealand representative teams in Australia had adopted the practice of performing a haka before the kick-off. In the wake of the Native team's performances, the crowds in Sydney and Brisbane had come to expect the New Zealanders to deliver a haka. The response of the local teams was a limp (in comparison) 'Hip, hip, hoo-ray'.

When the All Blacks arrived in England in 1905, they continued the tradition of performing the haka. It became expected of the visiting colonial teams to Britain that they would bring with them a native war dance. The South African Springboks delivered a Zulu-based war-cry on their 1906 tour to Britain. After the first professional rugby league team visited England and Wales in 1907 (Albert Baskerville's New Zealand 'All Golds') and performed the haka, the tradition was firmly set in place.

The English public expected the 1908 Australians - both Wallabies and Kangaroos - to also each have a war-cry. The captain of the Wallabies, Herbert Moran, refused to take part in any performance of his team's war-cry. He stated that the NSWRU had imposed the war-cry upon his team as "…the people in England expected it…" and "…it had a box-office value." In a truly amateur sense, the use of the war-cry should have been banned by the RFU as it was pure "show business".

No one has been able to prove that the words or actions of the Wallabies war-cry was directly taken from an Aboriginal custom. The war-cry was given to the team by a doctor, who was an official of the Newtown rugby union club. Where he obtained it is unknown, though the players told everyone it came from "the once powerful Illawarra tribe".

Wallabies War Cry 1908/09 Gau Gau [opponent's name and the venue] Whir-r-r! Win-nang-a lang (Thur) Mu-e-an-yil-ling Bu rang-a-lang (Yang) Yai!Yai! Gun-yil-lang-yang-yah! Translation (it was not performed in English): Greetings to [opponent] in [place] You are great men We are pleased to meet you We think we can beat you Come, let us try

In reality, no one took the war-cry as a serious cultural demonstration. The most ridiculous example came when an American [Californian] Universities rugby union team visited Australia and New Zealand in 1910 - they too were cajoled into creating a war-cry. Theirs was delivered in English, which might explain why it was described as "quite different from anything heard in the Antipodes".

A Welsh newspaper writer summed-up the position of the war-cry, "Was there ever anything more like tomfoolery on the football field than these Colonial war songs?"

Only the New Zealanders continued through the remainder of the century to use a war-cry - though the version often varied and it was not always performed. It was not until the 1987 Rugby World Cup that the (now traditional) haka became a permanent pre-match feature and was delivered with such vigour by the New Zealand players.

References.
Sean Fagan, The Rugby Rebellion
Herbert Moran, Viewless Winds
The Referee
NSWRU / ARU archives