Before the Coming of the League
1888-1908

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Joe Warbrick Member of the 1888/89 New Zealand Natives team that played 74 games in Britain.

The common telling of the history of rugby league outside of Great Britain begins with the formation of the New Zealand "All Golds" by Albert Baskerville and George Smith in 1907.

While in a general sense that is the beginning, the preceding 20 years provide numerous instances of the growing ties between what are today the heartlands of the 13-man code.

1888 - British team tours Australia & NZ

Though it was still seven years before 1895's founding of the Northern Union (rugby league), the 1888 tour of Australia and New Zealand by a British rugby union team provides the first connection.

Concerned that the tour was little more than a money-making venture, the team was not sanctioned by England's RFU, and there is little doubt that the players involved all received a share of the profits, breaching the amateur code's laws against professionalism.

Significantly, two-thirds of the 21 footballers who took part in the 1888 tour came from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire - from clubs and towns that would soon afterwards be prominent names in early rugby league, including Swinton, Batley, Salford, Halifax, Runcorn, Dewsbury and Rochdale Hornets.

The tour provided the first inter-action between the rugby communities of Northern England with those in New Zealand, New South Wales and Queensland, with matches played in Sydney, Brisbane, Newcastle and Auckland - cities that would fall to rugby league two decades later.

Indeed, when James Lomas' first English/British Lions rugby league team toured "down under" in 1910, many Aussies and Kiwis recalled with great delight "the Northern men" of the 1888 team, and spoke far less of the three other British RU teams that visited after the 1895 divide (in 1899, 1904 and 1908).

The tourists strongly influenced how rugby was played in Australasia - and, ironically, they are they direct parent of the 1905 All Blacks that decimated teams in Britain, and gave rise to the All Golds and rugby league.

In their post 1905 tour book, The Complete Rugby Footballer, All Blacks Dave Gallaher and Bill Stead wrote gushingly of the effect of the 1888 Lions: “It was left to Stoddart’s British team to show Maoriland the fine points of the game and the vast possibilities of combination. The exhibitions of passing they gave were most fascinating and impressive to the New Zealander who were not slow to realize the advantages of these methods. One may safely say that, from that season, dates the era of high class rugby in the colony ."

Harry Speakman - from Runcorn to Queensland

Runcorn's 24 year old Henry ('Harry') Speakman stayed on in Brisbane after the 1888 tour, where he won representative honours with Queensland (1889-91), and captained the colony. Speakman also turned out for Ipswich, and in 1892 was attracted to the gold rush town of Charters Towers, where he played on until the turn of the century.

Speakman's influence on Queensland rugby's development is widely recognised - he came to be lauded as the "Father of Towers Rugby", and it was his coaching that was principally behind Queensland's most formidable period in either rugby code before the arrival of State of Origin (aside from the 1920s Maroons).

Speakman's debut for Queensland came in 1889 against the "New Zealand Natives" in Brisbane.

1888-1889 - New Zealand Natives Team tours Britain

The Natives team, predominantly Maori, had just completed a massive 74-game tour of the United Kingdom. The most prominent names in the tour party was the now legendary Tom Ellison and the five Warbrick brothers.

Over two-thirds of their games were in the Northern counties of England, and it was there that they found their toughest opposition, suffering their heaviest losses to Halifax and a combined Yorkshire team, and their strongest support from the public and footballers alike.

So popular were the New Zealanders in the North that they were convinced to play repeat matches against Wakefield, Leeds and Wigan. Meanwhile, after a falling out with the RFU, towards the end of the tour no clubs in England's south were prepared to play the Natives.

This tour too was also pseudo-professional, with a share in the gate-money the prime reason for the players taking part in the venture at all. Two decades later, the sage advice of the tour's promoter and manager, Thomas Eyton, would provide valuable personal insight for Baskerville and his planning of the "All Golds" tour.

That the Natives had forged long-term ties with rugby in the North of England is confirmed by the appearance of their names tied to rumours of impending moves by Maori players to Northern Union clubs.

In September 1903 the Otago Witness reported that, in the aftermath of the Northern Union's decision to start up an annual England v Other Nationalities contest, three Maori footballers (described as "pupils of Joe Warbrick") were set to depart for Lancashire.

It was far from a fanciful story with the first New Zealander to have taken up rugby in the North of England a decade earlier - George Stephenson.

George Stephenson - from NZ to Manningham (Bradford) & Hunslet

George Stephenson, a junior auctioneer with his father’s business in Dunedin, moved to Bradford (Yorkshire) in the early 1890s to learn about the woollen industry. A fine young rugby player, Stephenson joined the Manningham club.

This article is based on Pioneers of Rugby League.

Stephenson returned home just before "the great rugby schism" of 1895 that gave birth to the Northern Union, and by the end of the decade he was in the Otago representative team, where he and Auckland's George Smith became the most prominent three-quarter backs in the colony.

Stephenson again sailed to the North of England in the early 1900s, where he signed on with Hunslet, thus becoming the first professional rugby (league) player from the colonies.

There can be little doubt that Stephenson provided Smith with support and insight in the lead up to the "All Golds" venture.

Smith himself revealed to the Otago Witness in September 1902 that he had received contract offers from Manningham (Stephenson's first club) as well as Huddersfield and Bradford.

Smith and many of his 1905 All Blacks team mates attended Northern Union matches during their now famous tour.

Stephenson was also in Sydney in August 1906 when Smith's Auckland team spent a week in the NSW capital, and secret discussions towards the birth of rugby league in Australia and New Zealand took on serious tones.

Smith and Albert Baskerville are rightly recognised as the founders of New Zealand rugby league, but they would have found their negotiations with the Northern Union much harder work if not for the insight and connections provided by George Stephenson.

Albert Ramsden - from NZ to Hunslet

The first New Zealander to play 13-a-side rugby league was Albert Ramsden, from Petone (near Wellington). Treading a path similar to Stephenson's, Ramsden left for the north of England in April 1907 to gain first-hand management experience from an uncle in the mills.

Ramsden, a promising half-back, had first come to prominence across New Zealand in mid-1905 after scoring the match-winning try for Wellington over the "All Blacks" before they sailed for Britain.

When Ramsden himself arrived in Yorkshire, Northern Union clubs quickly sought out his services, with Hunslet ultimately winning his signature on a four-year contract with what Wellington's Evening Post described as "an offer said to have been a very enticing one."

It is also interesting to note that the timing of Ramsden's move coincides with the finalisation of negotiations between the Northern Union and Wellington's Albert Baskerville for the proposed "All Golds" tour. Both were familiar to each other as on-field opponents in Wellington, (Baskerville played for the Oriental club), but whether Ramsden took on any secret role to smooth the way for the "All Golds" tour is unknown.

Ramsden made his Hunslet debut in the first round of club matches under 13-a-side on September 7th 1907, with the Parksiders defeating Hull 9-8. Ramsden played that opening match at stand-off (five-eighth), but was moved to the centres for the following two matches.

Hunslet went on to win "All Four Cups" that season (Challenge Cup, Championship, Yorkshire Cup and Yorkshire League), however, in a champion team, Ramsden found it difficult to hold a permanent place. Unfortunately, he missed selection in Hunslet's team for the Boxing Day encounter with the "All Golds".

Alf Larard - from Hull to South Africa to Huddersfield

Alf Larard Played for the Springboks in 1896 and Huddersfield RL Club in the early 1900s.

South Africa too provides a link to early rugby league via Alf Larard, who was half-back and sole try-scorer in South Africa's first ever rugby union Test match victory (in August 1896 v the British Lions).

Hull-born, Larard migrated to the Transvaal as a 17 year old in 1887, presumably in search of opportunities in gold mining. In Johannesburg he began playing rugby union with the "Diggers" club, which no doubt was comprised of miners.

Larard progressed to the Transvaal rep team for the Currie Cup competition, and then to the South African combined team in 1896.

He continued with his rugby union career, and when the Anglo Boer War erupted in 1899, he joined the English side of the divide, enlisting with the "Imperial Light Horse Regiment".

In mid-1901 Larard returned to England, where he signed on with the Huddersfield NU club and began playing rugby league.

Whether the opportunity for the now 30 year old Larard to play professional rugby was behind his decision to return home is still a mystery. He played the next four seasons for Hudderfield, notching up over 100 games, and holding the coveted captaincy role in his final season.

With thanks to Hendrik Snyders (Rugby League South Africa) for additional details and photo of Alf Larard. Hendrik is seeking information on South Africa's rugby league pioneers, and can be contacted via snydersh@telkomsa.net

Additional thanks to Tom Mathers and Tony Holmes on the Hunslet 1907/08 playing stats for Albert Ramsden.