Yuletide Kangaroos

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Though rugby league in England has moved to summer, the tradition of holding matches on Boxing Day has continued.

Admittedly, these “holiday season” games - where once “Christmas Day matches” were much anticipated events of the winter – are today a mere shadow of past times, with few top flight players making an appearance.

The ritual of Christmas football extends back to medieval times, with ancient texts recounting how adjoining parishes and towns would fight for possession of the head of the day’s sacrificial offering (an ox or cow), and how this evolved into folk football, which gave us our modern football codes.

James J Giltinan (1908 Kangaroos Tour Manager) Photographed amongst the snow and ice of Boxing Day, 1908 [Source: True Blue by Ian Heads]

In Christmas in Ritual and Tradition (published in 1903) the author C.A. Miles tells us that football is the only field sport traditional to the Christmas festive season (from Christmas day through to 'the Twelfth Night').

Even in summer-time Australia, church and community Christmas celebrations in the mid-1800s were often reported to have been a day that included “cricket, football, dancing, kiss-in-the-ring, and a variety of other amusements.”

By the time rugby league came on the scene in Australia in 1908, the playing of folk football at Christmas festivals had long since become a thing of the past.

So it was with some novelty that the first Kangaroos learned that they would be playing matches right through the Christmastide period.

On Christmas Day 1908 the Kangaroos played against Leeds at Headingley. More than 12,000 spent their Christmas afternoon watching Australia win a hard-fought contest 14-10.

The home referee though had irked the locals, and at the full-time whistle many of them stormed the field. Some quick-thinking policemen snared the referee first, and got him to the safety of the dressing rooms.

Most of the Aussies had never seen snow before, and awoke on Boxing Day to find their Southport lodgings carpeted in a thick white blanket covering. The boys raced outside and ripped into their first snow fight.

Within days though, the team quickly tired of its lure. After weeks of cold, rain and slush, the men no longer took kindly to the English climate. More than a few had colds, and could not go outdoors – a long way from their families and friends, it all served to make their temperament particularly caustic.

All the Kangaroo touring teams, from 1908 to the 1967/68 squad, played rugby league over the Christmas season. The schedule of early tours had Yuletide matches in England, with the post WW2 tours coinciding with the French leg of their campaign.

Chris McKivat’s 1911/12 team were the second Aussie team to play on Christmas Day, defeating Runcorn 54-6 at Southport.

The 1929/30 tourists weren’t so fortuitous with their Christmas Day outing at Parkside, with Hunslet inflicting an 18-3 rout over the Kangaroos. The following day (Boxing Day), the Australians scored a last minute try to beat Hull KR 10-5. The 1937 team fell 13-0 to Broughton Rangers in their Boxing Day fixture.

Wally O’Connell, five-eighth in the 1948/49 Kangaroos, recalled in his biography, In Defence, the kick-off to the French stage of their tour: “On Christmas Day, we won our first game, which was against the Pyrenees, 43-3. We had to play again on Boxing Day after a 120-mile bus drive, against Catalan at Perpignan."

"Catalan was a very good team and won 20-5. At the reception after the game, the Frenchmen celebrated as though they had won the Test series. The eating, 10 courses of the best food, and drinking went on for seven or eight hours."

Subsequent tourists had their own tales to tell of French hospitality.

In Albi, hometown of famed artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, the 1956/57 Kangaroos played against the local team on Christmas Day. Confronted with a 25-4 penalty count, the Australians somehow prevailed to take the match 25-20.

According to Newtown’s Dick Poole, the evening meal was one to remember: “Christmas was in Albi. Christmas dinner was a bit of steak - horseflesh - and that was it! That was your Christmas dinner!”

The 1959/60 Kangaroos were pitched against Villeneuve on Christmas Eve and then Albi on Christmas Day.

In dreadfully wet conditions, the Kangaroos beat Villeneuve 11-5, but had little left in reserve to overcome a fiery Albi team, and lost 19-10. The Albi match was described by rugby league hard-man Noel Kelly in his autobiography as “a football war that had very little to do with the spirit of Christmas.”

After the 1963/64 Kangaroos had survived their Christmas in France, Kelly had come to the conclusion that the combination of French rugby league, the Kangaroos and Christmas, was a recipe for “The Festive Madness.”

The 1963 Christmas Day game at Albi had been a decidedly wild affair. The Kangaroos beat a ‘Rouergue XIII’ selection 13-2, in a day full of bizarre incidents. Amongst the happenings, tour captain Arthur Summons (who wasn’t playing) came from the grandstand mid-game with an interpreter to confront the referee about his rulings.

Interviewed by Ian Heads in The Kangaroos, Summons said of Christmas: “We were in France, a long way from home, sitting in the pub looking at each other. I think we all felt a bit empty then.”

In the early Kangaroo tours, letters and parcels were sent via ship from Australia at the start of November, timed to arrive at the team’s hotel for Christmas. By the 1960s, with phone calls traversing the globe still an extravagant luxury, the ARL arranged for the taping of pre-recorded private Christmas messages from the players’ wives and children.

Each footballer responded in his own way to the news and words from home. Some were suddenly energised, while others fell into a dark melancholy.

Ian Walsh, in his book Inside Rugby League wrote of the 1959/60 Kangaroos after they played their Christmas Eve match in Villeneuve.

In walking back to the team’s hotel, Walsh and some of his team mates came upon a decidedly despondent Brian ‘Poppa’ Clay.

Few will quibble that St George's Clay was one of the toughest men to play the game, yet Walsh saw Clay “stop in the middle of a bridge and stare down into the floodwaters. When we caught up we found he was crying. Brian told us the next day ‘I felt so lonely.’ He is a very good family man, and I guess he was homesick.”

Australia never played a Christmas Day Test match. The closest came on December 24 in 1967 at Stade Albert Domec in Carcassonne, France. The French defeated the Kangaroos 10-3.