Kangaroos War Cry

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Looking back, the idea of the Kangaroos performing an Aboriginal war-cry seems quirky, perhaps even insensitive.

Yet, from 1908 to 1967 Australian teams in England and France delivered a war-cry before kick-off.

In early tours it seems to have been used for most matches, however, it was soon reserved for just Tests where it was well received by the English spectators (and later French as well).

"Before the game began the Kangaroos thrilled the English crowd with their war-cry," recalled Clive Churchill of the 1948/49 tour. "Johnny Graves [Australia's winger], who would have made a fortune in the show business, stood out from the line-up and led us. We sang our war-cry on both sides of the field, much to the delight of the crowd."

Ian Walsh, vice-captain on the 1963/64 tour, remarked that, "The English people love to hear the war-cry." Walsh also spoke of a secondary benefit: "It is handy, too, for releasing tension and warming up the players because it involves a lot of stamping and arm-waving."

"We used to practice it in the lounge [bar] or at the back of the Troutbeck [Hotel] and whenever we attended a function someone would be sure to ask us to do the war-cry." Walsh revealed that the Kangaroos used the war-cry for other purposes too: "We said the proper words in England, but sometimes in France we would use the opportunity to roar abuse at the crowd and the referee!"

The war-cry was used for the last time in December 1967 in France. It went out with a whimper as Australia lost a three-Test series by 2-0 (with one match drawn).

The first public performance of the war-cry by the 1908/09 Kangaroos occurred when they arrived at Tilbury Docks in England. They lined themselves along their ship's deck and delivered it to "weird and awful effect" upon the crowd standing on the wharf below.

The reason the Kangaroos had a war-cry at all derives from the rugby union All Blacks' tour of Great Britain three years earlier. The New Zealanders had adopted the use of a war-cry since their first visits to Sydney in the late 1800s - when they arrived in England in 1905 they did the same.

The war-cry was really part of an entertainment package, and was used to help attract fee-paying patrons to the grounds and improve the financial return to the NZRU.

After the 1906 South African Springboks produced a war-cry for their visit to Britain, and Baskerville's (1907) New Zealand rugby league team delivered the Maori haka, a pattern was clearly established. The English public expected the 1908 Australians - both Kangaroos and Wallabies - 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." The Wallabies dropped their war cry after that tour, never to perform it again.

In a truly amateur sense, the use of the war-cry should have been banned by the RFU. As Clive Churchill's description [above] puts it, the war-cry was purely "show business".

The Kangaroos war cry was given to Jack Fihelly (Queensland player/selector of the 1908 team) by Archie Meston, who claimed it came from "the warriors of Stradbroke Island".

Meston was manager of a travelling troupe of Queensland Aboriginals. The troupe performed in Sydney just before the Kangaroos sailed for England, and again at the 1908 club Final between Souths and Easts.

Stradbroke Islanders today confirm that that the words and actions of the Kangaroos war cry are found in their language and customs.

The 1908 Wallabies 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'.

One also needs to keep in mind that the war cry of past teams were all much tamer than the haka performed by the Kiwis and All Blacks of today.

While the Kangaroos let their tradition lapse in 1967, the Kiwis and All Blacks continued on (though the form of the haka often varied, and it was not always performed).

It was not until the 1987 Rugby Union World Cup that the (now traditional) All Blacks' haka became a permanent pre-match feature and was delivered with such vigour by the New Zealand players.

In reality, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, no one took the war-cry as a serious cultural demonstration. It was just part of the show, part of taking a bit of the colonial world back "home" to Britain, and hoping it would help to add to the attraction (and therefore gate-takings) at matches.

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. Based on American Indian customs, it involved burying a hatchet in the middle of the field. Their war cry was delivered in English, which might explain why it was described as "quite different from anything heard in the Antipodes".

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

Further reading:
"The Origin of the Kangaroo War Cry"
see pages 386-389 of Pioneers of Rugby League by Sean Fagan