RL1908 - Rugby League Archive

With Amanda Smith 19/4/2002 ABC Radio
Lest We Forget - Sport and War

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/stories/s535558.htm

Summary: This week, in anticipation of ANZAC Day, the role of sport in the First World War, and in the commemoration of war. One of the most heated debates in Australia during the First World War was whether sporting events should continue.

Historian MURRAY PHILLIPS looks at how this debate coalesced around the rugby codes, and why Rugby Union suspended competition for the duration, while Rugby League did not.

Details or Transcript:

Amanda Smith: And this week on The Sports Factor, we’re looking ahead to Anzac Day, and the role that sport played in the First World War.

Amanda Smith: ....to sport in the time of war. During the First World War, there was a very heated debate in Australia about whether sporting events and competitions should continue or not. And according to sports historian, Murray Phillips, the opposing views in this debate were very much encapsulated in what happened with Rugby Union, and what happened with Rugby League.

Murray Phillips: Well on the onset of war in 1914, Rugby Union decided almost immediately that they would cancel their competition, and once they found out that the war was going to continue beyond that first Christmas, (and many people assumed that the war was only going to be a temporary thing, and over quickly) they declined to play any competitive games for the remainder of the war. In total contrast, Rugby League had a far more pragmatic position, and they decided to continue playing their competitions, modified in some forms, but they continued to play right through the duration of the war.

Amanda Smith: And why was this? Why did the two codes choose such divergent paths as to the continuation or not, or competition during the war?

Murray Phillips: Well there were a range of reasons. I think Rugby Union was essentially middle class sport; it linked really tightly with amateurism, and with all the beliefs centred around the value and efficacy of sport for war. And they decided they would cease all competitions and they are argued that that was the type of patriotism that was required by everybody in this great conflagration. So the Rugby Union said, ‘Look, we will stop competitions, we will help promote recruiting, we will do everything we can for the war effort,’ because in fact they argued, ‘If we held Rugby matches we would actually prevent recruiting, we would present a position in which it was really morally corrupt that you could play sport, enjoy watching sport, at the same that people were being injured, maimed and killed in fact on the battlefields throughout the world. And how moral that would be for people to listen to roar of the MCG or the Sydney Cricket Ground for that matter, while at the same time people were getting knocks on their doors, being told their family members had been injured, maimed or in fact killed. In total contrast of course was the Rugby League, which took a far more pragmatic view, and that pragmatic view was really based on two issues: firstly they had fought very hard for the last seven or eight years to establish themselves as the dominant winter football code in Sydney and in Brisbane. So there was that sense of pragmatism. It was also a very strong working-class, Catholic link in Rugby League, and that section of the community had a far more pragmatic view about their view of the war. They argued that, ‘Yes, we will support the war initially anyway, wholeheartedly, and we will do everything we can.’ So the Rugby League actually encouraged their members to recruit. They encouraged them to raise money in terms of patriotic funds, and they argued that ‘The best thing we could do for those who didn’t go to war was actually to continue our competitions, to provide some sort of cathartic effect for spectators and players as the war ravaged on.’

Amanda Smith: But did attitudes within either of the Rugby codes in Australia change over the course of the war?

Murray Phillips: Rugby Union maintained steadfastly that it would not hold competitions. It argued that the only form of patriotism was full-on, cessation of sport. Rugby League did change over the war, and that reflected some of the social tensions that were implicit during the middle years of the war. In essence, Rugby League was very keen on the war effort initially. It didn’t stop competitions, but it virtually did everything else it could to support the war effort. But as there were the Great Strikes, part of the industrial turmoil of the time, asectarianism grew, as the conscription campaigns really essentially divided people along a whole range of different lines, that enthusiasm within Rugby League actually tapered out. So they still ran competitions, raised money for patriotic tournaments, but when you look through their internal records, the enthusiasm for the war that was evident in those first few months and in that first year in fact, really diminished over time. And I guess if you look at Rugby League and if you look at Rugby Union, in fact the decisions these different sporting groups take in fact mirror the class conflict of the period.

Amanda Smith: Did the Rugby Union fraternity tend to see going to battle as a kind of extension of their sporting involvement, along the English idea that you know, the Battle of Waterloo had been won on the Playing Fields of Eton?

Murray Phillips: Well Rugby Union had initially started out as a game that really catered for all sections of society, but with the formation of Rugby League, Rugby Union became an increasingly middle-class institution, and as such it drew from those people who went to the private schools and also the universities, in which there was a sense of inculcation of moral beliefs related to sport and participation. And one of the key planks of those sort of moral attitudes towards sport was that it prepared you for other parts of life. And one of those of course, was for war. And it was the Rugby Union that was a really big player in the establishment of the Sportsmen’s Battalions. And one of the posters from these Sportsmen’s Battalions was it encouraged all sportsmen to enlist in what was called The Greater Game. And the byline at the bottom of this large, inviting poster was, the last line of Vitai Lampada by Henry Newbolt, and it argued ‘Play up, play up, and play the game’, and that essentially epitomised that belief.

Amanda Smith: Yes, this is this great poem, the Vitai Lampada, which I think means something like ‘They pass on the torch of life’, the Henry Newbolt poem, that goes on with things like The sand of the desert is sodden red, But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, Play up, play up, and play the game.

Murray Phillips: Very emotive stuff. It drew on whole lots of ideologies that came from Britain that were fostered within an Australian context, and it essentially said to footballers from the Rugby Union backgrounds, ‘This is what you’ve been doing for the majority of life, you’ve been playing football, now go and play the greater game.’

Amanda Smith: But that idea didn’t hold much cred within Rugby League circles?

Murray Phillips: Well again, the class differences are crucial here. Rugby League essentially drew from a working-class background. The working-class clientele were not imbued wholeheartedly with the athleticism ethos, that actually said that sport prepared you necessarily for greater things in life. In some cases that may be what happened, but the reality was that sport was a whole range of different things. It was a way of in fact meeting whole groups of different people, it was of actually earning income to compensate for lack of income in your work profession for instance. So sport for working class men and boys, particularly in Rugby League, cut across a whole range of beliefs, some of which tied in with athleticism, but which meant a whole range of different things to a wider group of people.

Amanda Smith: Did the continuation of Rugby League competition hamper recruiting efforts?

Murray Phillips: Well if you listen to the Rugby Union people of course it did. These entertainments were the things that actually diverted the minds of men from the real task at hand, that is, defending the Empire and representing Australia overseas. The reality was that of course this made very little difference to recruiting at all, and in fact recruiting really struggled over the last couple of years of the war, and that resulted in the conscription campaigns. So no, what people worked out as the war went on, was that the continuation of sport really made very little difference to recruiting efforts. And that’s reflected in the fact that some sports actually tapered off in 1915 and early 1916, but by the end of the war, most and many competitions were back full steam almost.

Amanda Smith: Well the concept of sport being a preparation for war might have worked at Waterloo, but it really wasn’t going to work in the kind of war that the First World War became; does the sport-war connection lose currency with this war?

Murray Phillips: Well certainly the sport-war connection was one built on a million decades, inculcated in the private schools and the universities and spread out to the sporting clubs. So you had a very strong ideology. And that was put into practice in many accounts on the battlefront, and there’s some classic stories for instance, of an English army officer leading his men over the parapet, kicking a soccer ball and getting mowed down by German bullets. So yes, the reality of war was far different to what was perceived that sport would do for training recruits, and for those who actually ended up fighting, real live soldiers, because the warfare had moved on, because the nature of the war itself changed considerably. When you think about the horrible conditions that the Australians had to fight in Turkey for instance, or on the Western Front in France, in the thick, damp mud in what became essentially a trench warfare between two stagnant forces. What people learn on the Rugby field, or what they learn in the boxing ring didn’t actually make a great deal of difference for those, when they were on the battlefront themselves.

Amanda Smith: Murray Phillips, who’s a senior lecturer in Sports Studies at the University of Queensland. Now, to commemorate Anzac Day next Thursday, there’s a national Rugby League game being played in Sydney: St George Illawarra versus the Sydney Roosters; and in Melbourne, the now-traditional Aussie Rules game between Essendon and Collingwood, at the MCG, preceded by an Anzac service at the ground.