New Zealand Maori Teams - 1908 & 1909

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

“We have come over here to beat the kangaroo!” Albert ‘Opai’ Asher, NZ Maori team 1908 & 1909

In its first seasons, rugby league in Australia was finding it a hard slog.

The code was living “from hand to mouth” and still every chance of collapsing under a sea of debts and unfulfilled promises.

League’s founder, James J Giltinan, thought he had the answer – a rugby league team comprised entirely of Maori footballers.

Giltinan reckoned that the combination of the new 13-man rugby, together with the Maori’s penchant for adventurous football, would produce a draw-card that no sports loving fan could resist.

Under the captaincy of Albert Asher, the “New Zealand Maoris” tour party sailed into Sydney in June 1908.

Asher had a fondness for hurdling over defenders and was bestowed the nickname of “Opai”, the name of New Zealand’s champion steeple-chase horse.

Asher was already well known in Australia, and the news that he was leading an All Maori rugby league team spread like wildfire.

The League announced the Maori team would play against Australia as well as the NSW Blues and Queensland Maroons, with matches in Sydney, and Brisbane. Games were soon added in country centres, notably Newcastle, Maitland, Toowoomba and Warwick.

Giltinan’s bold initiative paid off with the opening Sydney match drawing over 30,000 to the Sydney Showground at Moore Park – setting a new gate record for the code.

Asher and the Maoris also quickly proved that they were more than an able team, ensuring that the tour would bankroll the code’s growth wherever they played.

The Sydney Morning Herald enthusiastically described the contest as “a brilliant exhibition of the game, and the result was a win for NSW by 18–9. From the kick-off to the full-time whistle there was not an uninteresting moment. An extraordinary pace was maintained, and the ball travelled with ever-changing advantages and disadvantages, which kept the crowds in an effervescent condition. There was probably not a spectator who did not leave the ground satisfied that he had witnessed a game well worth seeing.”

The Maoris returned again in 1909, only to find that rugby league was on the brink of bankruptcy and practically “dead to the world”.

This article is based on Pioneers of Rugby League.

Yet, after their two opening games in Sydney drew a combined attendance of over 50,000, the NSWRL’s financial woes vanished.

By the end of the 1909 tour the financial security of the rugby league in NSW and Queensland was practically assured – all thanks to the public’s craving for the Maoris and the way they played the game.

Without the early tours of the New Zealand Maoris, there is little doubt that rugby league would never have gained its ascendancy over NSW and Queensland so quickly and so permanently.

"‘They put every pound of energy into their attacks that they were possessed of,” recalled a supporter at the time. “There was no mistaking the determination of the Maoris to make the pace as hot as possible.”

Not only did the Maoris thrill the crowd by their rapid-fire passing, highly speculative throwing about of the football, and Asher’s hurdling feats, but their big strapping forwards introduced to the game the unprecedented notion of ball-carriers dropping their shoulders into defenders to bump them off, instead of simply trying to evade tacklers with a run or a kick.

“Their men made little effort to dodge opponents,” wrote one reporter.

The Aussie tacklers did little more than slightly knock the Maori runners off their stride, only to turn around and see them still careering off downfield.

In one instance, Dally Messenger knocked one Maori runner clean over the touchline – the Maori simply got up, laughed, and urged Messenger to try and repeat the dose if he was game!

After the tour the Sydney clubs began offering terms to the Maori players, with Peter Moko joining the Glebe team.

Moko himself put a proposal to the Northern Union (reported in the NZ Truth 6 March 1909) for an All-Maori team to visit Britain in 1909-10, playing against the rugby league clubs of England and Wales. However, in the wake of the financially disastrous Kangaroos tour of 1908/09, the NU declined the offer.