Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

The one event in rugby league's first years that is continuously misrepresented, is the defection of the 1908/09 Wallabies, and the motives of James Joynton-Smith.

As long ago as 1988, Gary Lester revealed much of the true history in The Story of Australian Rugby League. The events are more fully explored, including new findings, in
The Rugby Rebellion.

What is surprising is that many Union and League books/articles (including some recent ones) have ignored Lester's research, and continue to portray Joynton-Smith as a media
mogul who hijacked rugby union for his own
financial benefit.

This is despite Joynton-Smith not starting his first newspaper until 1918, and it clearly being shown that all profits from the Kangaroos v Wallabies matches were to be given to South Sydney Hospital.

Some have even gone so far as to write that Joynton-Smith had been orchestrating criticism against the NSWRU and Metropolitan Rugby Union (MRU) through newspapers since the arrival of rugby league. Yet, apart from selling the Epping Ground [Harold Park] to the MRU in 1907, Joynton-Smith's name did not appear once in the 'code war' until August 1909.

Up to that time, he had made his money through owning hotels and race tracks. Joynton-Smith appeared to have no connection with rugby at all.

With the fight between League and Union in Sydney in somewhat of a stalemate in the late winter of 1909, (neither side had the ascendancy), the Wallabies who were inclined to take up rugby league recognised that they held a unique bargaining position.

A handful of rugby league officials (notably Bill Flegg), acting without sanction, attempted to secretly organise Wallabies v Kangaroos matches. They failed as the Wallabies (led by Chris McKivat) demanded far higher payments than Flegg could offer. Flegg also wanted to pay the Kangaroo players an equal amount, rather than end up having to give it all to the Wallabies to meet their price.

It seemed that nothing more could be done. The NSWRL did not have the money to meet the payments sought by the Wallabies. Nor did the NSWRL (or anyone else for that matter) want to be seen as bringing about the demise of the NSWRU by signing the players en masse. The NSWRL had not contracted footballers for their services/loyalty in 1907 and 1908 (when it first started), and was not going to resort to what was outright professionalism to win the war over rugby union.

Some NSWRL officials though were intent on finding a solution that would deliver the Wallabies to rugby league. The answer still lay in organising 'charity matches' - as the NSWRU had made it clear that participation in such a match would be enough to ban a player for life as a professional. Having taken part, the disqualified Wallabies would then have to take up rugby league.

South Sydney's S.G. Ball approached James Joynton-Smith, hoping he would fund the payments to the Kangaroos and Wallabies to take part. He agreed to provide the money, subject to all profits going to the South Sydney Public Hospital. Ball went back to the Wallabies, and their demands (in the hundreds of pounds each) led to nothing being left for the Kangaroos, who eventually played for match payments only.

In 1908 Joynton-Smith had been elected by the local community as President of a committee formed to bring about the building of the hospital. He led a concerted fund-raising effort in Alexandria, Redfern, Waterloo, Mascot and Botany. Joynton-Smith saw the great interest in possible Kangaroos v Wallabies matches as a further means to gain funds for the hospital.

Sir James Joynton-Smith

Why then did Joynton-Smith apparently feel no compunction for what the defection of the Wallabies would do to the NSWRU? Why did he side with the rugby league officials?

A speech he made in 1910 (at the arrival of the English rugby league team) suggests he simply had no sympathy for the NSWRU's refusal to provide better player benefits.

While other NSWRL speakers thought the 'League v Union' debate was no longer worth even raising (including Fred Flowers, grand father of current ARU CEO Gary Flowers), Joynton-Smith (by then NSWRL President) launched another attack on the NSWRU.

There is little doubt that Joynton-Smith was an astute businessman, always interested in improving his financial position. But is that alone reason enough to malign his actions in the Wallaby defections as greedy and self-interested?

In the young democratic country of Australia, the prevailing thought at the time was that if someone was sharp enough to build his way to wealth, then good luck to him. (Arguably, that is exactly what some of the Wallabies were seeking to do.)

As we have seen, Joynton-Smith wanted the match profits to go to the South Sydney Hospital. The hospital opened to the public the following month, so any additional support would have certainly been timely. His fund-raising and management contributions to the hospital continued for the rest of his life, so it is difficult to accept the idea was a smokescreen.

He was similarly involved with both Sydney and Prince Alfred Hospitals, Wentworth Falls Convalescent Home, Picton Lakes 'T.B.' Soldiers and Sailors Settlement, and was chairman of the NSW 'War Loans' committee.

These roles all indicate that Joynton-Smith believed, as did many men who made large volumes of money, that they also had a responsibility to their community. Indeed, in 1920 he was honoured with a knighthood for his philanthropy.

Apart from looking to fund improvements to the hospital, there is no other apparent motive. It is plausible (though unproven) that he may have done it to improve his public popularity. In 1912 he was elected to the NSW Parliament representing Labor, and in 1918 also held the office of Lord Mayor of Sydney.

The loss of the Wallaby players and Dally Messenger from rugby union has been cited by some as the primary reason rugby league gained the ascendancy in Sydney.

In the case of singling out Messenger from the 1907/08 'founders', it maligns the contribution, influence, and standing of other great players (many who had appeared in Australian rugby union Test teams) such as Arthur Hennessy, Albert Rosenfeld, Pony Halloway, Jimmy Devereux, Pat Walsh, Alec Burdon and others. Messenger's greatest crowd-drawing period in Sydney arguably did not begin until 1911 when he led a great Eastern Suburbs team.

Of the 31 Wallabies involved with the 1908/09 tour, 14 signed to play against the Kangaroos. What is clear is that the players knew they had a strong bargaining position, and got every pound they could extract for their defection. It doesn't sound like they were weak-willed men who immediately fell to the money when it was first put before them.

It is also worth considering the remaining 17 Wallabies - they were hardly the second-rate members of the tour party: Tom Richards, Norm Row, Ward Prentice, Philip Carmichael, Bede Smith, Syd Middleton, Danny Carroll, Fred Wood, Tom Griffin and the team's captain 'Paddy' Moran were all highly regarded and popular footballers. Were the rugby union's playing ranks truly decimated?

Chris McKivat

Of the original 31 Wallaby tourists, only eight provided a significant contribution to rugby league: John Hickey, Charles Russell, Chris McKivat, John Barnett, Robert Craig, Albert Burge and Paddy McCue.

The other six converts made few or even no appearances with Sydney clubs: William Dix 0 games, Edward Mandible 2, Charles McMurtrie 14, Kenneth Gavin 0, Peter Burge 9 and Edward McIntyre 0.

Of the major representative matches against England in 1910, at no time did the ex-Wallabies make up the bulk of any selections. In the NSW match (the first representative match since 1909), only four were chosen. For the first Test, there were five. In the 'Australasian' team, the most prestigious and popular match of the tour, only McKivat and Craig were included.

As shown, only eight of the ex-Wallabies became mainstays of Sydney club rugby league. At most, five appeared together in a Test match in 1910. Is that sufficient to credit them alone as the source of rugby league's domination over rugby union in 1910?

The real impact of the Wallabies defection occurred in the offices of the NSWRU. In early 1910 the Union announced it would no longer try to provide benefits to equal those on offer under the NSWRL. At that point, many players and followers who had supported the rugby union, hoping that the split would end amicably by the NSWRU becoming semi-professional, saw that it was not going to happen. They left in their droves.

Moreover, is it realistic to believe that a truly amateur NSWRU was going to endure in Sydney until 1995 without a professional body/code ever coming into competition against it?

In New Zealand, France and Wales, rugby union found 'secret' ways to work out how to meet the needs of footballers - the RFU and IRB never confronted their semi-professional habits. Had it been exposed, those Unions would have been compelled to follow amateurism, and many of their footballers would have then gone to rugby league.

In England, soccer and (in the north) rugby league catered for working-class footballers. In South Africa, rugby union was clearly a class game. In the USA, cities such as Detroit began professional American football. In Melbourne, in the years just before WW1, professionalism came to Australian rules. In summer, cricket (British Empire) and baseball (USA) catered for the payment of players.

In Sydney, the footballers felt that to be paid secretly was demeaning and un-Australian. The sheer size of the crowds and gate-money in Sydney made it apparent to all how much money was being made from football - they were some of the largest gate-takings in the world.

To point to Joynton-Smith and the "poaching" of the Wallabies as the single event that caused rugby union's demise is a nonsense. It is truly naïve to think that a professional football code would not come to Sydney in the early 1900s. If it wasn't rugby league, it would have been Australian rules or perhaps soccer.

As it was, the emergence of professional rugby league instead of Australian rules gave rugby union the opportunity to survive as an amateur rugby code. If NSW and Queensland had turned to Australian rules instead, rugby union in Sydney and Brisbane would have gone the way it did in Melbourne - into obscurity.

Parts of this article are from: The Rugby Rebellion.

What also can't be sustained is an argument that professional football was an evil, that those involved were money-hungry greedy speculators, and that footballers who accepted payments were either weak-minded or selfish.

In the case of some modern rugby union writers who take this view, they also portray the 1995 professionalism of their code as a watershed awakening of the sport.

How professionalism is an abhorrence in 1908-10, yet is perfectly reasonable in 1995-2005 is yet to be explained.

The Sydney Sportsman wrote in 1907, "The Union barrackers affirm that only those that bear its brand are the aristocracy".

Nearly a century on, little has changed.

Copyright © 2005 - Sean Fagan. All rights reserved - the article above may not be reproduced (in full or part) in any form without written permission.