Jack Gibson's Fur Coat

A ONE-SIDED PREMIERSHIP DECIDER

The 1909 decider is unusual in that it was played by only one team. Sure, two teams were supposed to show up but one decided to boycott the fixture. The team that showed up – South Sydney – still had to go through the charade of playing before they could be declared winners.

So, on Saturday, 18 September, Souths kicked off against their absent opponent Balmain, picked up the ball, scored a try and were declared the 1909 season’s premiers in what one paper declared ‘a fiasco’. It was Souths’ second straight premiership, having won the inaugural competition the previous year.

To make up for the absence of the final, a rough team of players from other clubs who happened to be there was patched together and they played Souths – and lost 18-10.

The controversy around the match started earlier in the week and stemmed from a risky idea of the league. They had decided to stage three matches between the Kangaroos and the Wallabies. Risky because it wouldn’t be a good look for the new code if the rugby union representatives beat them at their own game. And that’s what happened – the Wallabies beat the Kangaroos in the best-of-three series 2-1.

But, fortunately for the fledgling New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) the people running rugby union were idiots. They chose to ban all the Wallaby players who took the substantial cash on offer to play in the series. In one fell swoop, the union officials kicked out its best players, sending them into the hands of league. It was a move that strengthened the newcomer in league and damaged union’s fortunes for decades to come.

The Kangaroos apparently couldn’t hack losing the series. So on Saturday, 12 September, just after the Kangaroos had lost the final match, they called on the league to organise one more game. There was just one issue with that: the final was scheduled for the following weekend. Well, it should have been a problem for the league, but it wasn’t.

They decided to take the biggest game of their season and schedule it as a curtain-raiser to the fourth Wallabies-Kangaroos match on 18 September. A large part of the league’s motivation was money – it was out of pocket and saw one more game as a chance to recoup their losses.

Obviously making the final a warm-up game for the Wallabies-Kangaroos didn’t sit well with some in league circles, partially because the finals series had already been interrupted for several weeks to allow the three-match series to take place. Balmain and Souths had played the matches that qualified them for the final a month earlier on 14 August.

Balmain were particularly incensed, and at a club meeting it was decided not to place a team on the field on the Saturday. ‘It being the final match to decide the premiership of league football in NSW for season 1909,’ club secretary A Walker wrote in a public letter, ‘the action of the NSW league in playing it as an early match to the Wallabies versus Kangaroos is an insult to the teams concerned.’ But the league didn’t seem to care – the final would stay as scheduled. There was an understanding from Balmain that Souths would also boycott the fixture. But that didn’t come to pass, though the Balmain players were shocked to discover Souths all kitted up and taking the field in what was – at best – a dubious move.

Three days after the match, the league accepted the referee’s report – which must have been very brief – and therefore South Sydney were declared premiers. It seemed to be a sneaky move with a Balmain delegation waiting outside to call on the league to reschedule the final for the following weekend.

The issue for Balmain was about more than just the insult of playing their match as a warm-up fixture. It was also highly likely the league’s actions had breached its own constitution. During league matches, a portion of the gate takings were to be used to pay for ground fees and other related expenses – as per the constitution.

As far as Balmain was concerned, there was a league match scheduled so therefore the league rules should apply. However, the entirety of the takings from that fourth game went into the promoter’s pocket, leaving the league in deficit. There was also the unpleasant issue that the match had been promoted as a fundraiser for the South Sydney Hospital and yet it seemed to have received no money either.

At a public meeting Balmain citizens supported the actions of their local team and passed some strident motions against the league. One contended that the proceeds of the match ‘were paid away illegally and unconstitutionally’. A second ‘condemns the actions of the league committee first in allowing the control of the game to be taken out of the hands of the governing body and secondly in allotting the promoters of the Wallabies v Kangaroos matches to collect and take away the whole of the proceeds without charging the usual fee for the use of our ground and deducting of all advertising, jerseys and other expenses.’

The meeting also chose to start a fund to collect money for a potential legal challenge. While funds were being raised, someone took the curious decision of writing to the Newcastle league seeking support for Balmain’s cause. That didn’t go well for the Sydney club; the northern league voted not to help them in any way, shape or form. Even worse, the committee stated that ‘the Balmain club acted in anything but a sportsmanlike manner in connection with the league final. They are also of the opinion that the league committee were lacking in their duty in not disqualifying the Balmain club for refusing to play when ordered.’

That blow notwithstanding, by November there was enough money in the kitty to investigate taking the league to the Equity Court. And there the matter seems to have ended – there are no further mentions of the dispute in newspaper reports. And, in the unlikely event they did take the matter to court, it’s obvious they didn’t win because league records still show South Sydney as 1909 premiers – however dubious their win may have been.

LEAGUE RULES

In the early years of rugby league, some in charge had so little faith in the worth of the sport that they tried to combine it with Australian rules to make a national sport. And, leaving aside the strong opposition to any such move, they tried to do it three times.

Rugby league had barely come into existence when the first effort was made to merge the two codes. In 1908 no lesser light than Dally Messenger told JJ Giltinan – one of the founders of league – that Aussie rules had much to offer. Messenger felt a game that contained the best features of rugby league and Australian rules ‘would be the most wonderful thing in the world of sport.’

That year, while the very first season of rugby league was underway Giltinan headed south to Victoria to float the possibility of amalgamating the games to create what was tagged ‘Universal Football’. So it’s a little odd that the National Rugby League (NRL) minor premiers are presented with a shield that bears his name, given he tried to kill off the game of rugby league in its earliest years. In July Giltinan said his proposal had been accepted by the Victorian league, who passed it onto the national council.

‘Both games will benefit but the Australian rules game must be brought into line with the Northern Union game, though of course the latter must also give away something,’ Giltinan said. ‘There is not such a vast difference between the two [sports].’

Giltinan’s proposal called for 13 players a side, with the aim of the game to kick the ball between the rugby league–style posts – the behind posts were to be eliminated. A crossbar featured between the posts because some in Australian football circles had a problem with goals that rolled in across the ground.

The Sydney Morning Herald immediately spotted what would become a problem for all efforts to create some sort of Universal Football – the off-side rule. In league, players must stay behind the ball to take part in play, while in Aussie rules they can take possession from anywhere on the field.

‘The rock the movement is likely to split upon from an Australian [rules] standpoint is the suggestion to introduce off-side,’ the Herald reported. ‘If there is one thing the Victorians have no time for it is that.’

However, it seemed that ambition was the sticking point; the Victorians wanted a code that would only be played in Australia while Giltinan (much like the Super League proponents of the 1990s) overreached and saw the sport being played worldwide. Giltinan didn’t stop there either; at a conference held to discuss the universal football concept, he also pledged that league would kill off rugby union in a matter of a few years. It’s a curious thing for him to say at a conference that was in effect killing off league and inventing rules for a new game.

The universal football concept returned six years later, in 1914, the year the Great Britain Lions toured Australia and the Australian rules football interstate carnival (held in NSW for the first time) took place.

Charles Brownlow (yes, the guy whose name is on the medal) got things up and running after what he perceived as the underwhelming response to the NSW interstate carnival. A total of 50,000 spectators watched the 14 games – around 3500 per match. He compared that to the 38,000-plus crowds drawn to watch the Lions play Australia. He figured, somewhat naively, that a combined code would therefore draw big crowds in both Victoria and NSW.

Conferences between officials of both codes were held late in 1914, even though there appeared to be little appetite for a merger among fans of either sport. ‘The proposed amalgamation, one is afraid, is not taken seriously by anybody outside the immediate officials concerned,’ the Melbourne Leader reported. ‘We may be quite sure that the rugby league people will never sacrifice their present important international standing to evolve a new game, the effect of which would be to abandon forever those interests.’ As for Melbourne, the paper stated ‘there are too many people devoted to the Australian game to allow its being supplanted by a new code, half rugby, half their own.’

The conference delegates went ahead and devised some rules for this new code. Rather than 13, this time there would be 15 players per side, on a field not more than 160 yards (146 metres) long by 100 yards (91 metres) wide, which would make it both longer and wider than a league field.

The object of the game was to score a try or kick the ball over the crossbar between the posts. The tryscorer would also be the player who attempted the conversion. Scrums – which were the source of complaint even then, with one Sydney reporter noting ‘in the majority of instances [they] bordered on farcical’ – were to be eliminated and matches would be restarted by an umpire bouncing the ball rather than a team kicking off.

Still, the off-side rule was a point of contention, with Victorian officials rightly concerned that including one would eliminate their game’s high points, like spectacular marks. One NSW delegate suggested a compromise unlikely to work: that the off-side rule would only be enforced within the teams’ quarters and the centre space be a free area.

Horrie Miller, who was part of the conference, said the league committee that attended was in favour of the amalgamation but wouldn’t take things any further until the Australian rules authorities showed their hand. If they were also in favour, there was the likelihood of exhibition matches played in 1915 with a more serious competition in 1916.

Victorian clubs like Melbourne, St Kilda, Geelong, Essendon and Collingwood had ticked off on the rule changes, while Carlton gave the new game cautious approval. However, some floated the idea of a new Australian rules competition starting in competition to universal football. At the time, the Victorian code didn’t own the grounds they played on; the owners were cricket clubs who effectively rented out their facilities in winter. The Sunday Times put forward the suggestion that five AFL clubs could say no to universal football and start their own league, which the locals would likely prefer to the new code.

The agreed-upon rule changes were put to the state Australian rules bodies, some of which opted to make no decision on the new game – which is a clear suggestion of their lack of enthusiasm. Also, with World War I and a drought affecting the country, officials behind the universal football push decided it might not be the best time to invest heavily in developing a new code and setting up exhibition matches. And there the idea of a merger petered out.

These two attempts should have marked the end of the universal football quest. If a merger was ever going to happen it was when rugby league was new and hadn’t gained a strong foothold in NSW and Queensland. But NSWRL secretary Horrie Miller couldn’t let his bad idea go. While he was in Melbourne to send off the departing Australian team on its tour of England in 1933, he floated the idea to his opposite number at the Victorian Football League (VFL), Con Hickey.

And so some officials had more conferences about universal football and again looked at the rules, which were largely the same as had been nutted out in 1914. There were a few updates: the need for a running player to bounce the ball was removed, and Australian rules–style goal squares were added in front of the goal posts at each end of the field.

These conferences went ahead despite a number of NSWRL delegates being opposed to the new code. Most strident was president Harry Flegg, who refused to attend the August conference and blasted universal football supporters as traitors to rugby league. ‘In my opinion this conference is nothing but a direct move against rugby league,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with our game. We have always made any alterations necessary for the improvement of the game.

‘It is impossible to combine our game with another. There is absolutely nothing in common. Even if we did combine and had 90 per cent of our rules and only 10 per cent of theirs it would still not be rugby league.’

Rather than realising which way the wind was blowing, Miller took umbrage at his loyalty to rugby league being questioned – and then attended a conference that hoped to change league into something else.

Talk among delegates at the conference continued, with some suggesting the game could appeal to the Americans as a less-lethal version of their gridiron. At the turn of the century, American football was a deadly sport – it got so bad President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to abolish the game if changes weren’t made.

The 1933 push did get one step further than previous attempts in that a game was actually played under universal football rules. Held at Moore Park (now Fox Studios) the 11 August match was a secret endeavour with teams made up of visiting Queensland Aussie rules players supplemented by some local league players. Still, they couldn’t get enough for a 15-a-side match and so the trial featured 12 players a side.

The night before the match Miller gave an overview of the rules, which included a comprise on the niggling off-side rule. A soccer-style approach would be taken, where a player was onside as long as there were two defenders between him and the goal.

Despite the week-long efforts to keep the match secret, a Sydney journalist from The Sun crept inside to watch the game. He was quite gentle in his report, recognising the