The Beginnings

The New Zealand All Blacks who were later dubbed the All-Golds toured Great Britain in 1907.

Pic- New Zealand England Tour Program

Pic -1908 Wallabies - Many of these players deflected to Rugby League.

The New South Wales Rugby League was formed on 8 August 1907 at a meeting at the Bateman’s Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales.

Rugby league split from rugby union over disagreements about whether to pay players.

The first professional club competition started the following year 1908. 

Pic- 1907 Program vs NZ All Blacks

The chance to play the All Blacks (or the All Golds as the Sydney press had dubbed the professional New Zealand side) and receive a share of the ticket sales saw many of the city’s best rugby players transfer to the new league.

The most famous of these was the great Herbert ‘Dally’ Messenger, rugby union’s biggest star. He had been approached by Trumper and Giltinan, who knew that persuading him to align with them would be a major coup. After joining the new league, Messenger’s game statistics were struck from the rugby union record books and not restored for 100 years.

Three financially successful matches between the Kiwis and a hastily put-together New South Wales side followed. The matches were to be played under the Northern Union’s 13-person team and play-the-ball rules, but the speed with which the team was assembled left little time for mastering the new rules and so rugby union rules were employed instead.

Twenty thousand spectators watched the opening match on 13 August at the Royal Agricultural Society Ground in Moore Park. It looked as if the new professional league planned for the next year would be a success.

At the end of 1908 Giltinan financed a tour of England for the Australian rugby league representative team, the Kangaroos. But poor weather and industrial strikes in northern England reduced attendance at the games and the tour was a financial disaster.

Pic -1908 Kangaroos

The Northern Union paid for the Australian players’ trip home. Giltinan, now bankrupt, returned to find that he, along with Trumper, had lost their positions in the league hierarchy.

Financially and organisationally, the league was in turmoil. Many feared that the 1909 season would not go ahead. However, two games in rapid succession against a touring New Zealand Maori team attracted more than 50,000 fans. 

Almost overnight, the league’s financial problems disappeared and the club season was saved

Over the next few years rugby league went on to become Sydney’s dominant winter sport.

Pic - The Cup won by NZ Māori on tour in 1909 which saved the NSWRL. The Information taken from National Museum of Australia.