The Old Black Cavalry

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7871, 5 August 1911, Page 14

The Old Black Cavalry

And Their Bygone Charges Through a Campaign of Thirteen Years WHEN RUGBY CALLS : MANY TALES FROM THE TOUCH-LINE

By CHARLES MARTER ’ No. I.

IN tW winter of ISSS a youth hoard* a tram bound for Newtown Pari A football match was to bo playe there between the Wellington and Mm terton chibs. "Oh, yes, I know. It wa when the Ngatiraukawa first left th ehad-ea of tho magestic Tararuas, cross© the rugged Rimutaka in th© big wine jmH ©ought the Ngatiporan at Ponek on the shores of tho great water.” Es oept an exhibition game by night play ed on tho Basin Reserve —a genuine nc velty then and now—ho had never sooj a match. Curiosity alone was therefor tho magnet. Prom tho stopping plac near the Newtown Hotel he was making for the Park when a tiny spot of rail pinked him on the cheek. He was bacl on a tram on the way bo the city olmos immediately. What! —risk a wetting fo: a football match! Well scarcely, ii thooe wise old days. That youth won . do red what kind of queer creatures thej wore who still kept coining up the road Some few years after quite a young mar was, with a few others, huddled together on the lee side of the fence leading from old Brower's at Newtown Pari to tho playing field, sheltering from tin bone-searching ice-cold blasts that were rudely swishing up from the Antarctic, while some thirty odd young people, clearly mentally afflicted, in red and black, and blno and block uniforms, tossed and tumbled in the filthy mire to see who could get a ball soonest and eftenest in* a-particular spot. And the '"young .man and the other Esquimaus said "Hooray.” Another lapse, and, a man In years at all events, almost floated round on a board with other gulls, some even with wings, at Athletic Park, amid drenching, pelting rain squalls, from the north this time, while Now Zealanders and Queenslanders skidded, * slipped, and streaked through lakes and seas of mud ■ and valleys of slush, in the rain hope that they were deciding an international football supremacy. And when they threw a lifebelt to him and pulled him ashore he joyfully murmured "secure me a raft for tho next , disaster. I wouldn't miss it for worlds, not even if I have to swim ashore.” They were all one and the same person—the writer of - these experiences. But in between tho first and second periods he had become hopelessly invol- . ved : in. the Rugby maelstrom, and ever since he has been swirled hither and , thither, in its varying and at times exciting currents. As tho experiences of an individual all this, is perhaps of little importance, but as typifying a representative case of what Rugby does with its v victims it may be of some interest. Douglas Jerrold wrote that he believed that if an - earthquake were to engulf England, the English would meet somewhere among tho rubbish and dine just to celebrate the ©vent. In much the came spirit of determination to have what they want I believe that if Now Zealand and ‘Wales were to arrange- to meet on the ice’ barrier' in the dizziest ■of blizzards or on the rim of th© crater of Tarawera when, it was brimming over -’.‘with lavaistic emotion. Now Zealanders 'would be seem jostling with the penguins for th© best places on the touchlin© in on© ease or scampering through the steam and smoko to see. the dodgers from Llan-nadygrUgyUaidi—-take the rest as read—toppled into th© sizzling volcanic cinders, in th© other. • Old Hands And An Old Field. Ebro is a little- band of enthusiasts whom neither fire nor water nor plague 'hot pcotilence would keep away from tho game -that called them—lk© Hyams, Andy Wiren, Jack Gibbons, George Humphreys, Barr \ brothers, Marcus Marks, Bill Simm, poor old Billy Coffey, and, Goff Warren (without whoso buzz-fly restlessness and ream of paper and- yard of pencil no football congregation seemed to bo complete). And yet what a poor little squad that is of that army who were the life and soul of Rugby when the world of enthusiasts went very well, and was not so crowded. Ono could go on until a book was filled with names, familiar in our mouths as household, words,, of ; those who followed the great game, year in and year out, in sunshine and rain, and made the old park their week-ond tryst just for tho ; sheer lov© of tho thing. - That old rugged field, how it recalls th© happy time of. sweet? impressionable ■youth (I suppose if w© could really : fathom it it is this impressionablene.sa chat makes, the time happier and the ■men and things greater in that budding period of our; lives, than at any other time). Impressionableness—And The Past And Present. * This question of which is right, the * impressionableness of youth or the rna-' turity of man in its judgment of tho! relative , value of the* past and the pre;«mt must bo left like thou-! ‘sands of other things to tho f coming ; of th© cocqnigrues—the i golden period when all mysteries shall ; bo solved. Personally I am not at all! convinced by the argument that wo only thought that what men did iu those old days, was bettor because we were "more impressionable on account of our youth. Take acting (always a * popular subject when, the question, oij comparative excellence of what men do, is debated). Who is going to argue that the players of today are better than they were in ' tho tames when merit and experience alone enabled tho actor to got tho star characters as against the system of to-day

when influence and cash enable the unfit to got the 'Tat” parts. Those old timers trained harder than players do now, and there were more instances of individual enthusiasm on the part of the captains. Bern ember the self-denying wort, of the old Poneke players in their devotion to the "gym." That and the inspirational leadership of such a man as Syd Nicholls, had a great deal to % do with the early successes of this famous club. Another Enthusiastic Captain.

Jack King, too, was another instance of the enthusiastic captain. Ho led Wellington finely against the, Englishmen. King, however, was a little late with his enthusiasm on one occasion and Andy Thomson (a fine type of sporting player who was clever and strong all round in the game) did not forget to remind him of it. It was during one of the training evenings on the WellingtonMaruuvatu railway ground before the English match. The men had worked themselves to a, standstill when up came King (he was too much of an enthusiast to have been late except on the score of duty). "Now then, boys, lot's buck into it,” called out the fresh-as-paint King, as lie '.ipounded into the practice. .(By George, he' could run.) "Never mind you. Jack King, you do some of the 'buck’ in yourself. We’ve had enough,” replied the cheerfully indignant Thomson, as he and the others put their coats on, and big long-striding King was left to amuse himself in the twilight. Even the enthusiast cannot please everybody. King was a strong player on the "wing,” and he had as companion on the other “wing,” Smith (now in Rarotonga as resident commissioner). After the team to meet England had been chosen X remember-telling “Jimmy” that it had been decided not to play “wings.”

“Then what the is King deling there?” fairly yelled the splendid little bustler. I could not toll him'; but I knew where King worked hud I suggested he might make an afternoon call. Smith was a waspy, determined player who loved to be in the thick of it, and I am not at all certain that he would not have played up with the Englishmen.

The Old Trysting Place, With all its hills and dales many old time players had a real affection for it. Sid Nicholls (now there was a captain for you) had so much faith in his knowledge of it that he said he would not mind even with a terribly depleted team playing the Englishmen there on their return from Australia. “Daddy” , considered it worth a point or two to get the Englishmen in that mountainous country. We were so fond of the old place that we once waited till the moon rose, while the Wellington and Melrose bats whisked round in the semi-darkness. Why, a Melrose man had a shot at goal while his pals of the touch line gave him a better .sight of the ball by lighting matches. Then the curfew sounded.

All memories of the old park are not sweet though. It was a notably smelly glace after the surface had been churned into mud. One game will not b© readily forgotten by those who took part in it. It was between' a Maori team, Te Ante, College, and Wellington Club. The mud and slush alone was anything but attar of roses, and the players themselves mad© the atmosphere of the scrum distinctly murky and far removed from the perfumes of Araby. Prom the piebald scrum there arose a distinct haze of mud and* Maori. One of the Wellington players showed how he was possessed of a dual mind—-one part leaned to health, and the other to patriotism. Ho was seen hurriedly to leave the lee side of the scrum, take a few paces to the rear, .and expectorate. That was for health's sake. Then he plunged into the miasma again. That's where the patriot came in. In The Days Of Freedom.

These few impressions and criticisms of far-off Rugby things and struggles long ago are not offered as a pretentious chronological record of an experience of Wellington football lasting over thirteen years (tho devil’s number, mark you); but merely as a rough kind of mosiao contribution to the history of the game in my native city. In putting back the mental clock to those old days one recalls with keen de-* light tho absolute freedom we enjoyed as spectators. We were closer to the players, and through them knew more of the inner life of a fierce gam© while it was actually taking place; while now we have to keep literally—off the grass.

Put back the hands of time and remember how when the spoil ended we swarmed into tho ground and held special levees for our heroes, putting more questions than they could answer in a year and offering more advice than tl ey coiild assimilate or need in a century. That's when the lemons, too, were hurled about and everyone could make a contribution. Well do X remember the end of the lemon era. It was at Lancaster Park in 1595. I was manager of the Wellington team. When ihe players filed into the pavilion between the spells we wero offered tea! . . •• Think of it—tea, sugar and milk, and a piece of cake for footballers. Some of tho hard-doing forwards of those days could no doubt have suggested some other kind of liquid refreshment since the old menu had to bo abolished.

However, let's leave the ghosts of old places, and old customs, get back to tho living, thrilling, enduring Rugby. , Caught And Overwhelmed. "U lion and where did X get Rugbyitis. In at Newtown Park, watching

a lot of fellows in red and black jerseys, as persistent as wasps and as agile as monkeys, chasing a very frisky ball and a heap of epry chaps in blue and black jackets, who also wanted the ball to play with. That was the famous P’oneke Club in its first senior match. This wonderful club, known wherever the game is played, supplied the -foundation upon which Wellington built its fame. Even when those old Poneke players were not absolutely brilliant they were always sound In the effective principles of the game, and were always splendidly trained —In fine, they played what one, of their greatest admirers, Dr Newman, enthusiastically referred to, as “educated football/' Those splendid players in red and black captured my youthful fancy and no doubt there was also the sentimental sympathy young people feel for juniors jdaying their first senior game. However, sympathy, like fine Words, butters no parsnips. The Poneke lost, although they gained the only try of the match, one scored by Tom Ellison. One of the painful sides of this telling of old tales is that so many of those bygone heroes it recalls have passed down the Vale, A Demon In His Glee. I cannot write of Ellison without recalling the greatest forward I ever saw. Prom the time of which I am writing (18SG) into the early nineties Ellison was was at his zenith. I have often said: “Let mo see Ellison playing for his place in the Wellington rep. team, (as ho was then), and I will show you the most dashing, brainy, brilliant, all-con-quering forward X have ever seen/' Ellison, too, in those days seemed to take a devilish glee in his dashes that made him to the young imagination a trifle Mephistophelean. Ellison had scored his try in the northwest corner—a favourite spot of his—the ground used to slope towards it, —and a sensational victory seemed certain when one Thomson, who insisted on tucking his cap under his arm before he bolted, smartly potted a goal and the Athletes won. The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges. Years after from almost the same spot, Davy Gage after his return with the native team, calmly potted three or four goals with a precision that fairly sickened the blue and black section of the spectators. This was my first game, and for thirteen years so thoroughly had I become inoculated with the contagious virus of Rugby .which you pick up once you get in the maelstrom of the‘game, I never missed a match of importance except two—against New South Wales in 1894 and against Wanganui in 1896, and I may say that another kind of virus, popularly referred to as the "flu," but much more accurately and eloquently described by George Ade’s hockey boy as 'The mucous membranus and the broncho bazazas getting their wires crossed with the wollyollopsis down in the gazalium'' kept me away. A Dose Of Our Own Physic. The last game I saw? The match with Auckland, when the northerners rooted us out neck and crop and whipped us from end. to end at our own game. That was in September, 1899. With Hen Kelly's clever try—a run, a wriggle, a 1 bound and a leap over the line —the only 1 score we got against Auckland's fourteen. points, Wellington football faded froin my sight, but not. from memory. I look back on those thirteen years of Rugby, with Their shadows and sunshine, ups and downs’, kicks and ha'pence, with the enduring interest of one who has ' seen a great human panorama unfold ’ itself. '

When The Giants Of The North Came Upon Us.

I should have liked to have ended with a triumph; but it was not to be. Somehow I had a depressed feeling about that last match I saw, and nothing would remove it; not even the cheerful optimism of Alick Campbell, who, when the Aucklanders were nine points (this same shadow of a Gillet now in Sydney as a League player had done the kicking) said,. “Cheer up. I believe we'll win yet.” Win! We never looked like ,it, while those hard, sinewy northerners were tumbling our scrum into irrepar-

able ruin. I shall ask later on wha* has become of the Wellington forwards. I could have asked the same question on that beautiful September afternoon while the granite headed, burly, grim and . determined reps, of Auckland, Thames, Tauranga, , Kotorua, Waihi, Waikato, Wairou, j and Ngaruawahia were paying us back with the coin we had handed to them’ in earlier years. “My word,” quoth one James Geddis, of "Auckland, a well known newfrpaper man, with the glee that belongs to the man, who has got the winning end of the argument, “'Wellington did get ,it. That’s what you did to Auckland, remember, and so you must not complain. My word the Auckland forwards did make up for lost time.” All true—every word, Wellington had been soundly thrashed at the game it once played so well. And why? Because in place of tho famous Heavy Black Cavalry Brigade, there was a regiment of light horse.

They Did Not Meet, The first representative game I saw in Wellington—it was against Hawke’s Bay in 1887 —recalls a famous hero. of the field. Jack Tairoa. We had one of the family on our side, Dick, and I remember how interested we were in case they should meet. It was given out, no doubt.in jest, that if Jack could get his clutches on Dick he would make him' regret ho had ever seen this sinful 'world, while Dick advised Jack to hide when ho (Richard) came his way. Strangely enough the family meeting | was entirely avoided. Dick Taiaroa, by the way, was tho first player I ever saw who learned the trick of. suddenly running the reverse way. What an effective game can be mad© of the reverse run or the reverse pass! Did not W.ales gain its only try against ■ Now Zealand by means of tho reverse pass? Take Bush, part eel and part will-o'-th'-wisp: What a fascinatingly clever habit he had of feinting to pass one way and then siiddenly jolting off in another.

Taiaroa And The English. Talking of Jack Taiaroa—how those great loins of his used to hurl back tho foe as does tho huge bow of the powerful steamer throw back tho sea—reminds mo that the aptitude of the Maori successfully to imitate the Pakeha in football was never more promptly and effectively shown than by this same native in a match between Stodd art's Englishmen (they were Stoddan’s then; their captain. Sodden, had been drowned in the Nepean) and Hawke’s Bay. As to these Englishmen, let me say that I consider them by far tho most brilliant band of players whether League or Union Australasia has yet seen from "the Owd Countree." Jack Taiaroa was captain of tho Hawke’s Bay team, and he had many natives on his side—ono of them Taku

Panapa, declared by Stoddart to be one of the best throoquarters be bad ever seen in New Zealand, notwithstanding that Taku when, he got-warm insisted on playing with his boots off. Stoddart—what a beautiful, clean-cut, graceful j player he was! —broke through with one of bis dazzling runs which bad earned from him among the Cockneys tbo nick- ' name of "the bloomin’ dancin’ master,” ' but was thrown, into touch about a yard j from the corner flag. The Englishmen : knew all about Eugby—the New Zealand-L-ers didn't. And in this case, as in. f many of the other fine points of the game, we learned our first lesson from these clever players from Yorkshire and Lancashire. Stoddart bounced • the ball in play, jumped in the field after, it, and fell over the line—a try. Taiaroa came rumbling up the field. Liko Hamlet .in the duel, he was out of breath then. I: is big eyes glared bis disgust and he snorted out his indignation- "What game this, England?" ho puffed out. The Englishmen were cheerfully taking the ball out for a kick at goal. Taiaroa was never an orator; but ho made a few remarks and he looked like appealing to his war god td wither the English there and then. It was a new one on Taiaroa, but the playful representatives of the Houses of the Eod and White Eoses explained that there were many things in the game that native philosophy had never dreamed of. All the tricks Taiaroa’s ancestors had played on the British troops in. the wars had never equalled this, but he learned, that it was all in the game. Taiaroa was a changed, man after that: he played very despertely, with glimpses of his old and terrible form. Circumstances Alter Cases.

In the second spell the play was carried to the spot where StoddCft had shown the native how Rugby things should he done. Taiaroa was bumped into touch. Ho knew what to do. He had seen Buglands best do it. He performed the bouncing act and took the ball over the line —a try. Jack’s smile as his team went out for the kick at goal illumined tho whole ground. It was not only the beam of the victor, but of the man with new knowledge. It was a smart and wonderful trick ;he had learned; ho would taka it up country and try it oh his pals in the bush, and refer them to tho Imperial Administration for liis authority, “My word,” he said, amid tho roars of delight of his team and the amusement of the Englishmen as he went out for the kick at goal, “This is the best game I ever played/'

committee, Messrs Booth. P. Butement, McCarthy; H-anganui, Kingi, and A. delegate to New Zealand Rugby Union. Mr Sid Nicholls. New South Wales Defeated. The- year 189-1 .was a busy one for Wairarapa as far as representative J matches are concerned. The most important game, of course, was against the New South Wales team, -which took place at Mastertou on September 25th. The Wairarapa team took tiia field a 6 follows: Full back, H. Wrigley, three-quarters, D'Arcy (captain), McGovern. Thompson; five-eighth, Maguire; half, Hansen; wings, Mowlem. Morris; forwards, McDonald. D. TJdy. J. Cochrane, E. TJdy, R. Gray, W. Watson, Merewood. The local combination completely paralysed the visitors and administered to them the biggest beating they received during their tour of New Zealand, ' the final