FOOTBALL HISTORY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22545, 12 April 1935, Page 18

FOOTBALL HISTORY

MAORI TOUR OF 1888 (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 2.3. Reference is made in the Yorkshire Evening Post to the tour of the Maori footballers in 1888-89. The writer of the Football Notes quotes from a letter from Mr Ernest Parker, an authority on Wakefield Trinity football history. It is to Barron Kilner that Mr Parker attributes the introduction of “ Yorkshire Post ” shin guards. In those days players changed at home, and it was upon his arrival on the ground on one occasion that Mr Parker saw Barron Kilner produce two copies of the Yorkshire Post, which he folded up and inserted down his stockings. Mr Parker also refers to another player, Alf Dawson, imitating Barron Kilner by using doubled up copies of the Yorkshire Post as shin guards. When the Maori team of 1888 were to play Trinity they seem to have been warned that they would be faced with a very tough lot of players. “Before playing Trinity,” it is stated, “ the Maoris had gathered the impression from some source or other that they would meet the biggest ruffians of the tour at Belle Vue, and, in consequence, came prepared with shin protectors. It was not their custom to wear pads, and to see them at ’half-time stacking the pads near the top goal posts was very amusing. One of their players. Lee, said they had not found Trinity nearly so bad as they had been made out to be. “ Incidentally, the strenuous nature of that tour, and its financial results, make queer reading compared with the match programme and finances of present tours. The Maoris got through 74 matches in 25 weeks, travelling only 26 players, and playing 15 aside. I don’t know the financial outcome of the tour, but- the gross gate when they met Yorkshire County at Belle Vue was only £191.”