New Zealand Natives

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The New Zealand Natives before their game against Queensland in July 1889

The New Zealand Natives ( German  residents of New Zealand ) were a New Zealand rugby team that traveled through New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain in 1888 and 1889 . The privately sponsored team comprised 26 players. It had no official character (the New Zealand Rugby Football Union was only founded in 1892), was composed almost entirely of Māori and was the first selection from a British colony that was a guest in motherland Great Britain. In 2008 the team was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame .

During their ten-month tour, the team played 107 games. The New Zealand Natives won 78 games, lost 23 times and drew six times. In addition, Australian football and soccer were played in individual cases in Australia . Since 1910, the New Zealand Māori have continued the tradition of a selection team consisting of representatives of New Zealand's indigenous people.

Course of the Natives tour

The idea of ​​a Māori team to play games in Great Britain came from rugby player Joseph Warbrick . Thomas Eyton, who had attended a few rugby games during Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887 and had found that the British were by no means superior in play, learned of Warbrick's plans. James Scott later joined as a third partner. The roles were distributed as follows: Warbrick as team captain, Scott as team manager and Eyton as organizer.

Since there was no national association yet, nothing stood in the way of a selection team financed from private funds. The promoters bet on the fascination of the British for visitors from distant parts of the Empire and especially for indigenous athletes. The model was an Aboriginal cricket team from the western part of the Australian colony of Victoria , which had played 47 games in Great Britain in 1868 and had made a substantial financial profit.

Warbrick began assembling the crew in early 1888. In addition to Warbrick, twenty other Māori and - contrary to the original intention - also five Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) belonged to the squad. For this reason, the team from New Zealand Māori was renamed New Zealand Native Football Representatives ( New Zealand Natives for short ). Before leaving overseas, the Natives toured New Zealand and played against various national teams from the provincial associations. The first game took place on June 23, 1888 in Napier against Hawke's Bay Rugby Union .

On August 1, 1888, the Natives traveled from Dunedin by ship to Melbourne . After two games, they went to Great Britain via the Suez Canal . During the six-week trip by steamboat, the New Zealanders kept fit with coal shovels. They finally arrived in Tilbury on September 27, 1888 . The first game on British soil was played six days later in Richmond upon Thames against the selection of the county of Surrey and won 4-1.

The Natives were - like the All Blacks (national team) around two decades later - dressed in black and before the start of the game they each performed a ritual dance of the Māori, the later world-famous Haka . On average, the natives played a game every 2.3 days (for comparison: in modern games, the break is usually one week and the teams also have more players). Due to the lack of regeneration time, there were always minor injuries. The days when there were no games were used to visit sights.

During the tour, the natives also played three international matches. They won against Wales and lost to Ireland and England . The Māori were criticized in the south of England, where the rugby game was aristocratic, for their too energetic style of play. In northern England, however, where rugby was more of a working class game and the professional version of the rugby league split off a few years later , their fairness was praised. In the north, they didn't mind the New Zealanders' declared intention to earn money with the tour. As a result, most of the games took place here.

After the last game in Leyton on March 27, 1889, the Natives traveled on to Australia. From mid-May to the end of July, they toured various cities in the east of the country. They also played Australian football eight times and soccer twice , albeit far less successfully than at the rugby games. A short tour of New Zealand followed in August. The last game took place on August 24, 1889 against the Auckland Rugby Football Union .

Only in 1905/06 did a New Zealand selection travel to Europe again, this time not as a private company, but as the official representative of the national association. That team lost only a single game and was known as the " Original All Blacks ". Five years later, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union put together a Māori selection for the first time, the New Zealand Māori .

Results overview

rugby

country Games Victories draw Ndlg. Points
British Islands 74 49 5 20th 194: 88
New Zealand 17th 14th 0 3 119: 51
Australia 16 15th 1 0 239: 66
Total 107 78 6th 23 772: 305

Australian football

country Games Victories draw Ndlg. Points
Australia 8th 3 0 5 27:40

Soccer

country Games Victories draw Ndlg. Points
Australia 2 0 0 2 5:12

See also

literature

  • Greg Ryan: Forerunners of the All Blacks . Canterbury University Press, Christchurch 1993. ISBN 0-908812-30-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IRB Hall of Fame Welcomes Five Inductees . International Rugby Board , November 23, 2008, archived from the original September 12, 2009 ; accessed on May 18, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).