Celebrating 130 Years Of New Zealand Representative Rugby

June 28th 2023 officially marks 130 years of New Zealand Representative Rugby, with the first tour to be arranged by the New Zealand Rugby Union, arriving in Sydney Australia on this day in 1893.

Tour Programme Courtesy of NZ Rugby Museum

Australia didn’t have a national team in 1893, so New Zealand played against regional and district teams, with the key fixtures against New South Wales and Queensland. New Zealand won 9 of their 10 games and ended the tour on a high with a 16-0 victory over NSW in front of a 20,000-strong crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

New Zealand’s national rugby side wasn’t known as the All Blacks in 1893. The team's uniform consisted of a black jersey with a silver fern monogram, black socks, and white shorts. The white shorts were later replaced with black for the 1905 Originals Tour of Great Britain and Australia, after which the British media started referring to our national side as the All Blacks.

My Great Grandfather Henry Butland was selected for the 1893 tour and reportedly walked over the Southern Alps to catch the ship to Australia to play. Henry’s feat is reimagined in the children’s book ‘What it takes to wear black’, available from www.backintheday.co.nz. Henry represented New Zealand again in 1894 against a visiting NSW team, the first by a national selection on New Zealand soil.

Although Henry and his teammates played before the term ‘All Blacks’ even existed, they are officially recognised as All Blacks today, along with players from an even earlier privately funded tour of New South Wales in 1884.

Henry’s team was captained by a Māori named Thomas Rangiwāhia Ellison, who had toured Great Britain and Australia five years earlier with the privately funded NZ Natives Rugby Team. An exceptional rugby player, Thomas went on to write one of the game’s first coaching manuals ‘The art of rugby football’.

Timeline:

• 1870
  • The first game of rugby is played in New Zealand between Nelson College and Nelson Football Club.
• 1892
  • The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRFU) is established as our national governing body for the sport.
• 1893
  • New Zealand’s first officially sanctioned representative team (Henry’s team) embarks on their tour of Australia.
• 1894
  • New South Wales tours New Zealand
• 1905
  • First New Zealand Tour to Great Britain

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