THE TEAM THAT REVIVED AUSTRALIAN RUGBY
The 1919 AIF team
They were for good reason tagged ‘the saviours of Australian rugby’. But what an eclectic mob! The team included disenchanted soldiers who hurled their war medals into Sydney Harbour, ratbags who falsified their age so they could enlist before being in constant trouble with authorities, and adventurers who achieved Olympic fame for several countries. And it was led by the most extraordinary of men who became a ‘soldier of fortune’.
They all succeeded in resuscitating the game when it was under serious threat of being swallowed up by rugby league.
According to The Sydney Mail, the 1919 Australian Imperial Force (AIF) team produced football ‘brighter, faster and cleaner than any ever before seen in Sydney’.
‘The spirit was the rugby spirit — always hard and determined, but clean and sporting. Unknown footballers before the war emerged as giants of the game with this team.’
Rugby needed a serious jolt. Many union clubs had disappeared during the war, and the future looked grim. The Sydney Mail reported: ‘There can be no getting away from the fact that, judging by the “gates” the League game has a much bigger following than the Union.’
‘The reason is plain. People go to matches more for excitement than to study scientific play. They like to see plenty of fast rushes, open work, quick action. These the League provides more abundantly than the Union,’ the Mail said.
The 1919 AIF team, which had as its backbone several dynamic personalities, reminded all that rugby could still hold its own. In 1936, with the game again on a steady footing, Rugby News editorialised that before the war ‘matches were played to almost empty benches’.
‘Then the AIF players put up such splendid displays that public interest in the Union was at last awakened and from that time the process of rebuilding really began.’
Peace may have been declared, but the army authorities still had another serious problem to overcome. With thousands of Australian troops still in Europe, those in charge had to keep the troops occupied until they could get them home. The authorities were concerned restless and virile troops bored through inactivity would become unruly, causing trouble in British and French towns. Lieutenant G.H. Goddard wrote in his 1919 book Soldiers and Sportsmen: ‘They were men who had been away from home for long periods, engaged on a ghastly business, and to say that they were “fed up” is to put it mildly.’
What better way to keep Australians occupied than to lure them with sporting competition, including cricket, rowing, boxing, tennis, golf, rifle shooting, wrestling, swimming, athletics and rugby. Summoned shortly after the signing of the Armistice to Australian Corp Headquarters to organise these events was a prominent member of the 1908–09 Wallabies — Syd Middleton, now Major Syd Middleton of the 19th Battalion.
A 1908 Australian rugby Olympic gold medallist, Middleton was a member of the 1912 Australian Olympic eight rowing team which made the quarter-finals.
Middleton was an admired forward, with an intense rugby passion, as shown during the Wallabies tour when he played in 31 matches, including the first 18 games. He was also the first Wallaby to be sent off after punching an Oxford University opponent during the 1908 tour. He took offence to an Oxford player calling him ‘a convict’.
A distinguished soldier, he often admitted to being surprised he wasn’t killed, especially at Gallipoli. ‘I haven’t killed a Turk yet, but they have gone pretty close to me far too often,’ Middleton wrote in mid-1915.
Mentioned in Despatches in 1918, he received the Distinguished Service Order in 1919, and the following year the Order of the British Empire.
His DSO recommendation read: ‘The battalion owes much of its success to the splendid example set by this very fine type of officer. He was in command of the 17th Battalion on the 14th May 1918 east of Heilly, near Amiens when the enemy made a very determined attack on the front held by the 17th Battalion and the manner in which he handled the situation and quickly restored the line showed great initiative and leadership.’
He was fearless. On several occasions his Wallaby teammate Tom Richards, who won a Military Cross on the Western Front, bumped into Syd, including at Pozières.
‘Oh, what a wreck he is, he must be looking ten years older since I saw him last,’ Richards wrote in his diary. ‘The whole time he spoke to me he sat on a bed, and looked down on the floor, mechanically keeping a cigar alight by short puffs now and again. His voice was low, and like most of the men, halting.
‘Middleton was practically buried five times in one day, his stars were shot away from his shoulder on one side, the heel of his boot was dinted and his foot wrenched, a piece of shell penetrated his side and made quite a gash. And worst of all for a while was a huge lump of dirt that knocked him down and shattered his mind for a few moments. He thought his time had come to die. Day and night there was no relief. Dante and his inferno is a huge joke. It is the real hell.’
Middleton attended senior officers’ school, showing in the words of one examiner he was ‘a capable and reliable officer with plenty of determination, tact and energy’.
Strangely he didn’t appeal to everyone. In his war records another brigade major at the officer school argued against making Middleton a battalion commander, stating that he ‘doesn’t consider this officer has displayed the qualifications for the position. He appears wanting in energy, initiative, power of command and general supervision.’ These harsh words would have astounded the many who admired Middleton, particularly as he was instrumental in ensuring many soldiers enjoyed several weeks of high-level sporting contest before returning home.
While Middleton was a member of the AIF crew that won the King’s Cup rowing event, he looked after his favoured winter sport, organising an Australian ‘Trenches Team’ who assembled near the Belgian village of Barbencon to train for a match against the French Army XV in Paris and then the Inter-Service tournament, which basically became rugby’s first World Cup. He lured one big name — another illustrious Olympian Dan Carroll — to make a special guest appearance for the AIF team.
Some may not have played rugby for a while, but the game still had a strong wartime footprint. It was regularly played among the troops in Egypt before the Gallipoli campaign and there was even an Australia–New Zealand match on a stony Lemnos pitch during the campaign.1 Matches involving players from various nations provided a much-needed diversion on the Western Front. Richards wrote some of the best descriptions of these games, including those ‘played under the shadows of the Great Pyramids, games that meant as much to the players and their keen followers as ever did an International at the Sydney Cricket Ground’.
He witnessed the Welsh Engineers confront a Maori team in the French village of Laventie in early May 1916: ‘About 300 Welshmen and Maoris lined the sides and saw a splendid game. They showed their appreciation towards the close by shouting and cheering that astounded the few remaining inhabitants, waking them rudely, and causing them to stare in amazement at the excited crowd of dark-skinned Maoris and the uncontrollable Welshmen. These French people shuddered to think what the outcome might be, as they were still well within range of the Germans’ heavy guns. But never a thought of the Germans or the power of their guns ever bothered the minds of either player or spectator.’
It finished a 14–all draw.
Some years on, each division was asked to submit the names of their eight best players, which led to a sturdy Australian team, coached by Wallaby hooker Jimmy Clarken, defeating the French Army 6–3 in Paris. The selectors included General Thomas Blamey, who during the Second World War oversaw the Australian Corps, and NSW cricketer Jack Massie.
This Trenches team then went to London for a trial match against the AIF contingent based in England. From there the AIF team was selected to compete in the Imperial Inter-Service Rugby Competition, involving Australia, Canada, Mother Country (British Army), New Zealand, South Africa and the Royal Air Force, with the winner getting the King’s Cup. An Australian reserve team was also picked.
In charge of the main Australia team was the remarkable William ‘Billy’ Watson. Born in Nelson, New Zealand, to Australian parents — his father was a Tasmanian blacksmith — Watson moved to Sydney when he was 23, joining the Newtown club, where he excelled as a front-row forward. After touring with the Wallabies to the United States and New Zealand in 1912–13, he was among the first to witness battle, involved in operations in New Britain and New Ireland, seizing German wireless stations, with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force.
Discharged in January 1915, two months later he enlisted as a gunner with the AIF, and was in the Gallipoli trenches that August. But there were quiet periods, as Watson explained in a letter to his old Newtown teammate, Ralph Hill: ‘This war is a slow affair; here we are in practically the same position as the day they made the landing. I tell you this is a tough proposition, and nothing like what the Australian Press make it out to be. Our boys can fight, but so can the Turk and this system of trench warfare make it terribly hard to advance.’
It was on the Western Front where Watson was the consummate warrior.
Based in the Somme in November 1917, Watson was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for ‘gallantry and coolness in going to the assistance of wounded men under heavy fire’, which saw him promoted to full lieutenant.
He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry at Faucoucourt when, stopped by enemy machine gun fire, ‘he worked his way forward several hundred yards in front of outposts, directing the fire of three batteries, which gave great assistance to the infantry to barraging machine gun nests and strong posts’. Then he earnt a bar to his Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry during heavy bombardment near Bellicourt. Although badly gassed, Watson remained with the unit, helping to save the life of a wounded officer. He was awarded for his ‘energy and devotion to duty’.
So, a perfect candidate to lead an Australian Army football team, even though he wasn’t in tip top condition. Due to mustard gas, his body was covered with large, festering sores. To enable him to play in the AIF front-row, team manager Wally Matthews — a one-time five-eighth who withdrew from the 1908–09 Wallabies team due to university studies — had to cut open these sores with a sterilised penknife before his skipper could take to the field.
Alongside Watson in the AIF squad were several other notable internationals, including the speedster Sergeant Dudley Suttor, who was born in the NSW country town of Cowra, and was inexplicably overlooked for the 1912 Wallaby tour of the United States. The town-folk of Bathurst where he played club football were so incensed with Suttor’s omission many abandoned rugby and turned to league. He at least made the Test team the following year, before becoming a driver with the 15th Australian Army Service Corps in Egypt, France and Belgium.2
There were also Australian Test representatives John ‘Bluey’ Thompson, Big Bill Cody and Clarken, and seven from the Glebe–Balmain club. At fullback was Bruce Beith, who made his Test debut in the final 1914 international before war broke out and played three more Tests following the war. After completing his medical degree in 1916, Beith joined the Australian Army Medical Corps and was honoured with a Mention in Despatches in 1918 for ‘gallant and efficient service to the 53rd Australian Battalion . . . during the battles of Péronne and Morlancourt and the attack on the Hindenburg Line at Bellicourt’. On the Hindenburg Line, Beith successfully dressed and evacuated the wounded under heavy shell fire, despite half of his ambulance personnel and officers being either killed or wounded.
Brought in for the match against South Africa was the majestically named backrower Vivian Alphonsus Dunn, who had been commended for bravery and efficiency under fire, and who went on to play seven Tests after the war.
The AIF team wasn’t just restricted to rugbyites, with several notable league performers included. The best known was centre John ‘Darb’ Hickey, who mixed powerful running with dynamic defence and excellent goal-kicking. Such vast skills made him an instant attraction to those trying to get rugby league established in Sydney.
Hickey was a 1908–09 Wallaby, but had previously dabbled with league, being photographed with the state team for their match against the New Zealand professional All Golds.
He was surprisingly allowed to return to rugby, with authorities arguing his brief league interlude was a boyish indiscretion. Nonetheless, following the Wallaby tour, which included being in the Olympic-gold-winning line-up, Hickey was among the many to defect.
Hickey’s war experiences were tough. He wasn’t proud of his involvement. A butcher in the tough working-class suburb of Glebe, he showed off his sporting mementoes on the walls of his shop. There was nothing from the war, though. Instead, as soon as he was home he headed to Birchgrove Oval — where the first league match was played in Australia — and cursing the world flung his war medals as far as he could into the harbour. He refused to talk about what happened during his three years as a private in the 56th Battalion, which included several stints in hospital in France and England.
But before this personal protest Darb flirted once more with his old code, giving strength to the AIF side. Another notable league representative was Jack ‘Bluey’ Watkins, who tried to convince Harold Williams to turn to league on the boat over to the front.
There were some unexpected, even odd selections, which in the end turned into masterstrokes. Thomas or Tim ‘Rat’ Flanagan was the team’s energetic match-winning halfback. The aptly named Rat gave the AIF team cheekiness around the scrum-base. He was tiny, but a constant menace.
When only 14, the minuscule Rat was playing senior football in Murwillumbah. After being seriously injured in one of his first games in the Tweed River competition, his mother forbade him to play again ‘until I was old enough and strong enough’.
Rat was asked: ‘Did you prove a good little boy and do what you were told?’
‘I did for about two playing days. Then I hid my togs in the bush, changed, played and returned home in my best Sunday clothes just as though nothing had happened; but mother found out. She gave me permission to play then, and I was happy,’ Rat replied.
Rat spent a season in the Sydney rugby league ranks, before returning to Murwillumbah to play rugby. There were ramifications. Opponents who had heard about Rat playing league down south registered a protest, prompting Murwillumbah to be disqualified for playing a professional. So Rat moved to the Clarence River district to play league. Then war lured him away.
He was a mischief-maker, in constant conflict with his superiors, having to bob and weave his way through several court martials.
He was only 16, but wrote on his enlistment papers in January 1916 that he was a 22-year-old labourer. He jotted down his height as 5ft 2 ½ inches (158 centimetres), his weight 136 lbs (61 kilograms), and that he was born at The Oaks, near the NSW country town of Picton. Rat was soon in strife.
His first crime with the 25th Battalion appears on his military records in July 1916 for ‘creating a disturbance’ in Etaples which led to 14 days in confinement. Then he was absent when the roll was called. Another 14 days. A few weeks later Rat was charged with ‘drunkenness’. This time, 21 days. In October and December that year, he was ‘absent without leave’ and guilty of ‘drunkenness’.
Not even being hospitalised when wounded in May 1917 could contain him.
Rat was soon being questioned about overstaying his leave pass, and then in August 1917 for ‘using abusive language to Military Police’ while in Weymouth. Some months on, and he was in trouble for allowing a person he was supposed to be guarding to escape. That was followed by another ‘absent without leave’ complaint. Amidst all this, Rat was gassed, which meant another stint in hospital.
In August 1918 he was court-martialled, accused of ‘absenting himself without leave’ from the Hurdcott training camp from 10pm on 12 July 1918 until apprehended in London on 9 August.
Rat pleaded guilty. His written statement was vague, arguing he had only £2 16 shillings in ration money, and ‘was expecting money from Australia and waited in London for it’. It came on 11 July. His statement finished with: ‘I served 18 months in France and have been wounded twice.’
He declined to be cross-examined, and did not call any witnesses. Rat was sentenced to 71 days’ detention.
In January 1919, a no doubt relieved officer wrote on Rat’s ‘active service’ form the words: ‘To Corps Football team.’
Team manager Matthews was aware of Rat’s wayward nature, but informed Blamey he and skipper Watson would keep the halfback under strict control. Matthews knew Rat feared Watson. Watson told Rat he would stand for no nonsense. Rat responded and became a major team figure.
The AIF’s first tournament match against the Mother Country at Welford Road, Leicester, was a feisty affair. The crowd was furious that Australian forward and Sydney league player Sergeant Billy Bradley continually obstructed the home team’s scrumhalf John Pym3 when he was feeding the scrum. The referee tried to calm the spectators by putting the ball in the scrum himself. They were also irritated that Australia dominated up front, enabling Rat to speed down the blindside and set up winger Tom Stenning for the first try. All to no avail. The Mother Country, which included former Queensland prop Bruno Brown, won 6–3.
A week later, the Australians found their rhythm, defeating South Africa 8–5 in the Welsh town of Newport. It was a fair effort, considering Australia were so ravaged by injury even their manager had to find his boots and play at five-eighth.
A snow-storm in Bradford led to the postponement of their next match against New Zealand. Instead they confronted the Royal Air Force in Gloucester. While many spectators walked away due to increased ticket prices, those who got in saw the RAF overcome up front domination to win out wide, enjoying a 7–3 victory.
Then the AIF showed their true colours at Twickenham against Canada. Middleton called on his old Test mate Dan Carroll to help out in the centres, and he responded, finishing among the scorers as Australia tallied 10 tries in a 38–0 belting. Lieutenant Carroll had just completed service with the American Army, where he won a Distinguished Service Cross, before being wounded in the final months of the war. Carroll received the DSC for ‘extraordinary heroism’ with the 364th Infantry Regiment near Bois de Cheppy in September 1918. A member of the 1912 Wallabies team, Carroll fell in love with California and decided to stay.
The following year, he appeared for the ‘All California’ or ‘All America’ team against the touring All Blacks, suffering an embarrassing 51–3 loss at Berkeley. A highly intelligent person who to this day is rated among Australia’s most illustrious Olympians,4 Carroll was convinced into staying for the AIF’s main King’s Cup match — the rescheduled game against New Zealand in Bradford.
This time they relied on inside knowledge. Jimmy Clarken, who returned to Sydney with enteric fever in 1916 but was back on the Western Front four months later, had a plan to overhaul the tournament favourites. Clarken, yet to play a match in the tournament, approached Watson and Matthews, explaining he knew exactly how to disrupt the Kiwis.
They listened, because although at 42 his best playing days were behind him, as he hailed from the lush North Island town of Thames he knew so much about the inner workings of New Zealand rugby, and desperately wanted to beat his own.
As Winston McCarthy wrote in Haka! The All Blacks Story: ‘By 1919 Jimmy was getting to be long in the tooth for Rugby; but the Australian players had the greatest respect for this tough little front-ranker.’
‘They kept him in cotton wool and paraded him only when the going was tough. He insisted he play in the King’s Cup match against New Zealand. “Play me against them,” he said, “and I’ll guarantee I’ll upset them so much in the front row and they’ll get so little ball they’ll be snarling at each other.”
‘It must be realised that New Zealand then packed only two men in the front-row against the opponent’s three. In the match Clarken went in as hooker and at each scrum made sure that his head was in between the two New Zealanders opposite. That meant that at each scrum Australia had the loose-head whichever side the ball was put in. Starved of the ball, the New Zealand backs scored only one try.’
With it came Australian glory, where the 7000 crowd were in Goddard’s words ‘treated to the finest game of the series’. ‘Too much cannot be said in favour of the Australian pack, who outplayed the New Zealanders in every point of the forward game.’ Clarken reigned supreme in the surprise 6–5 victory.
Suddenly New Zealand were under threat of missing out on the King’s Cup, but a 9–3 win over the Mother Country was enough to finish on top and receive the trophy from King George V at Twickenham, a ground which earlier in the war was used to graze horses and farm animals, while one of the stands was infested with rats.
Australia finished third, from three wins in five games. At the same time, the AIF Reserve Team, led by Peter Buchanan, toured the United Kingdom, with their biggest triumph being over Llanelly at the renowned Welsh club’s home ground.
The AIF team’s duties were not over, as eight matches in Sydney, Armidale, Brisbane and Inverell had been organised on their return in July 1919, with a stop-over in Port Elizabeth where they thrashed the leading South African provincial side, Natal, 34–3.
The team discovered in Sydney that the game was in disarray. Clubs were without money, officials and players. Tom Richards had gloomily commented three years earlier: ‘Australian rugby is professionalised and dead.’
The NSW Rugby Union did whatever it could to revive an ailing beast. It was tough. Their 1917 annual report emphasised rugby’s enormous loss. On the back cover were the names of 243 rugby players who had died on active service. In their first post-war meeting, the NSWRU delegates had to assemble on a launch in the middle of Sydney Harbour due to an influenza epidemic. Making it worse, according to The Referee, the weather was ‘dirty’. The union was only able to continue due to a £500 grant from the Athletic Association of the Greater Public Schools.
In Brisbane, it was even more depressing. Many clubs had folded, and the few survivors in the 1919 season could only field 13 or 14 players a team.
There was even discussion in the press over whether league would gobble up union, that the two would merge, or even amateurs would finally run the professional game. In an editorial, under the headline ‘Will the Two Rugby Games Ever Fuse?’, The Referee pondered in May 1919: ‘The idea is becoming more and more pronounced in Sydney that sooner or later a serious effort will be made to bridge the gap which divides the two Rugby games . . . The old game has lost its fascination for the big public, the new game, in its professional side, has reached a point beyond which it may not develop without the cultivation of the amateur.
‘When all the soldiers have returned from the front we may find a movement initiated to this end. With amateur control, and amateurs playing side by side with professionals, to what heights might the game not rise in this country!’
The last hope appeared to be the AIF team.
Paddy Moran began the rally call by writing that after seeing the team perform in England it was crucial the Australian rugby community did everything possible to ‘keep them in the game’.
The AIF first played NSW, which had its fair share of former Test representatives including Larry Dwyer and Ted Fahey, luring more than 10,000 spectators to the Sydney Sports Ground after the NSWRU decided returned soldiers ‘with badges’ would be allowed in free, along with ‘wounded men from military hospitals’.
The AIF were immediately on song, winning 42–14 in a performance that had The Sydney Morning Herald in raptures: ‘In the forward division the fifteen stands out as one of the greatest seen on Sydney grounds.’
‘A feature of the game which pleased the onlookers was the determined tackling. Rarely has this phase of Rugby been displayed in a better light.’
The Referee correspondent implored rugby league followers ‘who delight in brilliant forward play’ to see ‘the AIF Rugby Union pack in action before they disband’.
‘They went through the home forwards as though they were ploughing their way through a paper bag, and if the backs had been of corresponding excellence, a three-figure score might easily have been recorded.’
Rat impressed. ‘Flanagan is a very short chap, but is thick built and must possess enormous strength, for he slung a few intending smotherers off his back as a duck shakes the water from her oiled feathers.’
So moved was one local official at the after-match function he implored the AIF team to be immediately admitted to the Sydney club premiership.
The following weekend in front of a capacity 12,000 crowd at Sydney University Oval they encountered an Australian line-up which included five Queenslanders. The outcome was tighter. It was again the AIF forwards who stood out in the 25–18 win. In the words of The Referee: ‘none ever lagged. They did the purely forward work, then backed up, chipping in with the backs and racing like three-quarters. Midway through the second spell there was a remarkable instance of this, when a string of eight players handled the ball in a passing rush and practically every alternate soldier was a forward, whose work did not suffer when compared with that of those from whom more fleetness and trickiness was expected.’
One day on, and the AIF team were at the end of shovels helping on various projects at the ‘garden suburb for soldiers’ in Matraville.
Then they headed north, defeating a New England side 36–11 in Armidale, before overwhelming Queensland 38–7, Queensland AIF 30–3 and Australia 20–13 in Brisbane. An Inverell romp when they defeated North-West Union 52–6 was the prelude to the final game against Australia at the Sydney Sports Ground in early August 1919. Their farewell appearance saw a flurry of AIF points in the first half, and then they held Australia out after the break to win 22–6. This time, their backline was prominent and Rat was ‘always gritty and solid’, to see the AIF finish the eight-match series unbeaten, scoring 67 tries to 37 and 446 points to 155. The top point-scorer was Glebe–Balmain’s Buchanan with 43.
With the win came rousing press accolades at a time when the local union knew they could bolster their own premiership competition through the influx of highly admired AIF players, most of whom hailed from Sydney. Queensland wasn’t so lucky, with its local union disappearing until 1928–29.
The game re-established itself in Australia’s premier rugby state, with a concerted push at both school and club level. As one of Australia’s premier players of the 1930s, Cyril Towers, explained, the AIF team laid a ‘very solid foundation’ for the game to regain its foothold. Then New Zealand came to the party by ensuring their best team came to Australia in 1920, followed by All Black tours in 1922 and 1924, which enabled the NSW Rugby Union to pay off its debts. This included paying back a loan from New Zealand.5
But it took time for rugby to restore itself as a popular Australian winter sport. Crowds for the 1920 All Blacks series were way below capacity — 10,200 spectators for the first Test at the Sydney Sports Ground, followed by 7000 and 3000 for the next two internationals. After more than 65,000 attended the Sydney versus Great Britain rugby league match at the SCG in June that year bringing in a record gate of £5500, The Referee even suggested the two codes should merge.
This match proved ‘beyond any shadow of doubt the Northern Union form of rugby has fired the imagination of the people; that the rugby league game and its control have won public confidence; and that the time has come when the rugby union and all that it stands for should make an effort to bring itself and the league into line’.
Shortly after, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, who was in Australia to further the cause of Spiritualism around the world, told the Melbourne Herald rugby was inferior to other football codes.
‘I know something about football for I played Rugby for Edinburgh University and Soccer with Hampshire. I have also seen the best American football. I consider the Australian game (Australian rules) is magnificent, and from the spectacular point of view is probably the best of them all,’ Sir Arthur said. ‘I quite agree,’ added Lady Doyle.
Sir Arthur continued: ‘The man-handling element in the British game, when the play is fast and the scrums break up, makes it an extraordinary fine game, but in the Australian game there is such constant movement that it stands by itself.’
Nonetheless, ‘Rambler’ in The Referee backed the rugby cause by saying the AIF tour came at the right time to remind all of the code’s attributes. ‘They have given pleasure in their homeland by the happy blend of vigor and pace, which they showed and by their tackling. Sydney football followers especially those who had dropped away from the Union code, were wondering if rugged forward play — rugged without being crude — and determined tackling were lost arts. The AIF team undeceived them.’
The 1920 Football Annual, compiled by The Referee, commented: ‘Nothing better has probably ever been seen in Australia than the forward play of this team. They were a great set of men, powerful, fast, and a clever, coordinated machine which never lost the power to reveal match-winning or try-scoring individualism when the occasion demanded it.’
Their feats were even more noteworthy considering the toll war had taken on them, particularly a terrible diet and endless stress. Many AIF players believed competing freed their mind from the horrors of the previous four years.
The Sydney Mail said ‘unknown footballers before the war emerged as giants of the game with this team’.
‘They brought with them confidence and determination as the results of their years in the trenches. In the games they tore “over the top” just as they did in the greater game in which they had figured so prominently in France. Generally, they advantageously affected the play of the opposing side, and as the result . . . Rugby Union football has been sharpened up in a most unexpected way, placing the game where it was before the war.’
It would not be the last we would hear of either their adventurous captain or uncontrollable halfback.