New Zealand 'Natives' finally honoured in Rugby's Hall of Fame

[TheMercenary]

Quite an interesting early history

The New Zealand Natives XV were finally installed in Rugby's Hall of Fame by the IRB in London this week, 120 years after the longest and most extraordinary tour in sporting history.

The tour was essentially a coming-out party for Maori rugby – and indeed the Maori people – and lasted an astonishing 14 months including well over three months at sea.

It took in a mind-boggling 107 competitive games, including a few Australian Rules games in Melbourne and, although designed as a profit making exercise, soon developed into a fight for financial survival, especially during the long winter months touring around northern England.

Of the rugby matches in Britain they won 49 of the 74 played and of the 107 games on tour they won 78. The 21-man party included some of the early greats of Maori rugby – Tom Ellison and the five Warbrick brothers – but also contained a few "passengers" hurriedly recruited to make up the numbers. They averaged a game every 2.3 days, on three occasions played matches on consecutive days and on one occasion played three matches in three days. Burn out clearly didn't exist in those days although the official tour log does record that for one match they were down to 11 fit men.

Days off were spent travelling to the next destination by train. In fact the British leg could only be undertaken because of the excellence of the existing train service, it would be virtually impossible now – while the hospitality was lavish but tiring.

Some of the Native players enjoyed Lord Sheffield's spread so much before the match against Middlesex that they were found asleep in nearby bushes when it was time for the team photographs. The Natives' play that day was 'void of combination' according to the official tour report.

Later in the tour, the game against Oxford was lost because 'festivities at Cambridge the night before had not done our boys much good' and after a banquet in Belfast a team member involved in an altercation was left to sleep in a cell overnight.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rug...gby-Union.html