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Manu Vatuvei celebrates the try of Lewis Brown (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Renee McKay)
The support in New Zealand for the Warriors from rugby league supporters is intense and passionate, as it should be for a team that is making the NRL Grand Final for only the second time. But it is the unqualified support from the nation’s rugby community that is putting the New Zealand into the Warriors franchise.
The All Blacks watched the Warriors defeat the Melbourne Storm in the dressing room following their brilliant victory over France. They then sent a message of support to the Warriors team.
The Prime Minister John Key, who has been emulating his predecessor Richard Seddon, who was deemed the ‘Minister for Rugby’ in the 1900s, sent a text message “You Beauty!” to Peter Leitch, the Mad ‘Butcher’, rugby league’s number one fan and supporter of the code.
Key will be sitting in the stand at ANZ stadium with the ‘Mad Butcher watching the Warriors trying to make history by defeating Manly.
For rugby union supporters, the long, attritional war between the two rugby codes is over. The days of hostility between officials and sanctions against those who ‘changed sides’ are now part of a historical rivalry that used to arouse unrelenting passion.
A sign of this, aside from the unconditional support for the Warriors from the rugby community, is that an influential director of the Warriors is John Hart.
For those who might not know Hart is, suffice to say, he was a long-time successful coach for Auckland and the All Blacks, until he presided over the RWC 1999 campaign.
It was All Blacks, too, notably the great All Blacks winger John Kirwan and the ebullient winger/centre and scorer of most tries in a World Cup match (6 against Japan in 1995) Marc Ellis, who helped the Warriors franchise get a credibility with the great mass of rugby supporters in New Zealand.
You will never get rugby writers now writing disparagingly about rugby league as they/we (for I was one of the guilty men) used to about a decade or so ago.
In defence of this writing, we would argue that we objected to the continual bagging of rugby as a spectacle and, more importantly, the arrogance of rugby league officials like ‘Bullfrog’ Moore who would force themselves into the dressing rooms of New Zealand rugby teams and attempt to poach players to the self-styled ‘greatest game of all.’
Professional rugby, which came in in 1996, has changed all that.
Now it is more likely that most of the ‘conversions’ are with rugby league players coming across to rugby union for more money than the rugby league code can provide them with.
There is also an acknowledgement now from rugby union supporters that their game is going to survive and flourish well into the 21st century. This is a perception that was not possible to make before 1996.
In the 1990s, particularly, it did not seem to be entirely clear that rugby union could survive the raids made on it by rugby league clubs in Australia and in England.
Wales, for instance, lost over 30 rugby union internationals to rugby league in the 1980s. This is one of the reasons why Wales lost its primacy as a rugby power.
Australia had always lost players to rugby league, some of them its greatest champions like Dally Messenger and Trevor Allan, since 1908.
New Zealand rugby lost great players, too, but not as many as Australian rugby did.
It was in New Zealand that the split between the rugby union and rugby league first occurred in the southern hemisphere.
Members of the 1905 All Blacks formed a professional rugby league side, which included Dally Messenger. The New Zealand media, who were totally supportive of rugby union as New Zealand’s ‘national game’, dubbed the professionals ‘The All Golds.’
Vicious cartoons ran in the newspapers of the days depicting an All Gold player as hooked nosed Jewish mercenaries.
Over the years, after this team established rugby league in New Zealand, a number of famous All Blacks made the change of codes. Bert Cooke, the greatest All Black centre ever (he was named by the legendary coach Fred Allen in his all-time New Zealand rugby team), made the switch.
So did rugby’s first super star, George Nepia, the famous Maori fullback who as a 19 year-old played every match on the tour of the UK and Europe in the unbeaten 1924 All Blacks.
Rugby’s only defence against this poaching was to impose a ban from future involvement in rugby by any defector. This was a cruel punishment to those All Blacks who during the Depression saw their rugby skills as their only way to make a living.
An amnesty was announced during World War II where rugby was deemed the official game of the New Zealand armed forces. This allowed former rugby league players like Johnny Simpson (later to be one of the great hard-man All Black props) and Bob Scott (named by Fred Allen as his greatest All Black fullback) to play for the All Blacks.
All this is history now.
The rugby community has accepted that the game is entrenched in New Zealand. The opening match of the RWC 2011 between New Zealand – Tonga was the biggest broadcast event in New Zealand’s history.
There is room for both codes, and for both of them to grow in New Zealand and around the world.
It’s a pity that this message hasn’t penetrated to several prominent columnists in New Zealand who are rugby league tragics. Chris Rattue, a columnist for the NZ Herald, never writes an article about rugby union, the Rugby World Cup or the All Blacks in which he does NOT bag the code.
He needs to accept that the war is over.
Both sides, by surviving and flourishing have won. It’s a live and let live world now. So throughout New Zealand, the united cry is “C’mon NZ Warriors!”
