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Rugby league has been closely grafted onto the ANZAC legend. Yet how can anyone justify the use of the term ‘ANZAC’ for the annual Australia vs New Zealand contest?
It is an insult to most of those who made the ultimate sacrifice at Gallipoli.
The stark statistics for World War I are horrific. Tens of millions died, including 11,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli.
Yet I wonder if The Roar‘s readers can name one rugby league player playing in Australasia’s premier competition – the professional New South Wales championship, later renamed the NRL – at the beginning of World War I who died at Gallipoli?
I have issued this challenge previously – and have searched through honour boards of the New South Wales Rugby League and some of its clubs, online.
It is an interesting – and revealing – question.
World War I actually began on July 28, 1914. The ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. So there was plenty of time for men to volunteer for war service.
Remember – these men would have had to be playing in the Sydney comp when war broke out, not before; and they had to have been a sad statistic of Gallipoli, not later battles elsewhere.
League’s recent move to play its ANZAC Test in Turkey in 2015 and have the players attend the Dawn Service at Gallipoli – for the centenary of the landing – was scuttled by the Turkish government. Do we know why?
A little ‘digging’ into history unearths the real reason this ‘ANZAC Test’ name is so remarkably inappropriate.
Firstly, league was the only code in Australia not to suspend its top competitions during the war.
Union suspended its competitions from the outset. Even the semi-professional or professional Melbourne-based Australian Rules game and its clubs did a far more patriotic job of supporting the war effort than did the rugby league.
Things just don’t add up here. The ‘Roll of Honour’ of the New South Wales rugby league (which was the ‘national’ body at the time, before the formation of the Australian Rugby League), for first-grade players or officials killed in action during the whole of World War I, contains only 10 names – and one of those is a non-player.
Compare that with some of the true ‘ANZACs’ of Australian sporting codes.
So let’s look at rugby union. In 1915, a Sydney newspaper reported that 197 out of 220 of the city’s regular first-grade rugby union players were on active service. That is 90 per cent.
According to England’s Daily Telegraph, an estimated 5000 Australian rugby union players went on active service during the war.
This figure represents about 98 percent of the playing numbers in the game, outside the schools, in 1914. Thousands did not return.
The simple, underlying reason for the vast difference in the numbers of men who served is that the NSWRL – to quote well-known Australian league historian and author Sean Fagan on RL1908.com – made no effort to persuade anyone to enlist.
Sure, the NSWRL made donations towards the war effort. But it was only five percent of the gate takings when 35,000 people watched the inter-state game in 1915 – and it was seen as a device to ensure the authorities did not try to close their game down.
In July, 1915, the Labor Premier of New South Wales, Mr WA Holman, exhorted these people thus: “Your comrades at Gallipoli are calling you. This is not the time for football and tennis matches… it is serious. Show that you realise this by enlisting at once!”
Australian historian Michael McKernan, a leading authority on World War I, in a 1979 essay titled Sport, War and Society, wrote that according to official records, about 75% of the unmarried rugby league players somehow managed to avoid serving during the war.
There are lots of social, historical and political studies that give reasons why this new working-class sport did not support the war as others did. And of course, there were league players who individually did enlist and go to war and died for their country.
But regardless of how or when the ‘rugby war’ was won by the league code in Australia, the outcome of World War I was that league had a thriving game in 1919, whereas union had to try to start again. In Queensland and Victoria it took many years just to re-establish the club game.
It is therefore ludicrous indeed for the sport of rugby league, almost 100 years after the First War, to seek to benefit from the warm feelings and friendly rivalry generated by the more modern concept of ‘the ANZACs’ by its use of the term.
To provide a little more background, the term ‘the ANZAC Test’ was controversial from the outset of the match in 1997, but not necessarily for the underlying major reason.
Some just saw it as ‘unseemly’ in comparing soldiers with professional sportsmen.
But the Super League (which had come up with the concept during its battle with the ARL) got around this by making a large donation to the Australian RSL.
Bruce Ruxton, the RSL head, featured in commercials for the inaugural match.
However, you may not know the term ‘ANZAC’ is legally protected in Australia by an act of Parliament; the Protection of Word ‘ANZAC’ Regulations (under the War Precautions Act Repeal Act 1920). It requires permission from the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs for its use in commercial events.
Such permission was granted for the event for the first three years (1997-99). But it does not appear to have been officially available from that point. Why?
From 2004, the Australian Rugby League called it the Bundaberg Rum League Test, after the principal sponsor.
Intriguingly, from 1997-99, the winner of this Test was awarded the ANZAC Trophy – which depicted an Australian slouch hat and New Zealand ‘lemon-squeezer’ hat.
But from 2004, when the rum people took over, the Bill Kelly Memorial Trophy was at stake. Kelly was a New Zealand league player in the early 20th century.
It remains to be seen which country will host the match for the centennial of Gallipoli next year. Apparently, the New Zealand RL holds hopes. But surely the game will be played on Australian soil.
Let’s hope the game’s organisers will by then have come up with at least one name (of a player from the 1914 season) who died at Gallipoli.
After all, despite all the hype, they aren’t making any more war heroes, are they?
Editor’s note: The NRL does not use the term ‘ANZAC’ in any of their communications. We have contacted the author to clarify assertions made in this piece.
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