SYDNEY - Australian Rugby League officials yesterday hit back at a former New Zealand journalist who said the tag "Anzac test" was a distortion of history because the code did little to support the Australian effort during the First World War.
Sydney Morning Herald journa-list Spiro Zavos, in a column this
week, described as "distasteful" the use of an Australasian icon to sell last Friday's test.
"More importantly, the ARL's claim to the mantle of the Anzacs is a distortion of its own history and the history of Australia," he said.
Zavos said league players did serve and die heroically during the First World War.
But, quoting from a 1979 essay by historian Michael McKernan, he said league bosses were worried that a rival syndicate might take over their game if it had to close down during the war, so they encouraged players not to enlist.
"The contrast with rugby union could not be more stark," Zavos said. "Ninety per cent of all rugby union grade players enlisted. The grade competitions in Sydney, Queensland and places such as Tamworth were cancelled until the First World War ended."
Zavos went on to write that "on this sacred day we should honour these heroic men."
National Rugby League media director John Brady denied that league was trying to claim the mantle of the Anzacs as its own, but wanted to highlight the memory of those men who died and the achievements of those who survived.
Brady said the ARL had acted in concert with the Australian Returned and Services League, through New South Wales president Rusty Priest.
"Nowhere was there the chest beating of one group having done more than another; that was left to Mr Zavos, whose sole contribution to Anzac Day has been to try to value the life of one man over another," he said. "The fact that men died at all was appalling.
"The fact that people would years later be scoring the cost of their sacrifice on the basis of how many came from which sporting team is pathetic."
Zavos said he had not intended "to denigrate the memory of those men who fought in the war."
"However my argument ... still stands. The ARL misused the Anzac tradition and its own history by claiming the Anzacs to promote a poorly-attended test."
- NZPA
