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SYDNEY - A hundred years ago today Australians got their first taste of rugby league. But it wasn't anything like the game as it is played today.
Actually it wasn't rugby league at all. It was rugby union.
The organisers, including Dally Messenger, Victor Trumper and JJ Giltinan, were nervous about staging a game no-one had seen in Australia before, in case it was a financial flop.
Instead they capitalised on the newly forged reputation of the New Zealand rugby team, who two years earlier had toured Britain and earned the immortal soubriquet All Blacks.
Such was the awe with which the New Zealanders were regarded, then as now, that more than 20,000 people turned up on a balmy late winter's day in Sydney to watch the men in black take on the NSW rugby league team, dubbed the All Blues.
What made it such a significant day in the history of Australian sport is that for the first time, footballers were paid for their services.
This was considered abhorrent to the people who ran rugby union, a game invented by Englishmen of social standing who would never dream of stooping to something so vulgar as accepting money for playing sport.
This spirit of amateurism was to cling to rugby for another 90 years, but in those gritty days of early Australian nationhood, footballers were mainly working-class people who needed to earn a crust.
The flag-bearer was Dally Messenger, the greatest player of the day. He was the son of a professional oarsman, and was brought up to believe elite sportsmen should be paid for their skills.
A few weeks earlier his fame had helped draw a crowd of 52,000 to the Sydney Cricket Ground to watch the NSW Waratahs play the (amateur) All Blacks. To this day it remains the crowd record for a Waratahs game, but Messenger and his fellow players of 1907 received not one penny of the takings.
For Messenger, it was the final straw.
Together with Giltinan, who put up A3;1000 ($2836) of his own money, and Trumper, who drew up the contracts based on his cricketing experience, he promoted Australia's first game of professional football. It was the foundation of an industry that pays its stars so handsomely today.
The rugby establishment refused to grant access to the best venues - the SCG and the adjoining Sydney Sports Ground - so they held the match at the nearby Sydney Showground.
(There were uncanny echoes 70 years later when Kerry Packer used the same ground to stage early World Series Cricket matches because the game's establishment refused him access to the traditional grounds.)
After a curtain-raiser of Australian Rules between local clubs Sydney and Newtown, which served to stir up the dust on an already parched field, the New Zealanders prevailed 12-8, scoring three tries to two.
They played 15-a-side under existing rugby union rules.
Messenger scored one try and a conversion and was by general consensus the outstanding player on the park, dazzling everyone with his all-round skills.
The most telling statistic, however, was the number of clicks of the turnstile.
The income was enough pay the New Zealanders their guarantee of A3;500 (for which they were dubbed the All Golds by an Auckland newspaper in reference to their fondness for gold sovereigns), and leave enough over for Giltinan and Messenger to set up the new rugby league competition the following season.
It was a gamble that came off. "They had to draw a crowd," said Sean Fagan, a rugby league historian and author who has just published "The Master: The Life & Times of Dally Messenger".
"It was a big enough stretch for people to come and watch a game of professional football, let alone a new game that no one had seen before - which was rugby league," he said.
"So they decided to play under rugby union rules."
They played another two matches before the New Zealanders - with Messenger seconded to their party - embarked for a tour of England and Wales to play rugby league under the billing of the Professional All Blacks. They were, of course, barred from rugby union for life.
The following season, 1908, saw the introduction of the 13-a-side rugby league competition we know today, with nine foundation teams: Norths, Souths, Easts, Wests, Glebe, Newtown, Balmain, Newcastle and Cumberland.
Messenger's name lives on in the Dally M awards and the JJ Giltinan Shield is still presented to the minor premiers of the NRL competition.
- AAP
