On July 29, it will be exactly 100 years since the greatest rugby team ever to leave New Zealand sailed from Wellington. These 29 men would win every one of the 32 games they played in England, Ireland, Wales, France and Canada, and would be known ever after as the “Invincibles”.
Many of the players remain legendary today – George Nepia, Cyril and Maurice Brownlie, Bert Cooke, Jock Richardson – and their captain, Clifford Glen Porter. In the decades that followed the 1924-25 tour, their names were revered as the likes of Colin Meads, Jonah Lomu and Richie McCaw have been in more recent times.
Offside Porter
Scottish-born Porter migrated with his family to Wellington, where he worked in his father’s grocery and packaging business. He started club rugby (in Horowhenua initially) at first five-eighth before switching to wing forward (flanker). He was nicknamed “Offside Porter” because his anticipation was so accurate and his speed around the scrum so great that opponents insisted he must have been offside (shades of Richie McCaw). Good referees could see he was not. Well, not always.
He played 41 times for the All Blacks. Fullback Nepia said he was “the best captain I ever knew”, and NZ Herald rugby writer TP McLean, who interviewed him several times, wrote that Porter “exuded authority”.
“His voice was commanding … He was thoughtful about and considerate of his players. He knew his own mind and, when he wanted things done, they were done quickly. But he was no dictator.”
The man who would become All Black 286 in 1923 was a shade under 80kg (12st 8lb) and 1.73m tall (5′8″), but was broad in the chest, with solid legs. “He had good speed,” wrote McLean. “He was agile, he could turn on a sixpence. Outstanding features were black, prominent eyebrows over deeply set blue eyes, a balding, later bald head, a wide mouth which gave him a most excellent, humorous smile and a bass voice of quite exceptional resonance.”
The phrase that crops up time and again in reports of his play is “uncanny anticipation” – referring to his ability to predict how moves were going to develop, and to place himself in exactly the right place to take advantage.
The Voyage
Jetlag was not an issue for a team spending five weeks on a sea voyage, but maintaining fitness certainly was. They exercised by day and talked rugby by night. They ate well and they gained weight.
Nepia said Porter was an insistent fitness coach, getting them out of bed early every morning so their exercises would not inconvenience the other passengers. One night, after Porter had gone to his bunk, they used a piece of rope to tie his door shut – and enjoyed the luxury of a sleep-in the next morning.
Most importantly, though, this was a time for team building, for knitting together as a unit, for developing leadership. Nepia wrote in his autobiography, “We have known each other, but up to this stage, we have never really known each other. Now is beginning the friendship, the trust, the companionship which more than any other quality is to be the basis of our success …
“And all of the time, in one way and another, we are deepening the comradeship which has opened out among us. In these later days, when teams hurtle the world in swift airplanes, the journey is one brief wonder which does nothing but get a group from one place to another. In our day, the voyage in the Remuera is the foundation of all our success. We had begun the journey as 30 individuals [including manager Stanley Dean]. We end it, at Plymouth, as 30 members of a team. This long voyage has created one quality above all others. This is trust. When you build this among men, you build such a wall that nothing will ever knock down.”
The young men were away from home for eight months, living out of suitcases, unpaid, playing twice a week, often on poorly maintained turf, without a coach and with a manager who would too often leave the practical arrangements to his captain while he courted the aristocracy.
The Tests
Porter was injured in an early match, but despite recovering well, was not selected for the tests in Britain. He had not endeared himself to the other selectors, he had been left with too many of the organisational and coaching tasks, and the referees had their eyes on his potentially offside play. He took these decisions without rancour at the time, but was left throughout his life with a sense of bitter injustice.
Suffice to say, they won every match and were being referred to as the Invincibles even before the end of the tour. They beat Ireland 6-0 and Wales 19-0. They did not visit Scotland because of an organisational dispute among the Home Nations. The culmination of the British leg of the tour came against England, in which Cyril Brownlie became the first player to be sent off in a rugby international, for kicking a man on the ground. The alleged victim later acknowledged he had not been kicked. Porter was in the stand sitting with the Prince of Wales, who was furious at the referee’s action and demanded to know whether he should intervene. “No, Sir,” Porter told him, “the referee’s decision is final.” Even for a prince. The All Blacks won with 14 men, 17-11.
And so to France, not, at the time, a recognised rugby nation. The tourists had fun and won their games easily.
They crossed Canada by train, won a couple of matches in Vancouver and arrived back in Wellington by steamer on March 17. Their welcome was described fulsomely by the Evening Star: “No all-conquering Roman Emperor could possibly have received a more enthusiastic welcome home than that which was accorded the 1924 All Blacks, who, with an unbeaten record of over 30 victories, returned to Wellington by the Tahiti today … It was a thunderous welcome. Wellington people are not as a rule demonstrative, but today they turned over a new page, and let themselves go.” The Star’s writer went on: “The demeanour of the team on and off the field had always been that of gentlemen. They had added to the magnificent name of New Zealand established by the Expeditionary Force.
“The tour had done much to cement the bonds of Empire.”
Porter retired from rugby after captaining the All Blacks successfully against the touring British and Irish Lions in 1930. His friendship with George Nepia was lifelong.
Nepia gave his birth year as 1905, but later claimed it was 1908, so he may have been only 17 in 1924. He said he owed everything to the early boosting and encouragement that Porter gave him. “He knows, this chap Porter,” Nepia said, “just exactly how to get the most out of a man.”
Ian St George is the author of Cliff Porter, Captain of the 1924 Invincibles: 100 Years On, available from onadmiralroad.co.nz or rugbymuseum.co.nz
