Wellington against International teams: versus Australia 1931

Above: His Excellency the Governor General Lord Bledisloe meeting the Wellington players before the match against Australia. Three years later, Bledisloe donated the Cup in his name to be played in internationals between New Zealand and Australia.?

Match details

Result:?Wellington 15 – Australia 8
When: 5 September 1931, at Athletic Park.?
Weather: Fine to start with, with a southerly blast arriving during the game
Crowd: 17,000

The tour

For the first time in 18 months, an Australian team toured New Zealand. Rugby in Australia was as strong as it had ever been and the Wallabies had whitewashed the All Blacks 3-0 on home soil in 1929 and had beaten Great Britain in a one-off Test the previous year. Despite missing several frontline players for various reasons, they were expected to be tough opposition, providing they got mostly dry grounds to play on.

However, they didn’t and their tour wasn’t a memorable one. Coming over in a particularly wet and wild winter, the Wallabies struggled, winning just three and drawing one of their 10 matches played. By the time they met the All Blacks in Auckland they had lost to Southland, Canterbury, Wellington and a Seddon Shield Districts XV (in Nelson) and drawn with Otago. Working their way north, the match against Wellington was their fifth encounter.

The match

Desperate to ignite their tour, and just a week out from the Eden Park international, the Wallabies needed to win this one, against a strong Wellington team who the year before had famously defeated a full-strength Great Britain 12-8.

While there wasn’t the same fervour of the previous year’s match that had brought Wellington to a standstill, there was still significant interest and a healthy crowd showed up to Athletic Park this Saturday afternoon.

After playing all their games in the South Island on ‘sodden’ grounds, the Wallabies were initially granted their wish of a fair day and dry conditions. The match kicked off and they tore into their work and established an 8-6 lead by halftime.

But all the while, storm clouds were brewing to the south and late in the first half the wind turned and a raging southerly accompanied by driving rain and hail arrived.

The weather bomb didn’t seem to affect Wellington and in particular wing Nelson Ball who scored a second half hat-trick which won the game for the home team. Ball scored all three of his tries chasing kicks, one feeding of a Wallabies mistake and two following up the good work by Wellington’s inside backs, halfback Frank Kilby and five-eighths Herb Lilburne and Mark Nicholls. In all, Wellington scored five unconverted tries with Nicholls having an off day with his boot.

The teams

Wellington: H. R. Pollock, J.D. Mackay, J.R. Page, N. Ball, M.F. Nicholls, H.T. Lilburne, F.D. Kilby, P.E. Stiver, H.F. Mclean, J.D. Shearer, C.A. McPherson, E.J, Reid, E.R.P. Diederich

Australia: A.W. Ross, W.H. Hemmingway, C.H.T. Towers, H.V. Herd, D.L. Cowper, G.T.B. Palmer, S.J. Malcolm, O.L. Bridle, J.R.L. Palfreyman, T.D. Perrin, P.B Judd, M.C. White, M.R Blair, E.T. Bonis, W.H Cerutti

The players

The All Blacks’ Test team to play Australia had been announced some weeks prior to this game, with several players from the previous year’s 3-1 series win over Great Britain missing – Wellington’s Mark Nicholls and Hugh McLean among them.

But Wellington was represented in the 1931 Test against Australia by four players: ‘Rusty’ Page, Herb Lilburne, Nelson Ball and Ted Jessep.

Hutt’s Nelson Ball scored a try on debut in the All Blacks’ 20-13 win. He was then overlooked for the All Blacks the following year but he scored four tries for Wellington in their 36-23 win over the All Blacks the following year and was subsequently recalled when original selection George Hart got injured. In all, Ball played 22 times for the All Blacks including five Tests. He was a UK tourist in 195/36.

Rusty Page, an army officer playing for the Wellington club, made his Test debut at centre the following week and eventually played 18 games for the All Blacks including six Tests. His career followed a similar path to Ball’s in that he was left out of the All Blacks in 1932 but helped Wellington beat them and then toured the UK in 1935/36 in his swansong.

First five-eighth Herb Lilburne was a railway worker from Canterbury transferred to Wellington in 1930 and played for the Hutt club. Lilburne played exactly 100 first-class matches and played 10 Tests.

Poneke hooker Ted Jessep’s claim to fame was that represented the All Blacks and the Wallabies – and played Test rugby for each country against the other. He was born in Sydney but moved to Wellington as a child. Between 1926 and 1932 he played 46 matches for Wellington. After appearances in an All Black trial in 1930 Jessep played in the following week’s Test against the Wallabies, which was the last time a 2-3-2 scrum was packed down. He moved back to Australia and was vice-captain of the Wallabies team that won the first ever Bledisloe Cup series against the All Blacks in 1934.

Another player of note in this match was Wellington’s captain Frank Kilby, out of the Wellington FC club. Kilby was the original nuggety halfback and had toured with the All Blacks to South Africa in 1928 only to go badly injured his ankle and play a limited role. He came back to play three straight seasons for Wellington before being re-selected in the All Blacks in 1932 and 1934 – captaining the team in all four Tests he played in. Differences with the manager meant he was not selected for the 1935/36 tour to Europe. He later became a leading administrator and All Blacks manager.

References

The?Evening Post?and?Dominion?newspapers, September 1931

Arthur Swan and Gordon Jackson. Wellington’s Rugby History 1870-1950. A.H and H.W Reed for the WRFU, 1952.

The Visitors - The History of International Rugby Teams in New Zealand by Rod Chester, Neville McMillan. MOA Publications, Auckland, 1990
?
The Encyclopedia of New Zealand Rugby
By Ron Palenski, Rod Chester, Neville McMillan. Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland 1998

Photo credit: The Dominon 7 September 1931