The Otago Daily Times counts down the 150 greatest moments in Otago sport.
No 72: Carisbrook hosts first football test (1922)
The New Zealand football team played its first game in Dunedin on July 23, 1904, losing 1-0 to New South Wales.
Eighteen years later, Australia toured New Zealand and the first test between the sides was scheduled for Carisbrook on June 17.
Australia scored a 2-1 win over Otago in a midweek game. Then, on the Saturday, a crowd of about 10,000 - probably a record for the sport in New Zealand, the Otago Witness believed - gathered for the test.
The weather was overcast and the ground slippery, and it seemed the Australians struggled to adapt to the conditions.
New Zealand - clad in black jerseys with a silver fern on the chest - opened the scoring through Ted Cook, but the Australians levelled just before halftime.
Bill Knott put New Zealand up 2-1, then soon after Cook got his second.
The match report later said New Zealand's strength was its counter-attacking ability.
After the test, a concert was held at Kroon's Hall, and the next day the sides were taken to a picnic at Seacliff.
The second test in Wellington finished 1-1, and New Zealand won the third test, in Auckland, 3-1.
New Zealand's top footballers would return to Dunedin many times over the next 25 years, playing Chinese Universities (1924), Canada (1927), Australia (1936), English Amateurs (1937) and South Africa (1947).
There followed a long gap before the great 1982 All Whites played the League of Ireland in Dunedin. They returned in 1985 (to play Otago) and 1988 (Australia).
The success of Saturday's game between the Wellington Phoenix and the Brisbane Roar has raised the tantalising possibility of the All Whites coming back to Dunedin to play in the new covered stadium.
