Blanket coverage of city’s first test

In this series  Mike Houlahan looks back at how the Otago Daily Times reacted to significant events. Today, he looks at how the newspaper breathlessly covered the first rugby test played in Dunedin.

If you are of the point of view that the New Zealand media are too obsessed with rugby union, be thankful you were not reading the Otago Daily Times in June 1908.

The city was about to host its first  rugby test and the ODT — literally — wrote tens of thousands of words about it.

The All Blacks were about to face the visiting British team at Carisbrook. Dunedin had already had a taste of what the tourists had to offer, a crowd of 15,000 having watched Otago dispatch them 9-6 the previous Saturday.

A cautious ODT editorial noted that the touring captain and several of the top players had not been picked, with the following weekend’s test in mind.

However, it went on to note, "there is the circumstance that a proportion of the team does not seem to be in the condition that is essential if a hard and fast game is to be successfully fought out to the bitter end".

This was to be a recurring theme of the ODT’s test week coverage, the paper quite certain that the British players had probably lost fitness during their long sea voyage to New Zealand.

Rugby columnist "Fullback" echoed that, noting there were a reported 12 touring players injured in language which suggested that he might have thought that they were a bit soft.

The other big controversy of the week, and one which shows that the more things change the more they stay the same, was what the ODT deemed the unreasonably high cost of tickets — 5, 3 or 2 shillings.

"The degradation of  sport into a business is always to be deplored," it thundered. 

"It should be the aim of any and every amateur organisation to combat strongly any development which might tend to create an impression that the sport it controlled was being utilised for the mere sake of pecuniary gain. We do not believe that the New Zealand Rugby Union may legitimately be accused of possessing any desire to prostitute the game of football such a way, but it is impossible to deny that it is giving the public, which supports football, very strong cause at the present time for concluding that it has determined to take advantage of the British tour to secure as large profits as it possibly can." 

The matter was even raised at that week’s Dunedin City Council meeting, at which Mayor John McDonald called the cost "monstrous" and said he had taken it up with Cabinet ministers.

Despite the monstrous prices, Carisbrook was full to busting on June 6, and the ODT had the purple prose ready to go.

"It was in the air. Football. The throng in Princes street talked nothing else all the morning, and the Wairarapa, Wellington, Otago and Southland contests were fought again with tongues instead of feet. Small boys (those straws on the stream of popular opinion) were determined to dress the part and in the shops might be seen precocious youngsters ordering with a lordly air little boys’ football jerseys."

And so it went on, columns and columns of buildup and weather reports, before finally reaching the curtain-raiser (between the medical and arts divisions of the university), let alone the actual game.

That the ODT covered over several pages, with artist’s illustrations, as it examined every scoring play in exhaustive and exhausting detail, up to and including the performance of the referee, as the All Blacks trounced Britain 32 points to 5.

"The control of the game was in the hands of Mr James Duncan and a very busy time he had. But he came through with flying colours and gave every satisfaction to players and spectators alike."

If only Wayne Barnes could garner reviews like that.