Despite the failure of the rugby league codes to secure a position in New Zealand, a
national Maori rugby league team toured Australia successfully in 1909. The success
of this tour followed a failed tour in 1908. Significantly, the 1908 rugby league team
was a ‘private’ Maori team (Moorhouse, 1995; Davidson, 1947; Smith, 1998). Despite
the touring party running into financial difficulties, it encouraged the sending of the
first official New Zealand representative Maori rugby league team in 1909. The 1909
team enjoyed significant success on the field. One test attracted 40,000 spectators
(Davidson, 1947: 59), and another 23,000 (Moorhouse, 1995: 83). These matches
raised spectator interest in the rugby league game in Australia and, in 1910, a match
between an Australian rugby league team and a visiting British Northern Union team
was attended by 39,000 (Phillips, 1996: 199).
According to McCarthy and Howitt (1983), the 1909 Maori Rugby League team was
potentially a more severe blow for the NZRFU than the threat presented by the All
Golds tour and the defection by players to rugby league. They suggest that a
significant number of prominent Maori players would have switched to rugby league
and helped establish this code as the national sport in New Zealand if the suggestion by
Parata, a Maori rugby union administrator, to send a Maori ‘All Black’ team to
Australia in 1910 had not been accepted by NZRFU administrators. Writing on the
success of the 1905-06 All Black team’s they noted:
…the success of Gallaher’s team in the British Isles in 1905-06 was to cause the New Zealand
Rugby Union much worry in the next few years, and the chances were, and are, that had it not
been for a Maori, Wiremu Teihoka Parata, commonly and lovingly known as Ned Parata, the
game of rugby could possibly have given way to league as our national game (McCarthy and
Howitt, 1983: 75-77).
According to McCarthy and Howitt (1983), the exodus of Maori players in the early
1900s was provoked by the omission of Maori players from the All Black team. They
argue that from 1903 to 1913 only three Maori were included in All Black teams and
that “the years from 1896 when Gage captained New Zealand, to 1910 when the first
official Maori team was selected, were lean years in rugby for Maori” (1983: 72). It
was in this context that Parata voiced his concern with the number of Maori who
“frustrated at their being passed over in rugby circles, almost flocked to the alternative
– league” (McCarthy and Howitt, 1983: 75).