Sport Past and Present in South Africa

(Trans)forming the Nation

Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grundlingh, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grundlingh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317988588
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sull'etnia

This book provides an interpretation of sport in contemporary South Africa through an historical account of the evolution and social ramifications of sport in the twentieth century. It comprises chapters which trace the growth of sports such as football, cricket, surfing, boxing and rugby, and considers their relationship to aspects of racial identity, masculinity, femininity, political and social development in the country. The book also draws out the wider geo-political significance of South African sport, placing it in the context of the development of sport both elsewhere on the African continent and internationally. The history of sport has seen significant international growth over the past few decades. For the most part, however, the history of sport in Africa has remained largely untraced. By detailing the way in which sport's development in South Africa overlapped with major socio-political processes on the wider African continent, this volume seeks to narrow the gap.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

‘Preventing Huddersfield’:¹ The rise and decline of rugby league in South Africa, c.1957–1965²

Hendrik Snyders

Department of History, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Despite an early interest in the code among locals, an official history of rugby league in South Africa as well as a comprehensive historiography of the code is still lacking. This research is a first attempt to rectify the situation. Following the continuous migration of local rugby union players to rugby league clubs in northern England for over 50 years, rugby league was introduced into South Africa as entrepreneurial ventures during the mid-1950s and early 1960s. These initiatives immediately raised the interest of the local rugby fraternity for a variety of reasons. However, it also met with fierce resistance from the rugby union establishment (the South African Rugby Board) under the leadership of Dr Danie Craven, which was tasked with the protection of amateurism in the sport. An emerging rivalry between the National Rugby League (NRL) and Rugby League South Africa (RLSA), the two local controlling bodies, also complicated matters. Despite a systematic programme of intimidation, rugby league succeeded in establishing clubs, securing basic playing facilities and achieving international recognition and competition. It failed, however, in promoting its cause among the Black rugby fraternity or building its structures. In addition, incoming tours and limited success in the 1963 series against Australia and New Zealand coupled with a failure to secure long-term playing facilities conspired to undermine its growth potential and led to the local code’s inevitable decline by 1965.

Introduction

Ever since the establishment of rugby football league code under the auspices of the Northern Union in 1895, South African rugby players, both black and white, were attracted to the 13-man code. When league was officially introduced into South Africa between 1957 and 1961 thanks to the efforts of businessmen Ludwig Japhet, Norman Lacey and John Weil, a significant number of local rugby union players (including at least 150 full Springboks) joined the rival code.³ The subsequent migration of so many players to join rugby league clubs in northern England and Australia, as well the establishment of the rival code locally, deeply shocked the South African rugby union fraternity. Fearing the annihilation of their code through the establishment of a game that because of its own chequered history already represented a ‘resilient subculture’,⁴ the rugby union authorities embarked on a mission to destroy the rival code. The vehemence of this counter-strategy had everything to do with the political role of rugby union within the South African racial and political context, namely to build and promote white unity and identity at a national level and to serve as a marker of cultural difference.⁵ Rugby league, with its long history of racial tolerance and working-class roots in its northern England heartland, had features of a counter-culture. There was also the unarticulated fear that the assimilation of a foreign sporting culture might not only undermine the national identity and background of its participants, but might also contribute to the alteration of the national sporting ethos.⁶ The rugby field, so often a zone of prestige and emulation, was thereby effectively transformed into a zone of resistance.⁷

This essay traces the rise and decline of rugby league in South Africa between the years 1957 and 1965. It also attempts an analysis and survey of both the players and administrators of the sport locally, its difficulties and successes, and suggests reasons for its decline by the mid-1960s.

From Huddersfield to the High Veldt, 1895–1957

The founding of the Northern Union (NU) after a dispute and split between the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and 22 of its clubs over the issue of financial compensation to players who have lost earnings as a result of their rugby commitments (so-called ‘broken time’), initially left no impression on the South African rugby landscape. When the South African team won its first international match in 1896 against a British Islands XV, the local rugby-loving public found it quite natural to reward winning try-scorer Alf Larard with a gold coin – being totally unaware that this specific act was in direct contravention of the rules aimed at preventing rugby professionalism. The first time that rugby league actually entered the local consciousness was when it became publicly known that Larard had embarked on a successful league career with Huddersfield Rugby League Club (HRLC) for whom he played 100 matches over four seasons.⁸ By the time of the 1906 Springbok tour to the United Kingdom, the South African players and administrators were not only acquainted with the professionalism issue but signs of an early negativity towards the rival code also began to emerge.⁹

The first recorded native South African to join was James Megson, who joined Leeds RLFC in 1910.¹⁰ Although he never played first-team rugby league, his presence signalled a new local interest in the code. During the same year, the NU also recorded receipt of a request for a ‘Coloured tour’. This request was, however, turned down and an opportunity to establish an early presence on African soil squandered.¹¹ In the period before the Second World War, a small group of provincial players, some of whom were Springboks, joined various British rugby league clubs. When normal life resumed after the First World War, Springboks Attie van Heerden, Tank van Rooyen and Fred Oliver, followed by provincial players Nicholas van Heerden, Constant van der Spuy and David Booysen, joined Wigan Rugby League Football Club (WRLC) in the era before the Great Depression.¹² Contemporary evidence also indicated that most of them left with the public sentiment in their favour.¹³ As experienced international and provincial players, they were able to adapt quickly and established both themselves as local heroes and South Africa as a potential recruiting ground for similar talent. This early success was however short-lived, and by the start of the Second World War, there were no South Africans in British rugby league.¹⁴ Prior to this, in 1936, a second request for a rugby league tour to Northern England was declined.¹⁵ As a result, rugby league became merely a matter of notice on the agenda of the South African Rugby Board (SARB), whose task it was as a member of the International Rugby Board (IRB) to prevent league’s further spread. In 1957 matters changed as a result of Johannesburg businessman Ludwig Japhet’s initiative to introduce rugby league into South Africa.

The Japhet Exhibition Series and its aftermath, 1957–1961

In the early 1950s, Japhet, a Johannesburg lawyer and a member of the Transvaal National Sport Club (TNSC), became interested in establishing rugby league in South Africa. After a thorough study of the attendance figures and actual receipts of 24 rugby league finals (1929–1953) and various additional study visits to the United Kingdom, he was convinced that enough space existed for the peaceful co-existence of both rugby league and union (or amateur) rugby and that South Africa offered fertile ground for its establishment.¹⁶ Being an astute businessman, he opened negotiations with William Fallowfield, the secretary of the Rugby Football League (RFL) and the Rugby League International Board (RLIB) in 1953. He simultaneously engaged influential British journalists and rugby league administrators in both Australia and New Zealand to discuss the feasibility of bringing the code to South Africa.¹⁷ During the long years of negotiation he also secured the Driehoek Grounds of the Germiston Caledonian Society as a possible venue for his venture.¹⁸ In 1957, after four years of interaction and negotiation, the RFL and RLIB finally agreed to partner him in the staging of a missionary tournament of three exhibition matches involving the national teams of Great Britain and France.

The project to introduce rugby league into South Africa soon attracted both internal and external opposition, albeit for different reasons. Chief among its opponents were the SARB and the rugby league media in Britain. Fearing the undermining of the national game,¹⁹ the Transvaal (TVL), Eastern Transvaal (ETVL) and Border rugby union affiliates, in whose jurisdiction the exhibition matches were scheduled to be played, were all intent on fighting the proposal ‘tooth and nail’.²⁰ The leadership of the ETVLRU in particular viewed the scheduled events as wholly unnecessary and nothing more than a publicity stunt that must be stopped before it could harm amateur rugby union. As far as they were concerned, ‘if they [the organisers] want to play professional rugby, let them play in their own country. We do not want it here.’²¹ Similarly, Piet Malan, the representative of the Diggers Club at the 1957 Transvaal Annual General Meeting, stated quite emphatically that in his view professional rugby and the domination of local rugby by English-speakers were equally dangerous, although the latter issue may have been somewhat more serious.²²

Months before the actual staging of the events, the Japhet initiative also generated opposition and strong anti-tour feelings in Great Britain. The widely publicised anti-rugby league campaign in South Africa and the issue of apartheid in South Africa in particular affronted the rugby league support base. It also brought the unhappiness of league fans and the media with regard to the organisation of domestic rugby league in England to the fore. As such, the exhibition tour became a double-edged sword that did equal damage to all parties concerned.

Statements attributed to Dr Danie Craven that likened the code to a dangerous animal that needed to be exterminated won him no rugby league friends. The rugby league media, especially the league newspaper Rugby Leaguer, criticised Craven’s actions as both childish and silly as well as an ‘illiterate diatribe’ not ‘worth more than a good hearty raspberry’. At the same time, it severely criticised the British league establishment for, inter alia, excluding the Rugby League Supporters Federation (RLSF) from league affairs; for its failure to defend league from rugby union poaching by the army and others and to reverse its marginalisation within the education sector; and for perpetuating the myth that rugby league was wholly professional.²³ In addition, the whole issue of the sport colour bar in South Africa proved problematic.

Rugby league in the United Kingdo...