Tribute to rugby pioneer

A new book seeks to shed some overdue light on the man who introduced rugby to Nelson and New Zealand. Geoff Collett reports.

Everyone knows - or has no excuse for not knowing - that the first game of rugby in New Zealand was played in Nelson, at the Botanical Reserve. But what about the man who made that first game happen, who could claim to have brought rugby to New Zealand?

That his name is hardly a household one is at least partly explained in the opening of a new biography about him, where he is quoted: "That I introduced the game to my native land was a mere coincidence and nothing to blow about."

Rugby historian Clive Akers has decided otherwise, recently writing and publishing the story of Charles Monro, "the man who gave New Zealand rugby".

Monro was born in Nelson in 1851, one of the offspring of David (later Sir David) Monro, who went on to a prominent political career in the colony including Speaker of Parliament. The young Charles was sent to England as a teenager and studied at Christ's College there, where he was introduced to rugby; on returning to New Zealand and Nelson in 1870, he discovered a hybrid form of football being played here and decided to introduce others to what he called "the great superiority of rugby".

They took to it with enthusiasm and a contest between a Nelson College team and the new Nelson club was quickly organised. As the Colonist newspaper of the day described the famous first game in May 1870, "it is all shove, pull, rush and roll about in a confused mass till `down' is cried, and away the ball goes again till perchance it gets in touch or caught".

All involved heartily enjoyed it, apparently, and the young Monro continued to spread the enthusiasm, arranging for the Nelson club to travel to Wellington for a match against the capital's finest and helping set in train the sport's escalating popularity among New Zealand menfolk and its eventual emergence as the national game.

Akers recognises that the story of rugby's origins in this country is a well-worn one, so has chosen instead to write about Monro the man more than rugby the game. He traces Monro's life as he moved about the country and abroad and then settled as an orchardist in Manawatu.

His sporting interests were by no means confined to rugby - for example, he is also reputed to have played in the first game of polo in this country, also in Nelson, in 1871.

As Akers acknowledges in his book, Monro was not exactly forgotten by the rugby hierarchy. Portraits of him hang in both the New Zealand Rugby Union headquarters and the New Zealand Rugby Museum, where Akers is a long-time committee member and former curator.

But he felt something more was needed. He recalls in his book a conversation with Monro's grandson, Neil Monro: "We discussed how rugby was now a major multimillion-dollar business, yet the game's founder was largely an unknown man and never really recognised for what he started."

The wealth of background material Akers tracked down included extensive family diaries and correspondence and Sir David Monro's photo albums, some of the images from which appear in the book. The result ensures that Charles Monro's place in New Zealand's first XV is now recorded for posterity.

• Monro, written and published by Clive Akers, $50; available from Page and Blackmore Booksellers, Nelson, or the NZ Rugby Museum, PO Box 36, Palmerston North.

- © Fairfax NZ News