They were the ‘All Blacks’ not the All Whites in 1922, but New Zealand’s victory in the first trans-Tasman series a century ago was greeted with an Australian gripe.
Danny Hay’s 2022 All Whites and the Socceroos meet for the first time in 12 years in two internationals in Brisbane on Thursday and at Auckland’s Eden Park on Sunday week.
The two arch rivals have clashed 64 times since 1922. Australia – now an Asian confederation powerhouse headed for a fifth consecutive World Cup finals – have won 40 games to the All Whites’ 13, with 11 matches drawn.
Yet, it was New Zealand –captained by ex-soldier George Campbell – who triumphed in the first series in 1922 when football authorities strove to win the hearts and mind of rugby-besotted Aotearoa.
READ MORE:
* All Whites midfielder Marko Stamenic makes European Champions League group stage debut
* Former Wellington Phoenix midfielder named in Socceroos squad to face All Whites
* All Whites star concedes penalty in Serie A match against Jose Mourinho’s Roma
* All Whites can ‘bury demons’ against Australia, but what’s next after that remains unclear
Campbell, two-goal hero Ted Cook – a Southland banker and cash sprinter – and Wellington jeweller Charlie Ballard tormented the Australian defence in a 3-1 win over Australia at Carisbrook – Dunedin’s rugby fortress, in the first trans-Tasman football international on June 17, 1922.
Australia manager Alf Morgan said in the Otago Daily Times that “New Zealand deserved it on the day’’.
But his assistant-manager Syd Storey told the reporter that the New Zealand Football Association to get its referees to crack down on “obstruction’’, saying it was illegal, was not allowed in Australia and should not be permitted.
The issue became a point of contention between Storey and New Zealand captain Campbell, according to Australian football historians Nick Guoth and Trevor Thompson in their 2022 book, Burning Ambition – the Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes.
They wrote that Storey acknowledged in his post-tour report that the Australians “were warned before leaving … that New Zealand allowed players to be charged by their opponents when they did not have the ball’’.
Yet, Guoth and Thompson found, the tactic appeared lawful.
“The F.A. [Football Association] Laws of the Game for 1921-22 season stated that ‘charging is permissible, but it must not be violent or dangerous’ and ‘not from behind.
“There is every reason to believe that the New Zealand football authorities and players were still bound by these rules’’.
It still proved a sore point for Storey.
At a dinner after the 1-1 drawn second test in Wellington, the Sydneysider said, according to Guoth and Thompson, that “the Australians had no choice but to adopt the same roughhouse approach’’.
That jibe caused Campbell to “riposte that the Australians had proved very apt pupils’’.
It wouldn’t be the last time Australian football folk squawked about Kiwi muscularity. The Socceroos feared counting bruises when they faced All Whites greats Steve Sumner and Grant Turner in the 1980s.
The boot was on the other foot during a testy 2010 clash in Melbourne before both teams embarked for the World Cup finals.
Australian won, 2-1, but an Australian Associated Press report conceded “at times the Socceroos were reduced to looking like second-rate thugs. Vince Grella was lucky to avoid a straight red card for an appalling double-footed tackle on [All White] Leo Bertos. Tim Cahill was booked minutes later for an ill-considered challenge that had [Bertos] stretchered off’’.
Successful tour
But, barging bleats aside, the 1922 tour was a true groundbreaker. The sides were the first in international football, Guoth and Thompson asserted, to wear numbered shirts, an innovation then common in New Zealand rugby.
Football, then as now, was in rugby union’s shadow here, but it had a strong following.
New Zealand had played Australian teams before, but only New South Wales state sides.
By 1922 – four years after the first World War – both nations were ready to take their first steps on the international pathway.
The importance of the first New Zealand-Australia clash meant the Otago Rugby Union allowed the New Zealand Football Association to use its Carisbrook ground.
The Otago Daily Times declared the crowd of 10,000 was “probably a record for a soccer match in New Zealand’’ while Dunedin’s Evening Star noted “another 2000 took advantage of the natural grandstand … on the slope alongside the tram line’’.
New Zealand fullback Bob McAuley, an Otago tennis champion, was backed by a trainload of 600 supporters from his Kaitangata hometown.
New Zealand – dubbed the ‘All Blacks’ by local media – were clad in black shirts with a silver fern, white shorts and black socks with two white stripes. Australia wore sky blue with maroon trim – the respective colours of New South Wales and Queensland.
General consensus was the ‘Brook pitch – made slick by heavy overnight rain – would better suit than the home side than the Australians.
That soon proved the case. Campbell, Cook and Wellington winger Charlie Ballard combined superbly to cause problems for the Australian defence.
Centre-half Jock Corbett supplied a pass for Cook to strike home New Zealand’s first international goal, but Australia’s Bill (Podge) Maunder struck on the cusp of halftime.
After the interval, Ballard’s stinging shot which led to Bill Knott turning in New Zealand’s second goal.
Then Cook clinched a 3-1 win with some individual brilliance, receiving a throw-in and setting off on a solo run before slamming a rising shot past Australia’s keeper George Cartwright.
Jeweller Ballard was New Zealand’s gem. Tom Ruddiman, a former Aberdeen and Glasgow Rangers player, the trainer for the New Zealand team and newspaper columnist, wrote in the Evening Star that Ballard’s wing play “was a long way ahead of the others’’.
He praised Campbell for “working like a trojan for openings’’ and creating chances for Cook and Ballard, and hailed Cook for his “lovely goal with a fast rising shot’’.
“I think it is not too much to say that Cook was ever in the limelight,’’ Ruddiman wrote. “He is an opportunist of the first order, dashing and plucky; and my expectation of him was pleasingly realised.’’
Southland sprinter
Cook, a Liverpudlian whose family had settled in Invercargill, had genuine gas.
A talented cricketer, he also competed on the athletics circuit. Cash sprinting was a big deal in the early 20th century and Cook was rated among the swiftest in the land, alongside All Blacks Jim Parker and Jack Steel and Kiwis rugby league international George Davidson. He won back-to-back Sheffield titles in Invercargill and was only denied consecutive St Patrick’s Handicap race honours in Christchurch by a judging error. A photograph showed the Southland flyer had clearly finished first, yet he was only awarded third place.
Cook would go on to score four goals in the first New Zealand-Australia football series.
Around 12,000 fans flocked to Wellington’s Athletic Park for the second test.
Cook was on target in the first half from a Ballard cross, but Wilf Bratten equalised for Australia to earn a 1-1 draw from a game widely derided as a stinker by the New Zealand press.
Australia had everything to play for in the third test – a chance to square the series at Auckland’s Carlaw Park, a rugby league stadium opened in 1921 at the northern end of Auckland Domain.
New Zealand brought in former Aston Villa and Brentford striker Reg Boyne – the first Kiwi to playing England’s top flight – as trainer – and introduced future New Zealand cricket international Ces Dacre at inside-right.
The match produced the most brilliant football of the series, with Ballard and Cook firing New Zealand to a 2-0 halftime lead before George Brown pulled a goal back for Australia.
Dacre had a dream debut, scoring from 10m to complete a 3-1 win after keeper Cartwright had fisted away captain Campbell’s shot.
New Zealand clinched the series, with two wins and a draw, scoring seven goals to three.
The venture proved a success on and off the field.
Official records claim 15,000 crammed Carlaw Park (newspaper accounts variously estimated 9000 or 11,000). That meant up to 37,000 New Zealanders – from a population of around 1.3 million – had enjoyed a taste of international ‘association football’.
Still, the barging brouhaha lingered.
Guoth and Thompson wrote that Campbell was heckled by some Australian players when he “revisited the issue’’ at the third test dinner.
Onside, an Auckland Star columnist, claimed the visitors “showed extremely bad taste in their remarks’’, yet he claimed “the smiling New Zealand captain might have displayed more discretion by overlooking the sarcasm of his injectors’’ and “a little less passivity on the part of the Aussie team manager might reasonably have been expected’’.
But, Onside opined, the clash was “but a breeze which blew over’’.
One hundred years later, the All Whites-Socceroos flame, first struck in 2022, burns on.
Acknowledgements: Stuff archives, Burning Ambition – The Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes (Fairplay Publishing), the Ultimate New Zealand Football website, Papers Past, An Association With Soccer (NZ Football’s centenary publication).
© 2022 Stuff Limited