BAY OF PLENTY LEAGUE PLAYER IN MAORI TEAM

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 43, 26 September 1949, Page 3

BAY OF PLENTY LEAGUE PLAYER IN MAORI TEAM

One Bay of Plenty player, R. Hohua, of Ruatoki, has been selected to play in the New Zealand Maori rugby league team which is to meet Australia at New Plymouth on Saturday. He will play at fiveeighth. Hohua is one of the top players of the Bay and has played for leading Auckland clubs. Before he switched to league he was one of the best players in the Whakatane Rugby Union. The Maori-Australia game on Saturday has a special significance as the Kangaroos have not yet avenged the resounding- defeat inflicted on them by the last Maori team in Auckland in 1937, which was the last occasion on which Australian and Maori representative teams met.

Share of Victories There are, in fact, many defeats to avenge, for though records of Maori Rugby League are sometimes obscure, it is at least clear that in matches with Commonwealth teams the Maoris have had their share of victories.

The Maoris were very early on the Rugby League scene, and were featured first in an Australian tour in 1908, New Zealand’s original venture into League, then Northern Union, was the dispatch of the All to tour Northern England, home of the code, in 1907. Eliminated from the All Golds because of an injury, the jvell known Opai Asher opened discussions, while the team was away, with Australian authorities with a view to establishing League at Auckland. In 1908, Maoris, Opai among them, were recruited from King Country, Tauranga, Rotorua and Thames and in an Australian tour won five of their seven games. A request from Australia prompted another Maori tour in 1909. In this they played 10 matches and won seven, their victories including two against Australia —one drew a crowd of 40,000 — and three against New South Wales. This earned them the O. T. Punch Company Cup, which is still held by the Hetet family of Te Kuiti. Mr John Hetet was one of the team’s two managers. Stayed At Home

For the next 13 years the Maoris stayed -at home, but were given fixtures with teams from overseas. In 1910 England, which had been impudently beaten by the pioneering all Golds, came out to settle the account. The Maoris were beaten 29—0, but at least it was the only game in which the visitors were held below the half century mark. Maori League waned temporarily ,in 1922. To begin with the Australian tour did not go so well—only three of seven games were won—and on return the team was completely ignored; there was not one official on the wharf to welcome it. A marked decline in interest in League among Maoris followed. Reorganisation in 1936 changed the name of the New Zealand Maori Rugby League Board of Control to the New Zealand Maori League Advisory Board, and the board was granted representation, without a vote, on the League council. Further, alocation of matches with Maori teams was recommended when itineraries of overseas visiting teams were considered. This last move quickly bore fruit. Kangaroos Trounced

The following year the Kangaroos passed thorugh New Zealand en route to Britain and France, pausing to play two tests and one game with the Maoris. The Maoris had been in solid training for a week, and trounced the Australians 16—a. Half of those points came from the boot of George Nepia, who kicked four penalty goals.

That was the Maoris’ last international venture. Maoris, of course, have represented New Zealand since—there were eight in the 1938 Kiwi team that toured Australia and seven in the 1939 Kiwi team that went on a short-lived tour of England—but the only move since to send away a purely Maori team was allowed to lapse.