Dips into Football Past

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 955, 24 April 1930, Page 12

Dips into Football Past

WATCH SATURDAY’S | SPORTS EDITION FOR STORY OF PONSONBY i RUGBY CLUB 1 i 55 YEARS’ RUGGER HISTORY Fifty-five years ago, the Ponsonby Rugby Football Club was founded. Last year it won the Auckland Rugby Union's senior grade championship, and put up a record in all grades never before excelled in New Zealand. In Saturday’s sports edition of The Sun the story of the long history of Auckland's premier Rugby club will be told from the pioneer days, through the ups and downs of over half a century, to the present, time. This will be the ‘first of a series of articles which will appear in the sports edition weekly dealing with the history of all tile senior clubs in the three football codes in Auckland— Rugby Union, Rugby League and Association football. Many of these clubs go right back to the establishment of their codes in the City, and their story is, in part, the story of Auckland football. Many great players in Auckland and New Zealand Rugby football have been members of the Ponsonby Club, from the days of Albie Braund and Bob Whiteside (in his day famed wherever the Rugby game was played), to Dave Gallaher, captain of New Zealand's 1905 All Black side, George Gillett, George Nicholson and Bill Cunningham, the giants of the game in Auckland in the first decade of the present century. Then enter the players of more recent times—Lucas, McWilliams, Righton and Palmer; men with whom present-day football enthusiasts are well acquainted. The following week the history of one of Auckland’s oldest Rugby League clubs will be traced, and the third week an old-established Soccer club will form the subject of a special article.