Wellington against international teams: versus Anglo-Welsh 1908

?Above: Pat McEvedy, and the famous athletics shield contested in his name (insert), was brought up in Wellington and later returned to live there but in this match he captained the Anglo-Welsh against Wellington.

Match details?
Wellington 19 – Anglo-Welsh 13
27 May 1908 at Athletic Park. Weather: fine. Crowd: 18,000

The tour
The 1908 representative season was the busiest yet undertaken in the nearly three-decade history of the WRFU. Sixteen games were played for 11 wins and five losses. The highlight of the season was the visit of a team from Great Britain comprised of players from England and Wales and known as the Anglo-Welsh team.

The tourists spent two months in New Zealand and their overall record was only fair. In 17 matches they won nine, lost seven and drew one, scoring 184 points and conceding 153. In three Tests against the All Blacks, they lost 5-32 in Dunedin, drew 3-3 in a mud-fest in Wellington and lost 0-29 in Auckland.

The match
This match against Wellington was the Anglo-Welsh’s second of the tour, after opening with a 17-3 win over Wairarapa-Bush just a few days prior. Wellington, with several current and future All Blacks in its ranks was expected to be tough opposition.

The Anglo-Welsh team was led by captain for the day P.F (Pat) McEvedy, while Fred Roberts at first five-eighth captained Wellington.

Roberts scored the game’s first try and set up Wellington’s second try soon after, to loose forward William Hardham V.C, with a telling burst from a scrum. Halfback Clem Green scored Wellington’s third try and Wellington led 11-0 at the break.

Roberts instigated another brilliant try for Wellington after the turn, placing a centre-kick for his outside backs to re-gather and put wing ‘Mona’ Thomson away.

Down but not out, the Anglo-Welsh hit back with three tries to trail by just two points and a grandstand finish loomed. But right on fulltime Roberts offloaded to wing Frank Mitchinson who scored to make the fulltime score 19-13.

Despite the second half comeback, the Evening Post was largely dismissive of the tourists in its post-match analysis. “Britain’s representatives were fairly and squarely beaten by Wellington at the Athletic Park yesterday afternoon,” it proclaimed. “On the day the invaders were out-generalled and out-classed, and the margin of six points secured represented the difference between the two teams.”

The players
Scoring one try and having a hand in three more, Fred Roberts was the Player of the Match for Wellington. Roberts was at first five-eighth for this match, but he is better remembered as being Wellington rugby’s first great halfback. A stalwart of the Oriental Club (a forerunner to Oriental-Rongotai), Roberts played in Wellington’s first ever Ranfurly Shield winning team against Auckland in 1904 and between 1905 and 1910 he played 52 All Blacks games including 12 Tests (three as captain). He played 58 matches for Wellington after originally playing soccer for two years after leaving school.

Poneke’s Frank Mitchinson was a speed merchant on the wing for Wellington and was a stalwart for both Wellington and Wanganui representative teams for several seasons in the pre-WW1 era. Mitchinson was already an All Black at the time of this match, having scored a hat-trick in his Test debut against Australia the previous season. He went on to score 10 tries in 11 Tests, an All Blacks try-scoring record that wasn’t surpassed for six decades after his retirement when beaten by Ian Kirkpatrick. He played in all three Tests of this series. At the time of his death in 1978 the 93 year old Mitchinson was the oldest surviving All Black.

The Anglo-Welsh team’s captain for this match and tour vice-captain, Pat McEvedy, was a local boy having grown up in Wellington and attended St Patrick’s College in the mid-1890s before going to London to train as a doctor. McEvedy later moved back to Wellington and was the WRFU’s President between1930-33 and the NZRU’s President in 1934 and 1935. The McEvedy Shield, the annual secondary schools athletics competition in Wellington, was donated by Pat McEvedy in 1922.

The teams
Wellington:
G. Spencer, H.D Thomson, F.E Mitchinson, A.C Evans, W.J Wallace, F. Roberts, C.H Green, W.J Hardham, G. Hamilton, N.A Wilson, W.J Ranby, A.C Wilson, D. Rash, M. Dewar, W.F Alexander

Anglo-Welsh:
E.J Jackson, R.A Gibbs, P.F McEvedy, J.P Jones, J. I Williams, J. Davey, H. Larsen, J.C.M Dyke, R. Dibble, J.F Williams, E. Morgan, G.V Kryke, P.J Down, J.A.S Kirwan, W.I Oldham

References
The Evening Post newspaper, May 1908

Arthur Swan and Gordon Jackson. Wellington’s Rugby History 1870-1950. A.H and H.W Reed for the WRFU, 1952.

The Visitors - The History of International Rugby Teams in New Zealand by Rod Chester, Neville McMillan. MOA Publications, Auckland, 1990
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The Encyclopedia of New Zealand Rugby
By Ron Palenski, Rod Chester, Neville McMillan. Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland 1998