At half time in the Bledisloe Cup match last Saturday night 17 August, players from the Sydney University Football Club and Newington College — both celebrating their Sesquicentenaries this year — performed a re-enactment of their first rugby match together more than 140 years ago.

That original match was important not only for Newington’s history — it was the first recorded rugby match played by a Newington team — but for the history of rugby in Australia: it was ‘the first football match which has been played by a regular school team’, as our historical source for it notes.

Our source is an article in the June 1902 issue of The Newingtonian, which quotes at length from a newspaper cutting about a match to take place ‘this afternoon between the University football team and the Newington College Club, on the grounds of the latter.’ The cutting was undated, but the article’s author consulted William Horner Fletcher, an Old Boy and son of the College’s second President, Rev Joseph Horner Fletcher. He had played in the match and confirmed that it had taken place 33 or 34 years earlier. Most likely this was 1869.

The article also notes: ‘For some time previously Newington had been playing the Melbourne game (or a variation of it), introduced to the School by the then Head Master, Mr Metcalfe, who came from Victoria. However, a change to Rugby rules was decided upon, and the match against the Unis. was the first played thereunder.’ Metcalfe left Newington early in 1869 and it is likely that the policy change from Australian Rules to rugby took place soon after.

The Newingtonian reported that the Newington boys ‘had not thoroughly mastered the Rugby method of play, and, being hampered by their knowledge of the Melbourne game, they lost the match.’ Rugby rules were still evolving at this time. The match was played ‘according to the rules of the University FC’, with twenty players per side, a round ball and other features unfamiliar today.

David Roberts
College Archivist