CRICKET AND THE MORAL CURRICULUM OF THE NEW ZEALAND ELITE SECONDARY SCHOOLS c1860-c1920
Greg Ryan
Lincoln University, New Zealand
The development prior to 1914 of a `moral curriculum' within the New Zealand state primary school system is well documented. Colin McGeorge observes that the schools devoted an increasing amount of time to measures that would refine the moral character and conduct of their pupils and instil traits of discipline, industry and obedience. To this end, additions to the curriculum such as manual training, domestic science for girls, military drill for boys, various forms of physical training and later organized sport for both sexes, medical inspections, flag saluting and an emphasis on patriotism were legislated for, and reinforced by a diligent school inspectorate. All were aimed at producing superior specimens capable of serving New Zealand and the wider British Empire in a military or domestic capacity.1 By contrast, and perhaps due to their numerical insignificance, rather less has been said about the place of the New Zealand secondary schools within this environment. In 1900 there were only 25 secondary schools of any kind in the country with a total enrolment of c1800 boys and c1000 girls - or three per cent of the eligible age group. This increased to 25% by 1939.2
But to ignore the moral role played by the New Zealand secondary schools, and particularly the fostering of sport for this purpose in the elite boys' schools, is a serious mistake. In common with their English public school counterparts, New Zealand schools moved during the last third of the nineteenth century to establish sport as an essential adjunct to the lessons of the classroom. A succession of New Zealand headmasters and teachers, most of them trained in the public school and Oxbridge tradition, devoted considerable time and energy to developing sporting facilities, hiring well qualified professional coaches and using sport as the cradle for their moral rhetoric. Moreover, it was their imitation of an English public school model from the 1860s onwards which set the pattern for the primary schools. And it was they who produced the first generations of a colonial born middle class who were to play the greatest role in articulating New Zealand's consciousness of itself and its place within the British (sporting) Empire.
This paper argues that the most enduring expression of these moral values is to be found not in the conventional sporting association between New Zealand and rugby, but in cricket. Contrary to common mythology, cricket was the dominant game in nineteenth century New Zealand. It was the first organised team sport, the first to be played at provincial level and in the secondary schools. Even when rugby began to supersede it as the `national game' during the late 1890s, there remained an evident distinction between that which was `popular' and that which was more readily associated with esprit de corps. Rugby successes enabled it to assume an important place within the fabric of emergent nationalism and in some respects to offer a significant challenge to older imperial sporting ideals. The structural limitations of New Zealand cricket, and its attendant lack of international success, ensured that it remained a more obviously middle class embodiment of Englishness and imperial deference. Both games became important to the moral curriculum of the secondary schools. But if one accepts the contemporary rhetoric that New Zealand rugby made `men', then cricket made `gentlemen'.3
Educational institutions in general, and more especially those schools which sought to replicate the English public school model, played a crucial role in transmitting English cultural values to New Zealand.4 The New Zealand elite secondary schools5 fashioned a homogeneous educational and social philosophy which stressed the primacy of an English cultural, moral and imperial ethos and reinforced a longstanding colonial nostalgia for the familiar social institutions of `home'. To this end, A.E. Campbell in Educating New Zealand, one of the volumes commissioned in 1940 to mark the centennial of European settlement, concluded that `the historical principle of maintaining cultural continuity played a greater part in forming the education system of New Zealand than did the geographical principle of adaptation to a new environment'.6
In many respects the New Zealand schools were quite distinct from their English counterparts. Most claimed more egalitarian foundations, and eventually became secular institutions endowed by the state. Yet at the same time they were highly selective in borrowing from and exploiting the English model to convey a message to their pupils that the school was both a symbolic link with `home' and an important step towards the acquisition of a sense of culture and tradition in a recently formed colonial community. As Gary McCulloch observes of Auckland Grammar School, `imperial ideals and the trappings of tradition helped to conceal the fact that the school's character and role had in reality adapted quickly to its colonial setting.7
Yet there was not an immediate and wholesale adoption of the English sporting ideal within the New Zealand secondary schools. All experienced decades of fluctuating rolls and economic hardship before they could begin to consolidate and expand. Moreover, the schools had quite diverse social and theological origins and varying profiles within their local communities. Only towards the end of the nineteenth century were they able to fashion a fairly homogeneous educational and sporting philosophy. In the manner of the English grammar schools, their stated objectives upon foundation became blurred as they strove to replicate the ideals of the older public schools.8 Other features also drew the schools together. By the turn of the century every school had established a magazine - within which sporting and other activities were recorded and the school ethos expressed in articles by masters and old boys. They also adopted the English prefect and house system - as much a mechanism for administration and control as a structure for internal sporting competition - and most had adopted a school uniform, or at least a tie by 1900.9
Educational reforms during the early twentieth century made little impact on these traditions - other than gradually to increase the number of New Zealand boys who were exposed to them. George Hogben's efforts to impose a more vocational curriculum on the classically academic proclivities of the schools, and such far-reaching initiatives as the extension of free secondary education after 1902, were met with stiff resistance. Wellington College, in particular, simply refused to co-operate with the new regime. A. de Bathe Brandon, Chairman of the College Board of Governors, stated in 1908 that `it is the duty of the Board to preserve the Wellington College as the institution contemplated by its founders'. He warned that submission to the free place scheme would involve the school in a `moral suicide'.10
The growing importance of sport to the moral curriculum of the secondary schools owed most to a succession of headmasters who embodied the quintessentials of public school and Oxbridge athleticism, and in several cases were talented sportsmen in their own right. In time, these men were reinforced by their own carefully trained pupils and a clear pattern of recruitment from within the expanding New Zealand structure.
Christ's College, Christchurch, where cricket was well established by the early 1860s,11 was especially well served by Charles Carteret Corfe and Francis Augustus Hare. Corfe (1847-1935) took a BA in Mathematics from Cambridge and accumulated a formidable sporting record. An Athletics Blue, he also played cricket and rowed for Jesus College. Arriving at Christ's College in 1871, he contributed some outstanding innings for the Canterbury provincial cricket team during the 1870s and remained a leading competitor at Canterbury Athletics Association meetings during the mid 1880s.12 Corfe initiated the annual school sports and inter-school sports exchanges, supervised the building of the first gymnasium and swimming pool and the development of a new cricket ground. But he was a victim of politicking by conservative elements within the Christ's College Board of Governors, some of whom maintained that the College ought to be administered by a classically trained cleric rather than a mathematician. He was forced to resign in 1888. and turned his considerable abilities to reviving the fortunes of Toowoomba Grammar School, Queensland.13
Corfe's successor, Francis Augustus Hare (1845-1912), possessed far less athletic ability but no less dedication to the cause. Educated at St Columba's, Dublin, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hare came to New Zealand in 1872 as Private Secretary to the Governor, Sir James Ferguson. Appointed to Christ's College in 1877 as Chaplain and teacher of classics and divinity, he served as Headmaster 1888-93 before reverting to the chaplaincy until his retirement in 1912.14 He took the College XI on its first southern tour to Timaru, Oamaru, Palmerston and Dunedin in 1878 and remained a passionate advocate of cricket. `Season after season found him daily at the nets ... He had peculiar skill in detecting and developing latent talent and rejoiced exceedingly when he found the making of a good lob-bowler'.15 Hare was instrumental in securing a long line of talented professional coaches, establishing a new ground and pavilion in Hagley Park and employing a full-time groundsman for the College.16
Corfe and Hare did most to shape Joseph Firth (1859-1931) of Wellington College as the doyen of the first New Zealand generation of sporting headmasters. Born in Wellington, Firth won a scholarship to Nelson College in 1873 and became a pupil teacher in 1875. After representing the school at athletics, cricket and football, and as captain of cadets, he was a Junior Master at Wellington College 1881-6, and took 32 wickets in five matches for Wellington during the early 1880s. Appointed Gymnastics Master under Corfe at Christ's College in 1886, he took a BA from Canterbury College before returning to Wellington College as Headmaster in 1891.17
Before Firth's arrival Wellington College sport had languished - as much due to a lack of facilities as a lack of interest on the part of the teaching staff. Fortunes increased during Firth's first period of service and there were numerous matches involving pupils, masters and old boys.18 But standards slipped again after his departure to Christchurch, leading The Wellingtonian of May 1891 to roundly condemn the cricketers for their failure to practice and inability to put a full XI in the field at any time during the season.19 From late 1891 Firth set about raising funds to build a gymnasium and turn the College's surplus of rough land into quality playing fields. As one old boy recalled,
The Boss loved the Lower Ground. He spent hours after school with a bottle of concentrated sulphuric acid and a piece of tubing and burnt out the dandelions, docks and other weeds. He immersed himself in the literature of grass cultivation, and he became an authority on the question.20
Firth also led by example as a player, dominating the batting and bowling of the XI during the 1890s, boxing with his pupils, and regularly throwing his 6'5' frame into school football matches.21 Accordingly, The Wellingtonian now found much to admire. Cricketers were praised for their enthusiasm in practice and energy on the field, while `lounging' non- games players were attacked mercilessly.22 By the time ill health forced Firth to retire in 1920, Wellington College had established a consistent reputation as an academic and sporting institution of high regard, both within New Zealand and among all public schools of the Empire.23
Frank Milner (1875-1944) - Rector of Waitaki Boys' High School, Oamaru, 1906-44 - was another New Zealander who well understood the importance of sport. Educated at Nelson College and the University of Canterbury, Milner was an ardent imperialist and educational innovator. Indeed, he was regarded by certain of his contemporaries as the New Zealand equivalent of Thomas Arnold.24 Eminent Canterbury historian Sir James Hight recalled Milner during his student days as `a Spartan where physical fitness was concerned - he used to plunge in the Avon each morning before breakfast summer and winter'.25 This routine continued when Milner took over Waitaki. He was a regular participant in the early morning run and `tonic dip in the baths' which he demanded of his pupils in all weathers. Ian Milner felt that his father `was so bent on carrying through speedily the innovations that he wanted that he had to be personally in the vanguard of every activity'. Regular exercise, sunbathing, compulsory sport and total abstinence from alcohol and smoking became the watchwords of the Waitaki regime.26
Ian Milner's recollections of his own schooldays at Waitaki during the late 1920s resonate with memories of summer cricket and the particular fascination which pupils held for the distant game of England.
Empire sentiment apart, England at cricket, was the father of us all, Ashes in hand or no. A veteran like W.G. Grace was a dynastic figure.... I had my Jack Hobbs of Surrey and England and Bert Sutcliffe, Yorkshire and England.... After I'd straightened out the cream and green-covered mag, which had travelled twelve thousand miles into my hands, the first thing was to see how many Jack had made against Lancashire or Kent three months or more previously.27
Whatever Ian Milner's subsequent career as an active socialist, there was no mistaking the imperial and public school ideology which dominated his sporting youth.
Wanganui Collegiate School was equally well served by its sporting headmasters. George Richard Saunders, a Cambridge under-graduate and talented athlete whose ill health forced him to come to New Zealand in 1876, presented the first sporting colours, based on the dark blue and black of his own Gonville College. He raised £40 to clear a cricket ground and purchase equipment and, around 1880, took the XI to Marton to play St Stephen's Parish School.28 Saunders' efforts were sustained by Bache Wright Harvey (1835-88), Headmaster 1882-87. A graduate of St John's College, Cambridge, and a curate of various New Zealand parishes before his arrival at Wanganui, Harvey oversaw the rapid expansion of cricket, rowing, rugby and tennis during the 1880s. His cricketers attracted particular attention. An 1883 letter to the Wanganui Collegian, signed `Esprit de corps', suggested that arrangements should be made to photograph the XI, as it was common in England to photograph teams who had brought honour to the school.29
Sport at Wanganui received its greatest boost from Walter Empson (1856-1934). Educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Oxford, he joined the Collegiate staff in 1884 and served as Headmaster 1888-1909. Empson quickly introduced the prefectorial system and placed many other institutions of the school, especially sporting, in the hands of the boys. His philosophy is quite apparent from a report to the Wellington Diocesan Synod in 1889, when he stated that `success in sport may not be an infallible test of a school's well-being, but there can be little doubt that decadence in this respect is an almost certain proof that all is not as it should be'.30 In 1901 Empson instituted the Loretto uniform of shorts and open necked flannel shirts - soon to become standard in New Zealand primary schools. He was President of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in 1900 and the New Zealand Cricket Council in 1901.31
Auckland Grammar School owes its sporting tradition to C.F. Bourne (1850-1913), Headmaster 1882-93. With a First in Classics from St John's College, Oxford where he excelled as an athlete and cricketer, Bourne used sport and extra-mural activities generally to foster what he regarded as a much needed `tone' and `school feeling'. In 1885 he persuaded the Board of Governors to hire two good wickets in the Auckland Domain. But his idealisation of the public school model was not always matched by the social and economic realities of a colonial school in which funds were limited, facilities spartan and attendances sporadic. After several clashes with Auckland Grammar's Governors, Bourne left in 1893 to succeed Hare as Headmaster of Christ's College - a move he regarded as a `professional promotion' to a school better suited to his ideals.32
Bourne's successor, J.W. Tibbs CMG (1855-1924), Headmaster 1893-1922, was a distinguished product of Keble College, Oxford. According to the school historian, he belonged to the long tradition of `great Victorian autocrats who ran their schools almost single-handed and moulded them to conform with their own theories'.33 To maintain the `tone' established by Bourne, Tibbs created a school cadet corps, generated new enthusiasm for the Old Boys Association and inaugurated a strong tradition of employing like-minded Old Boys as teachers.34 The playing fields were greatly expanded and S.P. Jones, veteran of twelve Tests for Australia, was employed as cricket coach. There were four school XI's by 1913, and Tibbs had solicited sufficient contributions from old boys to initiate regular matches against Christchurch Boys' High School among others.35
While these men shared an obvious love for cricket as recreation, they prized the game even more as a moral metaphor. With its emphasis on group loyalty and cooperation, boys would ideally be conditioned for much sterner challenges beyond the field. Implicit was a strict adherence to the basic tenets of English amateurism which downplayed the importance of winning while elevating the value of participation. For as Richard Holt explains:
By teaching boys how to lose as well as how to win with dignity, the wider competitive principle was strengthened. For to succeed in any competition - sporting, academic or economic - the odds were very much that you would lose before you would win. It was vital that boys should not be discouraged by initial setbacks and that they should persevere until success finally came. There was no disgrace in losing so long as you did your best.36
This amateur ethos also represented an internal discipline and code of conduct for players whereby one adhered without question to both the written rules and the spirit of the game, and did not attempt to secure any advantage over an opponent that was not fully able to be reciprocated.37
The Christ's College Register, in an obituary for Corfe in August 1935, placed greatest emphasis on his use of sport in shaping the amateur ethos of the school.
[I]t was Mr Corfe who fired the imagination of the scholars, broadened their activities, impressed their receptive minds and fitted them to take their places in any company of the world's youth. He had a keen sense of his own responsibility, and both by example and by precept he created a similar sense in the minds of his boys. He knew what he was doing when he inculcated in his boys the love of games for their own sake and when he taught them that it was the quest and not the quarry that was important.38
This was high praise indeed for one who had departed from the College almost fifty years earlier in somewhat acrimonious circumstances.
Among the New Zealand headmasters, Joseph Firth was similarly preoccupied with a broad definition of amateur sportsmanship. As his close friend and biographer, Sir James Eliott, surmised:
Firth aimed at the development of the complete man, and would have placed first, character and personality; second, scholarship; and third, sport.... Firth looked upon games for boys not only as physical exercise but also, and mainly, as moral and mental training. He had no wish to make football matches and cricket matches a public spectacle for idle thousands; a source of revenue for promoters, and astute gamblers. Mob hysteria which at times sweeps like a wave over New Zealand for attainment of "football supremacy of the world" would have been a sorry spectacle for Firth. He remained all through the days of his manhood a grown-up, game-playing boy, and kept that spirit and outlook.39
As much as it was a positive element in the building of character, sport was equally, in Firth's considered opinion, a counter to the perceived evils of masturbation and other adolescent vice.
That Satan finds work for idle hands is an ever present difficulty for the schoolmaster whose aim should be to keep hands and minds busy with healthy occupation. It is true that at times the boy attaches too much importance to athletics, but the danger he thus incurs is a grain of sand to the mountain of danger that threatens the boy who, slack in his classwork, takes no part in the athletic side of school life. His mind wanders, and assuredly it does wander. It does not roam over the clean fields of health and the playing of games, but wades through the garbage of the gutter of idleness.40
Above all else Firth understood the interdependence of a healthy body and a healthy mind. Without achieving the former, one could not hope to possess the latter - or as David Newsome neatly expresses it, `I act therefore I am'.41
Much as this sporting code was an internal mechanism to serve the objectives of the New Zealand schools, there are also signs of proselytising. Under F.A. Hare's guiding editorial hand, the Christ's College Sports Register, inaugurated in 1884, helped to create a superior sense of `mission' in which Christ's College cricketers embraced a certain personal responsibility for the standard and tone of local cricket. Winning was not important for its own sake, but rather because it would send a clear message that a tradition grounded in English social and moral values had triumphed over its somewhat rustic colonial setting.
After a mediocre 1884-85 season the Register lamented that the XI had failed in its ultimate purpose.
Until the school Eleven shows itself decidedly superior to the ordinary second eleven as still to be met in Christchurch, it will neither fulfil completely its mission of improving the standard of cricket here, nor will it repay the pains and trouble that have been expended in coaching it for some years past.42
After further disappointing performances at the end of 1885, the Register offered the intriguing suggestion that the higher purpose of College cricketers was being stifled by the standards of their opponents.
It is the misfortune, at any rate it is the lot, of a colonial school eleven to have to play for the most part against cricketers who do not usually set them quite the examples of style in batting and bowling which boys do well to copy. In England, the Public School elevens are not only carefully coached on their own grounds, but during the early part of the summer are systematically fitted against teams of batsmen and bowlers, among whom are often gentlemen players of science and repute. Example, says the proverb, is better than precept. At any rate it is more often followed. Now without wishing to speak severely of a style as seen in the ordinary run of second eleven players in Christchurch, it may be safely affirmed that any youngster playing with or against them, will see quite as much to be avoided as to be imitated. Yet it is against second elevens that Christ's College cricket is almost entirely played.
To remedy the problem, Wednesday afternoon matches were instituted between the College XI and teams combining leading Canterbury provincial players and aspiring College colts.43 Nevertheless the XI still finished near the bottom of the local Cup competition on several occasions during the next decade.
Despite these failings, an English visitor to New Zealand during the mid 1890s was moved to remark that the College sporting facilities were as good as any in England. `The Canterbury people like to hear it called the `Eton of New Zealand', but it is Rugby rather than Eton. A leading feature in the school system is the attention paid to the physical side of education, to which the Canterbury people attach great importance'.44
But to attach great importance to sport was not to saturate the school with it. There was always an awareness of the need to keep sport in perspective, to view it as a component of the wider curriculum rather than its centrepiece. At Auckland Grammar School Tibbs warned in 1903 that all things needed to be kept in proportion.
Physical development alone will not save us, and unless work is restored to its true position as the serious business of life, we shall soon drop behind in the race for material and intellectual progress with the earnest German and the strenuous American.45
Four years later, during a heated debate on the role of school sport, Firth explained the careful balance of his position at Wellington College.
The schoolmaster's work lies very largely in the classroom, and his efforts are directed towards the boys' acquisition of knowledge and still more towards the training of the boys' minds; these things do not, by any means, sum up his work and anxieties, for there is a much more important thing than either - the boy's character. An important means by which to influence the boy in the right way, to get more closely in touch with his feelings, to give him opportunities for developing his individuality and his manly qualities - among which I rank highly usefulness and self-sacrifice - is afforded by school games and athletics. Of course these things may be allowed to occupy too much of the boy's attention and thought - they may be regarded as the only things desirable - but at this school very strenuous efforts are made to prevent play assuming too important a place.46
In this instance, warnings against the excesses of sport may have come less from Firth than from his College Board of Governors. In August 1907 the Board expressed concern at the consequences of College teams playing in club football after a local team had been suspended for its bad language in a match against the College. The Chairman advised Firth that matches should only be played against other schools and not against local clubs.47 The matter appears to have been taken no further.
The concerns of the Wellington College Governors point to contrasting attitudes to rugby and cricket among some headmasters after the turn of the century. Explanations for this divergence in sporting cultures require rather more space than the confines of this paper allow.48 Suffice it to say that many of those who advocated sport as a key component of their moral rhetoric felt more at ease with the amateurism and imperial deference characteristic of New Zealand cricket than with the increasing bellicosity of rugby _ a game which became a crucial component of emergent New Zealand nationalism through the deployment of distinct local playing methods and competitive attitudes.49 Of course it is undeniable that rugby came to be the pre-eminent sport of the New Zealand secondary schools. More often than not it was made compulsory. But it is equally true that no other sport prompted so much concern from headmasters as to how such popularity, and the requisite physicality of the game, might be kept within the bounds of etiquette and moral usefulness.
When the Rev. E.C. Crosse succeeded as Headmaster of Christ's College in 1920 he attempted to raise the academic standard of the school and reduce its sporting emphasis. His particular target was the annual rugby fixture against Christchurch Boys' High School. After the 1921 encounter drew more than 10,000 vociferous spectators to Lancaster Park, Crosse declared that he would not compromise the welfare of his boys by allowing them to be used for `gladiatorial purposes' in a public arena marked by bellicosity, a `win at all costs' mentality and no small amount of interest from the `speculating' community. By 1924 he had succeeded in moving the game from Lancaster Park to the College ground, and it was not played at all in 1925.50
Yet the tone of his prize-giving speeches throughout the 1920s reveals that while Crosse disparaged rugby as `a dragon with claws which feeds on the young', he reserved a certain fondness for cricket and tennis and never intended that they should be the object of his criticism.51 Similar feelings had emerged from the Secondary Schools' Teachers Association conference in May 1922. A committee report on school sport was of unanimous opinion that the Moascar Cup, presented for inter-secondary school rugby competition in 1920, was not in the best interests of the pupils and should be discontinued. It was felt that the Cup produced `undue excitement' among boys and caused too much of a distraction to their studies. To this end, competition for the Cup had all but ceased by 1925.52 Yet, at the same time, the committee explicitly stated that the Heathcote Williams Challenge Shield, the object of inter-school cricket competition since 1908, had no ill effects on school sport and ought to be continued.53 In part this was a reflection of the limited amount of competition for the Shield. But it was equal testimony to the lingering idealization of cricket as an embodiment of all that was essentially English, amateur and civilized.
Crosse found much comfort in the sentiments of T.C. Lowry, captain of the first New Zealand cricket team to England in 1927. Lowry was a Christ's College graduate and Cambridge Blue, described as `probably the best example of the English amateur to play cricket in this country'.54 Upon arrival in London, he informed the British Sportsmen's Club that his men were `Britishers anxious to appear on the cricket map, and accordingly came home not to beat the best sportsmen but to learn the rules as England taught them'.55 When the team returned to New Zealand, Crosse declared his first and only school half-holiday for a sporting occasion.56
For all of the sporting similarities, there was one marked difference between the New Zealand schools and many of their colonial counterparts. Unlike India, the West Indies and parts of Africa where cricket held a crucial mediating and harmonising role between indigenous and colonising cultures,57 there is no evidence of any deliberate cultivation of Maori cricket for similar purposes. The limitations on Maori cricket stem, in large part, from the rural base of the Maori population. Most belonged to scattered rural communities. Only 11.2% were urbanised by 1936 and 19% by 1945. Maori were therefore very unlikely to attend the sort of secondary schools which produced a large proportion of local and provincial cricketers. By 1935 only 8.4% of Maori aged 13 to 17 were attending secondary schools of any kind.58
It is nevertheless surprising that very little cricket was played at the leading Maori secondary schools - St Stephens Native School and Te Aute College. Te Aute under the headmastership of J.C. Thornton, 1878-1912, subscribed to many of the familiar moral and physical values of the public schools. The Te Aute students association (Kotahitanga) was also a firm advocate of integration into European sport. As late as 1902 Thornton suggested that Maori should be encouraged to pursue more gentlemanly activities such as cricket and tennis, rather than rugby which was violent, caused injuries and aroused too much of a fighting spirit. But there is no mention of a school cricket XI until at least the 1920s.59 There is no mention of the game anywhere in the history of St Stephens.
But it is surely significant that five of the seven Maori first-class cricketers who appeared in New Zealand prior to 1920 were products of the European secondary school system or of Te Aute College. John Grey (Jack) Taiaroa (1862-1907), solicitor, All Black, multi-talented sportsman and Hawkes Bay batsman during the 1890s, was educated at Otago Boys' High School.60 Paraire Henare Tomoana (c1874-1946), educated at Te Aute College, and later to become a noted Maori composer, writer and translator, played once for Hawkes Bay in 1903.61 Wiri Aurunui Baker (1892-1966), a beneficiary of Joseph Firth's cricketing tutelage at Wellington College, played as a batsman in 34 matches for Wellington between 1912 and 1930 and twice for New Zealand against New South Wales in 1923-24. His brother, George, another Wellington College old boy, played three times for Wellington in 1920.62 John Hopere Wharewiti Uru (1868-1921), educated at Te Aute College, was a farmer and native land agent who represented Southern Maori in Parliament 1918-21. He represented Canterbury twice as a fast bowler in 1894.63
Almost without exception the late nineteenth century curriculum of the New Zealand elite secondary schools placed an increasing emphasis on the utility of sport generally and cricket specifically. In a purely cricketing context, these institutions made a disproportionate contribution to the playing and administration of the game at a provincial and national level. By 1914 Christ's College had produced at least 57 first-class cricketers - for Canterbury, Hawkes Bay, Otago, Oxford and Cambridge, while Auckland Grammar School had provided at least forty - almost a third - of all Auckland provincial representatives.64 But, above all else, boys of whatever ability were imbued with an ideology which stressed a multiplicity of values for cricket beyond individual athletic prowess.
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Notes
1 McGeorge, 1992; McGeorge, 1985.
2 Murdoch, 1943, pp.4,40-41. There are no figures for the numbers in private secondary education during this period. An extrapolation from later figures suggests that the number might increase by 10-20%.
3 Ryan, 1996, esp. pp.364-394.
4 McCulloch, 1988, p.257.
5 Murdoch, 1943, pp.ix,33. By virtue of longevity, contemporary acceptance and having obtained a roll in excess of 100 by 1900, these were Auckland Grammar School, Wanganui Collegiate, Wellington College, Nelson Boys' College, Christ's College, Christchurch Boys' High School, Otago Boys' High School. Waitaki Boys' High School can also be considered in this group after the arrival of Frank Milner in 1906.
6 Campbell, 1941, p.6.
7 McCulloch, 1988, p.262.
8 Mangan, 1983.
9 The main magazines were The Grammarian (Auckland Grammar School); Christchurch Boys' High School Magazine; Christ's College Register; Nelsonian (Nelson College); Otago High School Magazine, The Oamaruvian (Waitaki Boys High School); The Collegian (Wanganui Collegiate School); Wellingtonian, (Wellington College,).
10 Roth, 1952, pp.110-116.
11 School List of Christ's College, 1935, passim.
12 C.C. Corfe, obituary, The Christ's College Register, August 1935, pp.93-95.
13 Hamilton, 1996, pp.114,129-137,143.
14 Hamilton, 1996, pp.107-108.
15 Hamilton, 1996, pp.109-111.
16 School List of Christ's College, 1935, pp.324-326.
17 A.W. Beasley, Joseph Firth, in Orange, 1993, pp.142-143.
18 Leckie, 1934, passim.
19 The Wellingtonian, 2 May 1891, p.5.
20 Quoted in Eliott, 1937, pp.188-189.
21 The Wellingtonian, passim.
22 For example, The Wellingtonian, 30 April 1892, p.8; 8 December 1893, p.6; April 1897, p.11; April 1901, p.11.
23 Heron, 1967, pp.55-56.
24 G. Lee, Frank Milner, in Orange, 1996, pp.343-344.
25 Milner, 1983, p.29.
26 Milner, 1983, pp.53, 56-57.
27 Milner, 1993, pp.49-50.
28 Sangster, 1985, pp.38-39.
29 Sangster, 1985, pp.48-49.
30 Sangster, 1985, pp.55-56.
31 P.B. Mackay, Walter Empson, in Orange, 1993, pp.132-133.
32 Trembath, 1969, pp.63-95.
33 Trembath, 1969, p.96.
34 Trembath, 1969, pp.105, 206.
35 Trembath, 1969, pp.87, 150, 172.
36 Holt, 1990, p.97.
37 Holt, 1990, pp.97-100; Dunning & Sheard, 1979, pp.96-7, 147.
38 The Christ's College Register, August 1935, p.93.
39 Eliott, 1937, p.178.
40 Eliott, 1937, pp.182-183.
41 Newsome, 1961, p.197.
42 Christ's College Sports Register, June 1885, p.8.
43 Christ's College Sports Register, February 1886, p.33.
44 Twopeny, 1895, pp.220-221.
45 Quoted in Cumming & Cumming, 1981, p.72.
46 Quoted in Eliott, 1937, pp.183-184.
47 New Zealand Herald, 2 September 1907, p.6.
48 This topic is still awaiting significant research in New Zealand. For a partial explanation, see Ryan, 1996, pp.347-348.
49 Vincent, 1997.
50 Ryan, 1999.
51 Christ's College Register, passim; quotation, April 1931, p.428.
52 The Press, 20 May 1922, p.10; 22 May 1922, p.6; Ryan, 1999, p.
53 The Press, 20 May 1922, p.10.
54 McConnell & Smith, 1993, p.91.
55 The Times, 7 May 1927, p.6.
56 Christ's College Register, April 1928, p.568.
57 Mangan, 1986.
58 M. King, in Rice, 1992, pp.286, 289.
59 Tyro & Scarlett, 1979; AJHR, 1906, p.33; Walker, 1990, pp.174-175.
60 Chester & McMillan, 1980, p.195.
61 A. Ballara, N. Huata, Paraire Henare Tomoana, in Orange, 1996, pp.534-536.
62 Carman, 1975, pp.119-125.
63 C.E. Lock, John Hopere Wharewiti Uru, in Orange, 1996, pp.544-545.
64 School List of Christ's College, 1935, passim; Trembath, 1969, pp.383-389; Auckland Cricket Association, 1983, pp.209-216.