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Sydney RU club in 1905, captained by Alec Burdon (unbadged, with ball)

The Game in Australia
by Sean Fagan of RL1908.com
Rugby in Australia has been played since the 1850's. Australia's largest city, Sydney, was a sporting city when Rugby League loomed on the horizon in 1907 and 1908. Throughout the second half of the 19th Century the three football codes - soccer, rugby and Victorian rules - had all gained support and interest since their introduction to NSW and Queensland.
While Melbourne and Victoria quickly forsook all other games in favour of their own version of the football game, Australia's northern states adopted a worldlier and open approach. It was not uncommon for players, teams and supporters to move back and forth between the codes depending on the attractiveness of the event, the timing, the location and the players involved. Rugby though gained the ascendency when teams from interstate, New Zealand and particularly England began to arrive.
The game of rugby was first played in NSW as early as the 1860's, with Sydney University the first club formed in 1864 and a district competition was introduced in 1900.
Soccer was formally established in NSW in August 1880, although it had been played in Sydney for decades earlier. Australian (or Victorian) Rules had been played in Sydney since June 1880. However, while Sydneysiders would never rule out going to any sporting event, it was clear by the turn of the century that rugby was the most popular winter sport in NSW.
In 1907 the NSW v All Blacks game drew a crowd over 50,000 to the SCG - a record crowd and near enough to 10% of the Sydney populace! In the seven years the district club competition had been operating since 1900, the sport grew wildly in popularity.
The rugby competition of 1907 consisted of 11 teams: Glebe, Balmain, Wests, Souths, Norths, University, Easts, Sydney, Newtown and the recently included clubs of Manly and St George.
Before the beginning of League in 1908, the Sydney district club rugby competition had been dominated by Glebe. They won four titles of the eight titles since the competition's inception in 1900. Easts won in 1903 and Souths in 1905.
Open grounds were the rule at the time and the barrackers ranged themselves in positions along the boundary lines of the fields. The fields themselves were kept clear by burly club partisans armed with a businesslike waddy or sapling.
The old-time players wore strides which generally ended below the knees and some wore caps in the club's colours with a tassel hanging at the back. Collar-stud or "whiskers" tackling was in vogue in rugby then and slick backline stars such as Lonzo Spragg and Stan Wickham would wear loosely-tied hankerchiefs around their necks - opposition tacklers were often left behind holding nothing but the hankie!
The first Australian rugby club was formed by Sydney University in 1864, with the original members playing amongst themselves or against the crews of visiting British warships. The University players adhered to the rules it devised on its understanding of what was being played in England. In June 1865 the Sydney Football Club was formed and it played its own matches at Hyde Park. Sydney University encountered its first real competition in 1870 with the arrival of the Wallaroo Club (wearing red, blue and white hooped jerseys).
Other clubs were formed, based on local communities, institutions or simply by shared interests - including Burwood, St Leonards, The King's School, Newington College, the 12th Regiment, Waratahs and Calder House. When Hyde Park wasn't available teams moved out to Moore Park, where the SCG and SFS now stand. Country clubs also formed in Goulburn and Camden, as the NSWRU was being founded in 1874 (as the Southern Rugby Union). One of its first roles was to reign in the wild rules of play.
The brutality of Australia rugby, even after new rules were introduced, caused a strong movement to rise that called for all clubs in NSW to play to Victorian (later Australian) Rules. Some clubs followed the call, while others offered both games. Rugby though withstood the challenge because of the strong hold it held in NSW country centres and in Queensland, thanks largely to the old-boys of boarding schools keeping rugby alive in the bush.
Given that the games of Rugby and Victorian Rules were still closely linked by common rules and the emphasis on kicking, moving between codes is not a remarkable or ill-conceived possibility. Despite the mayhem, popularity of rugby grew rapidly among young men who relished its physical contact. An increasing number of migrants from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales further helped to refine the play.
By 1880 the NSWRU controlled 100 clubs across Sydney and the country. One of the more active clubs was the Pirates - so named because its players came from the north side of Sydney and thus had to sail over the water for their games.
The 1870's saw a 2-3-2 scrum formation, with two wing forwards, two quarterbacks, three halfbacks and one fullback. These positions were standard until the arrival of the first overseas touring teams in the 1880's.
Soccer began to gain favour in the 1880s as parents' concerns about the apparent brutality of rugby took hold. Rugby though had a major advantage over soccer and Australian Rules via the lure of the increasing number of overseas touring teams. This is often sited as the key reason that Queensland did not fall to Australian Rules - continued inter-action with the Mother Country had strong appeal.
Queensland RU was founded (as the NRU) in 1882 with its first clubs being Brisbane, Wallaroo, Excelsior and Ipswich. Regular matches and tours between NSW and Queensland then commenced. NSW made its first rugby tour outside of Australia when they travelled to New Zealand in 1882, before the tour was reciprocated two seasons later.
In 1888, the first England team arrived in Australia - with bizarre tour arrangements that show how close the football codes still were. For their matches in NSW, Queensland and New Zealand, the English played to rugby rules. But when they ventured into Victoria and South Australia they played Aussie rules, or as it was called then "Victorian Rules". Remarkably, it was another sport - cricket - that had triggered the tour in the first place!
The tour was initiated after a failed cricket tour of Australia spelled financial disaster for England players Arthur Shrewsbury and Alfred Shaw. They ran a sports clothing outfitters in Nottingham and had sponsored the tour. Gambling on a belief that football was even more popular than cricket in the colonies, Shrewsbury brought together a rugby touring party. They were satisfied that the games of rugby and Victorian Rules were close enough for their players to be able to readily switch matches on the tour - enabling the projected income from visiting the southern cities and towns to be included.
The codes were very similar in the late 1800's - Australian Rules began its games with a place kick at the start as in rugby. Many of the terms of the game came from its rugby parent - for example "the mark". The ball they were playing with was still basically a rugby ball. The English played Carlton at the MCG in front of 25,000. The British also played against South Melbourne (now the Sydney Swans), Fitzroy (now the Brisbane Lions), Essendon, Port Melbourne and Port Adelaide.
When it came to playing rugby, the English brought with them a 4-3-2 scrum formation, using two halfbacks, three three-quarters and a fullback. The visitors played no Tests on the tour but of their 16 rugby games they won 14 and drew two.
Scrum formations varied almost year by year until 1899, when the eight-man pack, with a centre-forward or hooker, and two props was introduced. Test matches were first played in Australia in 1899 when the Reverend Matthew Mullineux's Great Britain team toured.
The two rugby states of NSW and Queensland formed an Australia rugby team for the Test, with Australia still 18 months away from Federation. "Australia" won the first Test in Sydney by 13-3, before the British won the three remaining Tests (one of which was in Brisbane).

SCG in 1899

The tour gave rise to increased interest from players and spectators over the next decade. The first New Zealand team to play Tests in Australia was the 1903 team. This was a magnificent team, which ran up big scores in almost every game. The New Zealanders defeated Australia 22-3 in Sydney.

In 1907, club matches in Sydney attracted weekly crowds of between 15,000 and 20,000 and when NSW played New Zealand the crowd was over 50,000. The increasingly large profits being enjoyed by the RU administration though was feeding a growing discontent amongst the players, and envy among some of the city's capitalists. The resolution though, lied across the Tasman Sea - in the Wellington post office!