Records of the early days of Australian Football in New Zealand are sketchy.
But it appears that the game was played there while the sport was in its infancy.
The sport’s earliest historian C.C Mullen wrote that in July 1875 three football clubs in Christchurch and two from Wellington who played their own form of football wrote to Victoria to ask about the finer points of “Victorian Rules” as the game was referred to in those times. There were plans to invite Melbourne and Geelong to visit the Dominion and it was hoped that Henry Harrison and Tom wills would make the trip to give lectures on the game.
Other sources say that a form of football was played a few years earlier in 1868 when the Nelson football club played a hybrid version of Victorian and soccer rules.
By the late 1880s a Maori Rugby team visited Victoria as part of a year long tour of United Kingdom and Australia. They played eight games under “Victorian Rules”, winning three and losing five.
One of those games was on 1 June 1889 against St Kilda. The Saints won with a score of 6 goals 7 behinds to 1 goal 6 behinds. The Argus was sympathetic, saying “The difference between the Rugby game to which the Maoris are accustomed , and the Australian game is as great as baseball and cricket and it is not to be expected that the New Zealanders should become experts at it with so little practice as they have had.”
In the early 1890s Victoria was hard hit by economic depression and out of work Victorians headed to New Zealand in search of employment. Mullen wrote that there were 44 clubs playing Victorian Rules across New Zealand.
The game had its peaks and troughs and seems to have fallen away until a revival in 1903. Vic Cumberland - the famous Saint ruckman was one of many players who crossed the Tasman for work. He was only there for a couple of years but the game was gathering in strength and by 1908 New Zealand sent a team to the first National Football Carnival featuring teams from all Australian states. The game was progressing well, but the First World War seems to have put an end to that and for many years the game virtually disappeared in New Zealand.
SAINTS IN NEW ZEALAND 1991
On 5 October 1991 St Kilda played a post-season exhibition game against Geelong in Auckland.
The clubs were both on the rise at the time a month earlier they had contested an epic final.
Some of the bigger names on both sides were not on the park that day.
Tony Lockett was in Queensland racing his greyhounds, and Stewart Loewe was having a knee “clean-out” after a long season.
Geelong had an even longer absentee list and went into the match without Gary Ablett, Paul Couch, Garry and Steve Hocking, Damien Bourke , Mark Bairstow and Andrew Bews .
Because the Western Springs ground was much smaller than a normal oval - essentially it was 110 meters wide and set inside a velodrome - the game had modified rules with 16 players on the field and six interchange.
A strong first quarter by Geelong set up an eventual 13 point win. The Cats booted six goals in a 10 minute burst in the final term and won by 12.11(83) to 10.10 (70). Robert Scott and Gavin Exell kicked three goals apiece for the Cats while St Kilda’s best players were Frank Coghlan, Bret Bowey, Mick Dwyer and Danny Frawley.
