When the All Blacks played Los Pumas this year, it was the first time a test had ever been played in Nelson. And the surrounding publicity highlighted the fact that it was also the first place that rugby had been played in New Zealand. Way back in 1870 nearly 150 years ago.
It raised the question as to what’s the oldest sport in New Zealand, and whether the sport of lawn bowls is a contender for that title.
Unfortunately for bowls aficionados, best indications are that surfing (whakahekeheke) is the oldest recreational pastime in New Zealand – in pre-European times Maori were believed to have surfed on boards (kopapa) or on bags of kelp (poha) – but that the practice declined when missionaries landed and failed to give their blessing to the activity.
Surfing was reintroduced by Hawai’ian surfer Duke Kahanamoku in 1915, but it wasn’t until 1958 when a couple of American surfees visited Piha, that the sport was popularised. By then, they had already been playing lawn bowls for three years up the road at the Piha Bowling Club.
Swimming and running must also be contenders for New Zealand’s oldest sport.
It’s easy to imagine that wizened Englishmen, debilitated by the hellish 19th century three-month journey from the homeland, might have plunged in to the waters from their anchoring barques, and raced each other to the beaches of this Antipodean paradise. Breaststroke or dog paddle of course, because freestyle swimming as we know it today hadn’t yet been invented.
However, it wasn’t until the 1830’s that the great inventors of sport – the English – brought one of their new inventions to Northland, and cricket started being played about the mission stations. While the Scots, presumably not that enamoured with the ‘gentlemen’s game’, brought their ‘Caledonian Games’ to New Zealand in the 1840’s introducing formality and competitiveness to athletics.
About the same time, a who’s who of Wellington immigrants realised that their harbour and weather provided an excellent locale for the first formal sailing race in New Zealand – and introduced the 1841 Wellington Regatta celebrating the first anniversary of the settlement.
It took until 1861 for the English to bring another of their new inventions to New Zealand – this time to Nelson with the game of hockey. Not to be outdone, the Scots introduced the sport of lawn bowls, also in 1861, creating the Auckland Bowling Club. The first club meetings may well have been absorbed with debating the merits of importing one of those new-fangled lawnmower things – perhaps a silens messor from Leeds lawnmower manufacturer Thomas Green & Sons – so that a green could be established the following year.
The population of 150,000 new and indigenous New Zealanders could also choose to join New Zealand’s first rowing club in 1861. As well as New Zealand’s first rifle club. It was indeed a golden year for New Zealand sport, but there was still not a wide selection of sporting choices.
There was no cycling, equestrian, golf, rugby and tennis until the following decade in the 1870’s. Even the world sport of football wasn’t introduced to New Zealand until the 1880’s. And basketball, netball and softball not until the new century.
Triathlon didn’t come along until 1978, when the first event was organised at Mission Bay in Auckland.
And whilst lawn bowls became a sport of choice for many early 19th century immigrants, they weren’t eager to share their passion with others throughout the colony. In fact, the Dominion of New Zealand Bowling Association wasn’t formed until 1913 – long after athletics, cricket, football, golf, rowing, rugby, swimming and tennis which all founded national associations in the late 1800’s.
By that time New Zealand’s early bowling clubs would have been eyeing the first petrol lawnmower to cut their greens –– the new Ransome’s Automaton proudly chosen by ‘His Majesty the King, the Duke of Norfolk, duke of Portland, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and may others of the Nobility and Gentry’.
Oldest sports in New Zealand at a glance
- Pre-European Surfing, swimming, running
- 1830s Cricket
- 1840s Athletics, Yachting
- 1860s Lawn Bowls, Hockey, Shooting, Rowing
- 1870s Cycling, Equestrian, Golf, Rugby, Tennis
- 1880s Football
- 1900s Basketball, Netball, League
Oldest sports in New Zealand at a glance
- Oldest national sports associations in New Zealand
- 1886 New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association
- 1887 New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association
- 1887 New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association
- 1890 New Zealand Amateur Swimming Association
- 1892 New Zealand Rugby Football Union
- 1894 New Zealand Cricket Council
- 1899 New Zealand Golf Council
- 1902 New Zealand Hockey Association
- 1909 New Zealand Rugby League
- 1913 Dominion of New Zealand Bowling Association
