Bill Maizey Popular Pugilist

Bill Maizey

Bill Maizey

Bill Maizey. Source: Ancestry.com

If you were tough enough to play Maher Cup you may as well make a quid in the ring as well. If you were good enough the money was better and boxing was probably not much harder than Rugby League Group 9 style.

Men successful in both arenas included Bill Brogan and Baden Broad from West Wyalong, Woody Field and Jockey Bourke at Gundagai, Harden’s Bernie McGrath, Coota legend Herb Narvo, Roy Plummer down at Wagga, Bob Banks from Tumut, Snowy Breasley at Junee, cherry man Alby Arabin and the notorious William George Maizey who played for Cowra in the 1930s. Continue reading

Minorities in Maher Cup Country

Maher Cup Country was and is a pretty culturally homogenous place, but there was always enough of a mix to make it interesting.

An hour before the first ever Maher Cup match Otto (Boydie) Beegling, the butcher’s son, and a highly respected young man from Tumut, warmed up the crowd when he took on a Adelong rival in a challenge footrace at the oval.  Eric Weissel, Bill Lesberg, Eric Kuhn, Charlie Schwartzel, Henry, Les and Tony Gelfius, Joe Steinke, Paul Butz, Len Koch and a 100 or more others with German names helped bring home the Cup to excited communities. Continue reading

Heroes On The Fringes of the Maher Cup : Brungle’s Digger Davis & Joe Nettup

Digger Davis & Joe Nettup

Like most men his age Tom Davis enlisted for the Great War.  In 1917 he fought on the Western Front, suffered from trench fever, influenza, scabies and finally was gassed just two months before the armistice.  He returned home in 1919 to be classified as “medically unfit” and to be now known in his community as “Digger” Davis. Nothing unusual there.

But Tom Davis was a non-citizen.  He was from the “mish”. He was in the language of the day, a darkie, an Abo.

Davis had enlisted at Cowra in January 1916 with a group of men from the Erambie reserve. Most of these eager recruits were discharged just a few months later as not being suitable due to their race.  Undeterred Tom Davis went over to Goulburn in October and  enlisted again.  The carnage in the trenches of the Western Front had by that time changed attitudes – anyone would do, and the army promptly shipped him off to France.

Tom Davis is fourthrow from the back, fifth from the right

Tom Davis is fourth row from the back, fifth from the right

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