In Maher Cup country you may have had to be a football hero to get along with a beautiful girl…as the song goes, but you didn’t need to be an International Australian representative. However 40 men on the Kangaroos Register (13 locals and 27 imports) did both represent the nation and play Maher Cup. In some 314 matches (43% of the total), at least one past, current or future international participated. On 23 September 1925 at West Wyalong four such men took to the field: Bill Brogan and Dick Vest for the home team, and Eric Weissel and Jack Kingston for the challengers. All were locals. It was indicative of the quality in the early days and a hint of why the Cup became such a phenomenon. Having phenomenal players helps. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Eric Weissel
Group 9 in the 1920s.
This is the first instalment of a brief history of Group 9 Rugby League.
Rugby League emerged in the Riverina in 1911, at West Wyalong. By 1921 it had replaced Union throughout the southwest. The NSW Rugby League, recognising the need to join up clubs and to organise this rapidly expanding sport, proposed prior to the 1922 season to divide the rural parts of the state into twelve groups. Group 9 was to include the teams Harden, Wagga, Cootamundra, Gundagai, Tumut, Temora, Barmedman, Wyalong, West Wyalong, Mildil, Ariah Park and Ardlethan. Continue reading
Memories of Temora in the 1930s
Andy Paterson, originally from Batlow, was a teacher at Bundawarrah School, five miles from Temora, from 1934-1939. Below are some reminiscences he penned in a letter to Les Gillard in 1986 upon Temora Rugby League Club preparing for a reunion. The letter is edited. Continue reading
Who Made The Most Maher Cup Appearances?
69 matches – Lionel ‘Nick’ Cullen (Harden-Murrumburrah) – 1950 to 1970 – and still playing first grade after the Maher Cup finished. A Harden local (Aurville), he played for over two decades for his home town with remarkable resilience and consistency. According to Eric Kuhn he was one of only two players who participated in every match in Harden-Murrumburrah’s amazing 29 Maher Cup streak from 1958-1960. He later coached local teams and still lives in the area.
66 matches – Sid Hall (Young & Bendick Murrell (one game)) – 1925 to 1945. A brilliant and tough centre for Young, Sid Hall declared his retirement from the game aged 31, in 1933. The next year we was back as the teams’ captain-coach. Not even the hiatus of the war years wearied him – he was part of a highly successful Cherrypickers’ Maher Cup side that reformed in 1945. He finally retired aged 43.
Eric Weissel’s Early Years
It must have been special to see this gifted athlete and footballing genius play in the days before the city folk and the nation noticed him. Some say those were his best years – witnessed by lucky punters on local paddocks – mostly at Cootamundra.
Those Magnificent Weissels
Eric Weissel, “Weissel the Wizard”, “Ec” to his friends, was a try-scoring, goal-kicking genius. In the Riverina of the 1920s and early 30s his performances helped develop the Maher Cup into a footballing phenomenon.
Playing for small town clubs all his life, his performances were not commonly witnessed by Sydney commentators and experts. Although his brilliance may never have been properly appreciated outside Maher Cup country, many local witnesses consider him to be possibly the best five-eighth the world will ever see.
He came from an extraordinary sporting family and below is an attempt at recording some of their history. Continue reading