moving into Mr Fagan territoty
The Story of the RAS Shield
In 1907, in NSW, a group broke away from the Rugby Union Football code to form Rugby League. The question at issue was reimbursement for players who lost work days because of injuries. Rugby Union officialdom refused to pay up on the grounds that such reimbursement would infringe the players' amateur status. Rugby League was founded to redress this deprivation. Though few players were paid, the new code was dubbed "professional" from the beginning.
To consolidate the break, the original organisers made a bold move. They approached the star player of Rugby Union, Herbert Henry "Dally" Messenger. Messenger, who in Rugby Union was drawing crowds of 50,000 when the population of Sydney was not half a million, and indisputably a sporting genius in a number of fields, consulted his family - and decided to support the injured players.
Rugby league ws formed in August 1907.
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He captained the first match in Ceylon, and led the First Kangaroos in the 1908-9 tour of Great Britain and, in the first 6 seasons of the NSW Rugby League, drew the crowds and consolidated the code.
This first competition's main ground was leased to the code by the Royal Agricultural Society, who donated the Shield you are now offered. Its intrinsic value is considerable. Its artistry is moulded from gold, silver and bronze. As the original icon of Rugby League, its historical value is unassessable.
Such was Dally Messenger's contribution to the spectator sport that in an unprecedented gesture, Eastern Suburbs Rugby League Club, who, after three wins, were entitled to keep the Shield in perpetuity, gave it to Messenger. (See 1914 Newspaper Cutting which is enclosed)
Dally Messenger was not a mercenary person in any sense of the word. He was feted, dined and accommodated by the Rugby League code until the last years of his life, when support was withdrawn. The one possession he clung to all his life was the Shield.
The Messenger family loaned the Shield to the Sydney Hall of Champions, who asked the family could they temporarily accede to a request from the NSW Rugby League to borrow the Shield for an exhibition. When the Messenger family went to "borrow" the Shield back for a family reunion the League refused to hand it over.
Dally Messenger III, grandson of the original "Dally", asked Mark Elliott of Minter Ellison, solicitors, to take the necessary legal steps to recover the Shield.
In the hands of Minter Ellison's Mark Elliott and David Grant the case, with a series of letters and phone calls finally proceeded to the preparation of the writ. As the writ had to be issued in Sydney the task was delegated to Andrew Ireland of Townsend & Company. Andrew Ireland, a Messenger family member, put the final bit of pressure on the NSW Rugby League who finally relented and handed the Shield over in April 1991.
