Football punch or drunkenness and blackguardism: Sport, alcohol and prohibition in New Zealand 1870s-1930s

Abstract

Drawing on substantial archival research, primarily from New Zealand newspapers, and on themes identified by Tony Collins and Wray Vamplew in Mud, Sweat and Beers: a cultural history of sport and alcohol (2002), this paper traces the contested relationship between sport, particularly rugby, and alcohol in colonial New Zealand. This was a new world society in which very strong influence was exerted over more than half a century by a temperance and later alcohol prohibition movement grounded in the Protestant churches. There is an evident tension to be explored between the increasing prominence of sport as a component of national identity, especially with the international success of New Zealand rugby teams after 1905, and the sometimes virulent attacks by prohibitionists on the supposed alcoholic excesses of sportsmen and spectators alike. While public houses had a significant role as venues for sports club meetings and other sporting occasions, and there is also evidence of brewery patronage for sport and a desire to reference it in alcohol advertising, it is clear that sports bodies also sought to neutralise the prohibitionist challenge through strictures on player behaviour and efforts to discourage ‘lavish entertainment’. Over time, prohibitionist rhetoric also shifted to emphasise specific examples of success by sportsmen who abstained from alcohol – a line of argument that was also pursued by others not directly engaged with the politics of the prohibition debate. The central question underpinning this paper is how successful was the prohibition movement in shaping the ways in which sporting organisations regulated the behaviour of their players.