Back on the market - rugby league's Holy Grail
Written by Ian Heads for the Sporting Collector Magazine September 2001
The beautiful silver and oak shield that is Australian rugby league's greatest treasure is to be offered for public sale. The Melbourne-based man who carries the bears the game's most famous name - Dally Messenger (the third) - has announced exclusively for The Sporting Collector that the game's first trophy, the Royal Agricultural Society Shield, will be offered publicly for sale in the near future - in the hope that it will eventually end up on permanent public display, available to all league fans. The Shield has been in the possession of the Messenger family since 1913, the year in which it was given by Eastern Suburbs club to the player known as `The Master' - Herbert Henry `Dally' Messenger - the greatest footballer of his time, and the man who was largely responsible for kick-starting the game of rugby league in Australia, after the breakaway from rugby union which led to league's beginning in England in 1895.
The Royal Agricultural Society Shield dates from 1907, the year before league competition began in Sydney. A genuine Australian sporting icon, it was presented to the newly-formed NSW Rugby League on Leap Year's Day, 1908 as the game's first premiership trophy. The rider accompanying the presentation was that the Shield would become the permanent possession of the first club to win the competition in three successive years. In seasons 1911-12-13 Eastern Suburbs, the Tricolours, did that, under the captaincy of centre Messenger. In the Sydney Sun newspaper of May 1, 1914, the great league scribe Claude Corbett wrote the following:
'The Royal Agricultural Society Shield, which was presented at the inception of the Leagueís first grade competition has been won outright by Eastern Suburbs, who upset all calculations by winning the premiership three years in succession. The club has presented the shield to their captain, Dally Messenger, `as a token of appreciation of his captaincy''.
So it was that the Shield, cast in solid silver at a cost of 50 pounds, disappeared into the bosom of the Messenger family - and remained there for the next 67 years. In 1980 it was loaned by the family to the Department of Sport and Recreation in Sydney for its Hall of Champions display - and in the years afterwards became the subject of a bitter dispute between the NSW Rugby League and the Messenger family when it was transferred to League headquarters in Phillip Street. Finally, after years of squabble the irrefutable evidence was uncovered that the Shield most certainly had been given to Dally Messenger in 1913, and rightly belonged to the family. It was duly returned, displayed for a time on the wall of a legal firm in Melbourne, then carefully packed up one day and taken to a safe resting place.
The Messengers, uneasy that such a treasure should be hidden from view `tested the market a few years back, in the hope that the League's head body would purchase the Shield - and display it in the rugby league museum that was being planned at the time. But the plan never reached fruition. In 1995, the News Ltd - backed Super League raids on the game changed league forever and things that would once have been of prime importance - such as the future of the game's original trophy - were suddenly devalued and pushed into the distant background. The Shield was withdrawn from the market - and has been in the care of Sydney - based Ken Messenger, Dally's brother, since 1998.
In an interview with The Sporting Collector Dally Messenger III revealed the family's plans to offer the Shield for sale in the months ahead. The Shield is of such importance to the game of rugby league and its story, that ideally it should be in some special place, for all to see, said Messenger. It is not really practical or possible for ordinary private holders of such a treasure to place it on any sort of permanent display. After much discussion and reflection we have decided to put the Shield back on the market. The price is $250,000 - with our belief being that unless people pay a fair and reasonable price for something special they are probably not going to honour it. However, the price is negotiable. We always had it in mind that if the right buyer came along - someone who would honour the Shield and work towards sharing it with the people who are the grassroots of the game, then we would look at lesser offers. This is not an easy decision for us. The Shield, after all is our inheritance - its history is so intertwined with the history of Dally Messenger himself.' But Messenger contends, reasonably, that in the fractured state in which it has been left, rugby league more than ever needs the solid things that bind it to a highly successful past.
The best result, obviously, would be if the men now running the News Ltd-funded game, pledged the money to buy back this priceless piece of the game's history - wove it into the game's modern fabric (as a modern day premiership trophy) - and shared its story and its availability with fans. The chance is there for that to happen, now that the old `Ag Shield' has been brought back into the daylight. But in uncertain and uneasy times for the game of rugby league, there are no guarantees.....
Ian Heads