1908 Melbourne Carnival - Official Opening

Official Opening

The official opening was conducted by Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael, the Governor of Victoria, at 3:00PM on Wednesday 19th August 1908, in the interval between the first and second matches of the carnival (the first match started at 1.15PM. the second at 3:30PM). The crowd of 7,000+ was in an excited mood: in the first match, New Zealand had come back from a 26 point half-time deficit to win by a single point.

The seven participating teams, with each player in their team uniforms, lined up and formed a hollow square.

The official party, the Governor of Victoria, accompanied by his private secretary, Victor Albert Nelson Hood (1862–1929), Sir Thomas Bent, Premier of Victoria, H. C. A. Harrison, Australian Rules administrative pioneer (then 71 years old), Mr. Cornelius Michael "Con" Hickey (1866-1937), Fitzroy footballer in the (VFA 1887-1894), secretary of the Fitzroy Football Club (1893-1910), foundation member and first treasurer of the Victorian Football League, and the inaugural president of the Australian National Football Council (formed in 1906), Mr. E.L. "Ernie" Wilson, the first secretary of the Collingwood Football Club in the VFL, and secretary of the VFL from 1897-1929, and Mr. Albert E. Nash, president of the New South Wales Australian Football League, were each introduced to the captain of each team and shook hands.

The ceremony was notable for the performance of "war cries" by both the New Zealand and Queensland teams; and, in the opinion of "Old Boy", despite not performing well on the football field, the Queensland "war cry" was the best of the two, in that it's effort was "dramatic, descriptive, and interesting". Although it is not clear (as it was in the newspaper accounts of the New Zealand team on other occasions) from any of the contemporary reports of the day's proceedings whether, on this occasion, the New Zealand "war cry" was specifically a haka or not, "Follower's" report in "The Age" strongly suggests that to be the case: "a feature of the inspection … was the Maori war cry, given with great zest by the New Zealand team, and equally stirring was the aboriginal battle cry of the Queenslanders".

Unfortunately, the second match, played immediately after the opening ceremony was nowhere near as exciting: Tasmania beat Queensland by the massive margin of 140 points.