From the time of the inception of the Australasian championships in 1903, New Zealand amateur boxing teams have travelled to Australia (for these tournaments and for the Olympic and British Empire Games), to France, Holland, Germany, U.S.A., Canada, England, and Wales. But apart from the signal success of Ted Morgan at the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928 and our various winners in the less competitive field of Australasian championship competition (there have been 48 New Zealand titles won here out of a possible 120), only Charlie Purdy (lightweight champion of the Tail Team Games in Ireland, 1924) and Frank Creagh (heavyweight champion of the British Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand, 1950) and Wally Coe (Empire Games welterweight titleholder, Perth, 1962) have won international honours.

Amateur boxing's two most coveted trophies in the Dominion are the John Jameson Belt, donated in 1927 by a well-known Dublin distillery, and the Earl Stewart Memorial Shield, presented in 1939 in memory of a former well-known administrator and referee. The belt is awarded annually to the competitor who is adjudged the “most scientific boxer” at the national tournament, and the shield to the association whose boxers gain most points at the championships (based on an award of 10 points to a titleholder and five to the runner-up).

by Brian Francis O'Brien, Sports Journalist and Author, Wellington.

The New Zealand Boxing Association, governed through its centralised council, is an all-amateur body which controls not only amateur but professional boxing as well. The NZBA has now as its revised aims: (a) “To govern, regulate and control amateur and professional boxing in New Zealand”, and (b) “To foster and encourage boxing”. Membership of the association is confined to financial local boxing associations approved by the Governor-General in Council under the Police Offences Act 1927, whose membership shall be exclusively amateur, notwithstanding the administrative link with professional sport. This rather curious situation, which deprives the sport of the administrative services of many of its outstanding professional performers, is brought about by the fact of there being legal provision for only one boxing body in the land. In order that that body may retain membership of the International Amateur Boxing Association (which is necessary to ensure competition in Olympic Games and other international events), it must exclude those who have competed for cash.

The association holds its annual conference at the time of the national amateur tournament. The council, elected at each conference, sits now at Wellington, and comprises a chairman, secretary, treasurer, and five other members. Two members of the present council are doctors and one a magistrate. The council is paid a permit fee for every tournament, amateur or professional, staged by the affiliates, plus a percentage of all prize money from professional bouts. This money is used in administrative expenses and grants to needy associations, an injured boxers' insurance fund, the amateur championships, and the sending abroad of New Zealand teams.

More recently, there have been post-war peaks, such as that associated with the defeat of the world-ranked Australian dual champion, Vic Patrick, by the young Bos Murphy in 1946; and again by the rise of the boyish-looking southpaw, Barry Brown, culminating in 1954 with his knock-out defeat of Gerald Dreyer, the South African holder of the British Empire welterweight championship. Murphy was New Zealand's first Empire champion (defeating Vince Hawkins, of England, in London); Brown was the first to win a crown in a home ring.

A contemporary of Brown's was Kitione Lave, who, as a powerful, colourful Tongan heavyweight, brought the first real challenge from the Pacific Islands. Island boxers today dominate New Zealand boxing – for instance, New Zealand professional titles in the top four weight divisions were recently held by Islanders – George Mahoni (Tonga), heavy; Johnny Nomura (Samoa), light-heavy; Tuna Scanlan (Samoa), middle; and Heinie Forsyth (Samoa), welter. Sam Levii is current welterweight champion.

The young New Zealander, it seems, has turned his thoughts to more leisurely pursuits, and it is ironic that at the present time, when both attendances and purses for the bigger fights are higher than ever before (Eddie Cotton, of America, and Johnny Halafihi, of Tonga, shared a record £4,000 at Auckland in 1961), almost all contestants are from the Islands, the United States, and Australia.

The New Zealand Boxing Association was formed at Christchurch on 4 July 1902. In concept it was purely amateur, its avowed object being the promotion and fostering of amateur boxing. Its first act, after having drawn up rules and obtained parliamentary sanction, was to stage the inaugural New Zealand championships at Christchurch. The winners were: J. Fitzsimmons (Timaru), heavyweight; F. Nash (Canterbury), middle; P. W. Olliver (Canterbury), light; and A. L. Jones (Canterbury), feather. The NZBA helped to inaugurate the Australian championships the following year. In these, boxers from the Australian States and New Zealand met almost every year in the main centres of the two countries. The first such event was held in Sydney and, of a four-man New Zealand team, H. M. Taylor and J. M. Griffin, both Greymouth competitors, were successful in winning the heavy and middleweight classes respectively. But the cost of these inter-Dominion tournaments eventually became prohibitive and they were abandoned after 1923, to be temporarily revived in 1933–34 and again in 1960–61.

It was not long, however, before the council appreciated the importance of professional boxing, if for no other reason than that it provided the very necessary funds for the preservation and maintenance of the amateur code. In January 1908, less than three years after the Wellington Boxing Association had promoted the first legalised professional contest in the country between George “Hock” Keys of Sydney and Tim Tracy of Wellington, rules were made to govern the conduct of professional contests. Tim Tracy, incidentally, was a remarkable Irish-born bootmaker who had not fought any kind of contest until past his thirtieth birthday; in 1907 he won a tournament at Christchurch among lightweights to become the first official professional titleholder of the NZBA. Tracy was the outstanding name in New Zealand rings in the days before the First World War. But the twenties were boxing's finest years, here and elsewhere. This indeed was an era of tremendous fights and magnificent fighters, of the million-dollar gate abroad and, at home, the greatest public support the sport was to enjoy for many years. Good boxers abounded. For example, in the year 1928 alone, Tom Heeney became the first New Zealander ever to fight for the world heavyweight title, losing gallantly to Gene Tunney in 11 rounds at New York's huge Yankee Stadium; welterweight Ted Morgan won New Zealand's first Olympic Games gold medal in any sport, at Amsterdam; Charlie Purdy defeated “Bluey” Jones for the Australasian lightweight championship and Jack Carroll for the Australian welterweight title; and Lachie McDonald beat Ted Monson for the Australian middleweight championship. Then there rose the two great “gamecocks”, Tommy Donovan (who in 1930, before an all-time New Zealand record attendance of 18,000, was to score one of his three wins over the American Pete Sarron, subsequently featherweight champion of the world); and Johnnie Leckie, who defeated internationally regarded opponents like Sarron and Claude Wilson (U.S.A.) and former Australian triple champion, Billy Grime, in Australia.

In 1962 New Zealand boxing could be said to have celebrated its centenary. It was on 8 July 1862 that a “navvie” (so described) and a veteran of the London prize ring fought in a ring pitched just outside of Kaiapoi on the banks of the Waimakariri River, Canterbury, for a stake of £100. This was the young colony's first experience of prizefighting, and the event was surrounded with sensation. The principals, George Barton (the “navvie”), and Harry Jones (the old L.P.R. bare knuckler), were badgered by the police, who at one stage cut the ring ropes and took possession of the ring, with revolvers drawn. The crowd of from 500–600 finally obstructed the “precious peelers” with sufficient purpose to enable the fight to proceed. Jones, too experienced and well conditioned for his rough-and-ready opponent, was favourite at four to one and the odds appeared justified, for he was proclaimed winner after more than 30 rounds (70 minutes). Summonses duly followed the fight, but these appeared to have quietly lapsed when it was discovered that among the spectators was the Crown Solicitor, several members of the General Assembly and of the Town Council, a magistrate or two, and many leading townspeople.

It was nearly 20 years before any real effort was made to build on these rather shaky foundations. This coincided with the arrival in New Zealand of the “Swaffham Gypsy”, Jem Mace, the last of the London prize-ring champions, the hardy bare-knuckle breed who rubbed the brine of beef into the skin of their faces to toughen it and whose rules permitted throwing and the use of elbows and knees. Mace established himself as a teacher of boxing – a unique teacher at that, and it was from his tournaments at Timaru in 1880 and 1881, and his boxing booths around the country, that there emerged men like the great Bob Fitzsimmons, world champion in three weights.

“Torpedo Billy” Murphy, the fragile-looking little Aucklander who hit like a heavyweight, despite his 8½ stone, put New Zealand boxing on the map when he knocked out Ike Weir, the “Belfast Spider”, in 14 rounds at San Francisco in 1890 to become world featherweight champion. He was the only native New Zealander ever to win a world title. These, and men like Harry Laing, who in Sydney knocked out Joe Goddard for the Australian heavyweight title, and Dan Creedon, who campaigned with great distinction in the United States (and actually fought Fitzsimmons for the world middleweight championship), were the immortals who wrote the early chapters in New Zealand's boxing history.

Formed in Wellington in 1906, the Kelburn Ladies' Bowling Club was the earliest women's outdoor bowling club in New Zealand. In general, the players did not have their own greens but were permitted to use the men's greens on weekday afternoons. Although women's bowling spread slowly in the South Island, it apparently made little progress in the North, for there was only one club formed before 1939. By 1930 there were sufficient clubs in the South Island to form the New Zealand Women's Bowling Association. This followed the pattern of the New Zealand Men's Bowling Association, and today the women's bowling clubs are grouped in 21 Centres. These, together with the N.Z. W.B.A., arrange championships and administer the game throughout the country. National championship tournaments were instituted after the Second World War, and these have since been held annually. In 1948, when the New Zealand Women's Bowling Umpires' Association was formed, there were about 500 players affiliated to the N.Z.W.B.A.; by 1964 there were over 20,000.

New Zealand has won the Pairs Gold Medal four times in the last five series of games.

by Robert Sproull Menzies Sinclair, B.A., M.COM., DIP.SOC.SCI., Secretary-Treasurer, New Zealand Bowling Association, Dunedin.

At the annual meeting of the council of the association in 1931, it was decided to delete the word “Dominion” and to alter the name of the association to “New Zealand Bowling Association”. Since the original constitution was adopted there have been, of course, radical changes. The council at first comprised a president, a vice-president, a treasurer, and 12 councillors elected (six from the North Island and six from the South Island) by a comprehensive poll of the bowlers in both Islands. This number was subsequently increased to seven from each Island and remained at that figure for many years. The growth of bowls in the North Island and the pressure of demands for representation caused the first constitutional change in 1946 when a system of joint representation of adjacent centres was introduced, resulting in an increase in the council to 10 members representing North Island centres and nine representing the South Island centres. In 1951, at a special meeting of the council held in February, the principle of direct and individual representation of all centres was accepted by the council and the separate office of treasurer was abolished. The council comprises four executive officers (the immediate past-president, the president, the junior and senior vice-presidents), and 30 council members, three from each tournament centre and one from each other centre. There are now 22 centres, 11 in the North Island and 11 in the South.

The present constitution provides for a Tournament Committee which shall each year consist of the officer of the association for the time being resident in the tournament centre and the three councillors for the time being representing that centre, together with such other persons as the council members of the Tournament Committee shall appoint. The Tournament Committee has power to appoint a resident Tournament secretary-treasurer, so that the functions of the administration of the general affairs of the association, by its Administration Committee and permanent secretary, are entirely divorced from the control of the annual Championship tournament, which is completely under the jurisdiction of the Tournament Committee with its executive officers and the tournament secretary-treasurer. There is no larger sporting fixture, from the point of view of competitors taking part, than a New Zealand Bowling Association tournament. The efficient organisation of this event in itself requires weeks of detailed preparation.

The growth of the game after the Second World War has been remarkable, the 416 clubs, comprising 23,242 players in 1945, having grown in 16 years to over 600 clubs with about 45,000 players. It is not too much to say that the New Zealand Bowling Association today is the largest active sporting body in New Zealand and its growth still continues. Most clubs have had to provide their own playing surfaces and premises at their own expense, and if one cared to place the low average value of £5,000 on the assets of the bowling clubs throughout New Zealand, it appears that the players have invested something over £3,000,000 in providing suitable facilities for their games.

For the season 1963–64, the Dominion membership stood as follows:

The following table compares the club and membership figures at the date of formation (1913) with those at 31 December 1961.