Herbert Henry "Dally" Messenger, (12 April 1883 – 24 November 1959) was an Australian rugby league and rugby union footballer. One of Australia's first professional rugby footballers, he is recognised as one of the greatest-ever players in either code. He played for New South Wales in the first match run by the newly-created New South Wales Rugby Football League, which had just split away from the established New South Wales Rugby Football Union.
Sometimes nicknamed "The Master", Messenger had a stocky build, and while standing only about 172 centimetres (5 ft 8 in) in height, he was a powerful runner of the ball and a solid defender. According to his peers, the centre's greatest attributes were his unpredictability and astonishing physical co-ordination, coupled with an ability to kick goals from almost any part of the ground. He was a teetotaller and non-smoker during his career and other than breakfast, Messenger would rarely eat before a match.
Messenger was born in the Sydney waterfront suburb of Balmain, New South Wales, and grew up on the southern shores of Sydney Harbour at Double Bay, where his English-born father, Charles Amos Messenger, a champion sculler, owned a boat shed.
Dally's grandfather James Messenger was barge-master to Queen Victoria on the River Thames, world champion sculler (1854-57) and a highly regarded boat-builder, including the Lady Alice for Henry Morton Stanley's second African expedition.
As a boy Messenger also spent some time living with an aunt in South Melbourne, Victoria where he attended the Albert Park Public School. It was there he recalled playing Australian Rules Football. He credited skills he learned at Albert Park as contributing to his later success at Rugby Union and Rugby League. Dally was one of eight children. His younger brother by seven years, Walter (Wally) also became an Australian representative rugby league footballer.
In Sydney, Messenger attended Double Bay Public School in the city's eastern suburbs. It was here that he initially honed his rugby skills, while also playing cricket and indulging in his other great sporting love, sailing. Messenger worked, too, at his father's boat shed. By this juncture, he had gained the nickname of "Dally". It derived from a prominent politician of the 1880s, the then Attorney-General of New South Wales, William Bede Dalley, whose most conspicuous physical feature was a splendid pot belly – an anatomical augmentation that Herbert Henry Messenger happened to boast, too, when he was a small child. Fortunately, little Herbert Henry shed his pot belly as he grew older, together with the "e" from the spelling of his nickname.
Messenger first took up competitive rugby in 1900, playing for a local rugby union club called the Warrigals in a semi-social club competition. Over the next few years Messenger continued to play with the Warrigals, persistently rejecting calls by officials of the Eastern Suburbs RUFC to move up to the higher standard of Sydney's grade competition. In 1904. aged 21, Messenger played no football at all. He decided to spend this year working for the Messenger family boatbuilding business in Double Bay.
In 1905 Messenger began playing for Easts in the club's second-grade team, but showed sufficient promise to earn promotion to the first-grade side on two occasions that season. In that same season, he also purportedly played Australian rules football club in a number of first-grade matches in the Sydney competition.
Messenger began the 1906 season in first grade with Easts as a 'standoff' (five-eighth). He swiftly won a following amongst the club's supporters due to his mesmeric ball skills, cheeky tricks, blistering acceleration and accurate short- and long-kicking game off either foot. Messenger moved to what would become his customary position of centre following his selection there for the New South Wales team in 1906. By the time of his Wallaby debut in 1907, he had made that position his own.
In his book Viewless Winds, the 1906 representative footballer Paddy Moran wrote that Messenger's play "was full of surprises, unorthodox, flash" and "directed largely by the unconscious mind". He said that Messenger "never became a slave to copybook practices" because his "instinct enabled him to see and take an opening in that operative second which is all-important". Moran compared him to Bradman in terms of their mutual ability to instantaneously co-ordinate their bodies into the right position in apparently ample time before the ball would arrive.
When talk of a professional rugby competition, or a Rugby League aligned with the 1895-founded Northern Rugby Union in England, was being aired, Messenger was instantly interested by the development. He was approached by a consortium that included Test cricketer, Victor Trumper with friend J. J. Giltinan, who knew getting Messenger on board would be a major boost for the new code. Messenger was star attraction in a NSW Waratahs match against New Zealand All Blacks that drew an enormous crowd of 52,000, which as the highest attendance and gate-takings ever yet seen in any cricket or football (of any code) match in Australia, created further debate about the rugby union players not receiving any remuneration. Messenger signed on with the new professional code on Sunday 11 August 1907. As the premier rugby footballer of the time, Messenger's signing is considered an integral moment in the foundation of rugby league. After he became a professional rugby league footballer, Messenger's rugby games were struck from the record books of the New South Wales Rugby Union and not restored for 100 years.
Rugby league with the New Zealand "All Golds", 1907-08
Messenger played in the rebel series against a professional New Zealand team, the 'All Golds' as they were referred to, and was invited to tour England with the New Zealand professional side. It remains unclear whether this was a result of the form he showed in the series or if it had been agreed on as part of his sign-on fee with the new code. It was said, and believed as Messenger family folklore for years, that the signing of Messenger to rugby league was negotiated with Messenger's mother Annie, and the promised amount for playing, at first, in three All Golds' games, was 50 pounds (based on increases in average earnings, this would be approximately £18,210 in 2015).
In the North of England, Messenger became more acquainted with the new game. By the completion of the tour Messenger had topped the tour aggregates by more than 100 points.
The 1908 inaugural rugby league season
On arrival back in Australia, Messenger played with the Eastern Suburbs club of the newly formed New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL), although a heavy representative schedule saw him play only a handful of matches for the club. Messenger's popularity helped showcase the new game and the NSWRFL took full advantage of this. He was selected to play in the first ever trans-Tasman test, which was the debut match of the Australia national rugby league team. In rugby league's first year, besides playing for his club, Messenger made representative appearances for Metropolis (Sydney), New South Wales and Australia, as well as for New Zealand and, in one case, Queensland, he also represented Australasia.
Following two heavy defeats, Messenger agreed to play for Queensland in a third match against New Zealand. The match ended in a 22–22 draw, with Messenger scoring nine points.
The 1908 Interstate rugby league series saw the first ever match between New South Wales and Queensland and Messenger scored a goal for the Blues in their 43-0 victory over the Maroons in Sydney. During the 1908 New Zealand Māori rugby league tour of Australia Messenger was selected to play for New South Wales and Sydney against the tourists.