Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

vigour, strength and group spirit on the rugby paddock. "The
recurrent rituals of the football field reconciled a pioneering
ethos with the complexities of a modern and urban society." 12
III
The impression of British recreation and sport as integrative
structures is, at best, superficial and at worst, an illu-
sion. In village cricket all classes took part but at the end
of the match the squire returned to his four posted bed, mansion
and estate while the labourer stretched out on a palliasse in
his rented cottage. Prize fight spectators were roped off into
sections for the lower classes while the aristocratic and affluent
lounged in ring side hansom cabs, char-a-bancs and elegant
coaches. Although pedestrianism at the end of the eighteenth
century, and well into the nineteenth century, had
aristocratic patronage and even upper class athletic involve-
ment, by the 1860s it had moved to enclosed grounds where the
interaction of a gambling sub-culture and the publican-assponsor
made it predominantly a lower class sport. The field
sports of shooting, fox hunting, and fishing, while developed
in eighteenth century England, were refined, in terms of etiquette
and protocol, in the nineteenth century. A major function
of field and equestrian sports was the reassurance of
privilege and patronage. The eighteenth century game laws, by
imposing a property qualification on sportsmen, effectively
denied all but county gentlemen the right to take game or even
to possess a gun. Shooting as a sport for gentlemen and aristocrats
and their guests took shape under the aegis of the landowner
with his country house, estates in Scotland and parties
of house guests. Such field sports were exclusively the recreational
domain of the nobility, aristocracy and landed gentry.
It is significant that for the pioneer settlers of New
Zealand, there were no divisive extremes of social class or
restrictive game laws, or socially appropriate parameters of
behaviour to inhibit informal hunting sports. Thus, while
there were no stags to chase or foxes to hunt, there were many
opportunities to shoot wild game and to develop the first truly
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