Richardson fired as administrator

Invincible Strangers 43 Chapter 18.3

Sport offered relief: ‘When HMS Diomede steamed into Āpia roadstead as a gesture to remind the islanders that the Administration there had at least the moral support of the British Navy, the tall, loose-limbed sons of the Mau gazed complacently, and instead of taking to the tall timber or hiking for the plantations in the interior, they issue a challenge,’ the Auckland Star reported. The Royal Navy accepted the challenge and found the fittest 15 men for a game of rugby.

‘It was in blazing sunshine, with the mercury near the 90-degree mark (in the shade) when the game was played. The Navy men soon faltered before the devastating brands of fuzzy haired Sāmoans, and the British line was broken so often that when the referee blew the final whistle the score read Sāmoa 22 British Navy nil.’ A ‘youthful lieutenant’ rubbed a bruised shin: ‘They know something about the game down there. I’ve had one game against them. That will do me.” Football and hockey teams were fired ashore, and beaten. Commented the newspaper: ‘Both Europeans and natives were most hospitable and the opinion formed was that British sport will go a long way to smooth over some of the little differences that are now causing heartburn in those delectable islands.’ The Otago Daily Times said that ‘when our men from the warships had been landed in fighting kit, and after they had been able to look about, to say “How do?” to the enemy, and to exchange courtesies with the laughing Sāmoan girls, they were challenged to a trial of strength on the football field.’ The scratch team wore ‘baggy trousers against the Mau in shorts’ who won: ‘Result, a general fraternising, amity and goodwill all round, the opposing teams drinking each other’s health with exchange of coconuts. We might have been spared the sending of warships and military police. It would have been sufficient to have sent the All Blacks.’ A footnote to history, just three years later ‘wing forward’ Frank Solomon became the first Sāmoan to make the All Blacks. His brother David followed in 1935.

Mau being arrested. Man with cross believed to be Tupua Tamasese