At the AGM Temora again commented on the “ceaseless chasing of cups” and considered that “competition matches are more desirable than cup matches”. On the other side of the argument treasurer Charles Inson from Cootamundra claimed that cup matches “had made football in the south”, while Tumut felt that it was located too distant from other centres for regular competition football.  The vote was 9 all with the president casting his vote against. However some competition football looked liked an inevitability in 1930.

There was renewed interest in Country Week as a stepping stone for players to represent the State as well as to strive for a place in the Australian team to travel to Britain.  The trial match process was rigorous and like no other year the Group 9 representatives were keenly anticipated from a most talented tool.  The final selection was: Bob Boyd (Temora), Reg Maker (Temora), ‘Bluey’ Keyes (Gundagai), ‘Snowy’ Marsh (Tumut), Len Cooper (Barmedman), Eric Weissel (Temora), George Rolfe (Young) (although George Purcell from Coota replaced him at the last minute), Jack Kingston (Cootamundra), Jack James (Cootamundra), ‘Bluey’ Forbutt (Tumut), Charlie Cornwall (Temora), Henry McGuire (Gundagai) and Gordon Hinton (Cootamundra).  The Group 9 team overwhelmed Group 8 by 37-10.  Southern Districts then defeated Far North Coast 28-5 but fell to St George 17-8 (for whom Gundagai native ‘Bluey’ Freestone scored two tries).  Weissel, Kingston and Charlie Cornwall were selected for Country.  Weissel and Kingston went to England with the Kangaroos, as did Group 9-bred players Bill Brogan, George Treweeke and Cec Fifield.

The Southern Districts team of 1929. Courtesy: The Wal Galvin collection

At a June meeting the competition versus cup issue resulted in another tied vote the president casting for the status quo, much to the indignation of absent Temora and Young representatives who understood that there was to be a specific meeting exclusively on this matter. The next month president Bill Flanagan resigned over the resultant discord.

Whereas it was expected that Fred Cahill of Young would challenge for the position he too resigned basically over the dominance of Cootamundra within Group 9 and Coota’s abuse of its powers in a protest regarding well-travelled professional footballer ‘Chips’ Phillips. The Phillips case produced probably the first instance of a rising against the Maher Cup as a corrupting influence.  As the Junee Southern Cross editorialised “It is quite obvious that in order to retain this trophy, there are certain clubs in the group, the members of which will descend to anything to retain it.”  The Sydney Sportsman declared Cootamundra’s disregard for the rules as ‘bushranging‘.

Bill ‘Chips’ Phillips second from left in the 1930 Cootamundra team

In August the NSW Rugby League banned Phillips for 12 months and Cootamundra were disqualified in all matches they had played him.  As well they were ordered to forfeit any cups currently held for which Phillips had represented them.  A month of further wrangling followed with the southwest fans starved of their Maher Cup diet. There was general uproar in Cootamundra against the NSWRL – even a threat to return to playing Rugby Union, as well as some sympathy from many Group 9 teams and officials over the City’s meddling.  At a fiery Group 9 meeting on 16 August Fred Cahill of Young re-emerged. He read the anti-Coota, anti-Sydney mood, and masterfully gained support of most Group 9 representatives. The Cootamundra based president, secretary and treasurer all resigned. Cahill was elected president with Gundagai securing the secretarial position.  He took it upon Group 9 to appeal the severity of the Phillips ruling and sorted the complexity of current Maher Cup protests where three clubs – Cootamundra, Junee and Barmedman – were all claiming to be the rightful holders…and the hope of a competition in 1930 was revived.

Grafton Daily Examiner 5 September 1929

When finally in September the Maher Cup resumed with Junee v Cootamundra before 4,000 spectators the feelings were so intense that a police inspector addressed the players prior to the match, concerned as much with potential violence off the field as on.  As the defeated Cootamundra brigade were heading home from Junee station they were pelted with eggs and gravel.

With Group 9 entering the Depression decade Temora representative Mr Carr could state without irony that the ‘Maher Cup was a business matter, not a sporting matter’.  The Young versus Cootamundra hostility was now welded on, and the Cootamundra club had alienated almost all the other teams by both their enviable success and abrogation of the principles of fair play.  However there was near unity in Group 9 on one thing – that NSW Rugby League was being run by city interests and had little understanding of the peculiarly intense football world of the southwest.

A newspaper report from 1929

In the last Maher Cup of the decade the tiny wheat lumper’s village of Barmedman demolished once almighty Cootamundra before a crowd some six times the usual population, on a ground described by sophisticates used to the SCG and the manicured Fisher Park as a ‘ploughed paddock infested by rabbits‘.  In an ‘up yours’ celebration of its rusticity Barmedman released a colony of the furry creatures to scatter in all directions at the start of the match.

Cootamundra was to lose its dominance for almost twenty years, but it wasn’t until 1933 that Maher Cup mania had subsided sufficiently for a proper Group 9 competition to be established.