Pioneers of Rugby in Wellington 072: Barney Wishnowsky and Arthur Bowman

The All Blacks team to Australia in 1938, featuring Arthur Bowman (highlighted in blue), representing South Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay respectively. Circumstances brought the pair to Wellington during the war and they would be leading club and Wellington players in the 1945 season. Morrison stayed in Wellington and became a prominent selector and administrator.

An overview of a pair of armed services players from outside Wellington who were leading players in the province in the last year of the war in 1945.

Between 1941 and 1945 Wellington’s club rugby competitions were curtailed, and provincial rugby took a backseat with hundreds of players serving at home and abroad.

Wellington club rugby continued, and an eight-team Senior A competition included a war-time merger of Poneke-Oriental and the inclusion of an Army team that was based at Trentham.

In 1945 there was also a Navy team competing in the second tier and an Air Force side in the Junior Championship.

Summing up the Jubilee Cup competition, the Evening Post described 1945 as “Wellington’s most eventful senior Rugby football competition of the war period, and one of the most interesting on record.”

The Jubilee Cup was won by Athletic, who beat Army in the deciding match on 25 August at Athletic Park.

This article looks at three players who came to play rugby in Wellington during the war, Tom Morrison, Barney Wishnowsky and Arthur Bowman.

Morrison was a wing, Wishnowsky a fullback and Bowman a flanker.

All three players played at least one season for the Army side, but by 1945 the trio were playing for different clubs.

What else these three players had in common was that they were Wellington’s representatives in the North Island – South Island inter-island match in Auckland and all three played the final big match of 1945 and the last match of the war years at Athletic Park between a New Zealand XV and a New Zealand Combined Services team.

Seargent Barney Wishnowsky was born in Halcombe in the northern Manawatu and played 6 matches for Manawatu in 1941 and 1944 for Kia Toa and the combined Old Boys-Kia Toa side.

He played for the Army team in the Wellington competition in 1945 and then transferred to play for Onslow in 1946 and 1947 alongside Morrison, before moving to Hastings and playing several seasons in his mid to late 20s for Hawke’s Bay.

Wishnowsky was a fullback and occasional five-eighth (at least in his early career). He would play 80 first-class matches including 19 for Wellington and 46 for Hawke’s Bay.

Wishnowsky was one of a handful of key Army club players who missed the final match of the 1945 Jubilee Cup against winners Athletic, as he was in Auckland with Morrison and Bowman playing in the North Island – South Island match. The Evening Post speculated that if Wishnowsky and co had been playing the outcome might have been different.

He died in February 2014 in Auckland, aged 90.

Like Wishnowsky, flanker Arthur Bowman also played several seasons in the Hawke’s Bay and played 28 matches for the Magpies. But his stint there was before he moved to Wellington and played for Army and then for the Wellington Axemen in club rugby in the final year of the war.

“Snow” Bowman had also toured Australia with the All Blacks in 1938 with Morrison and had represented Wellington in 1941 out of the Army club. He was an All Black trialist in 1939 and would have been in contention to tour South Africa in 1940.

Seargent Major Bowman played in five of six of Wellington’s inter-provincial matches in 1945 and scored a clutch try in Wellington’s 20-8 win over Auckland at Athletic Park on 22 September.

In 1946 he played in the top of the South Island and represented the Seddon Shield unions team that year, playing the last of his 68 first-class matches.

Bowman also represented the New Zealand Army at swimming and athletics. He worked as a Power board linesman and later as an oil company branch manager.

Bowman died in January 1992, aged 76.

References:

• Akers, Clive. New Zealand Rugby Register 1870-2015. New Zealand Rugby Museum, 2016.
• Chester, Rod, McMillan, Neville and Palenski, Rod. The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand Rugby. Hodder Moa, Auckland 2005.
• Evening Post – various rugby reports 1945
• Heather, Bruce. Onslow’s Golden Winter 1955. Publisher and year not given.
• McCarthy, Winston. Rugby in My Time, A Gallery of Rugby Greats. A.H. and A.W Reed. Wellington, 1958.
• Quinn, Keith. Give ‘Em the Axe. 150 years of the Wellington Football Club. Wakefields Digital, Wellington 2020.
• Swan, A.C. History of New Zealand Rugby Football, Volume 1 1870-1945. Christchurch. Whitcombe and Tombs 1948.
• Swan, Arthur C.; Jackson, Gordon F. W. (1952). Wellington’s Rugby History 1870 – 1950. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. & A. W. Reed.