Pioneers of Rugby in Wellington 104: Mick Hourigan

Mick Hourigan was a fast, strapping winger who played for leading club team Marist Brothers Old Boys from the late 1940s and played representative rugby for Wellington over five seasons.

Hourigan was a handful to contain at all levels he played in and he was known as a wing who would just about always come off on top given space and in one-on-one situations.

Paul Donoghue and Brian Dive in their book Marist Brothers Old Boys Rugby Club, the first 50 years wrote of Hourigan:

“Mick was a great chaser of the ball. He was big, aggressive and extremely fast. It was also noteworthy that the incomparable Ron Jarden never starred against Marist while required to mark him.”

The Rugby Weekly added this entry in their notes one week in 1959, a few seasons after his heyday.

“Mick was a fairly fleet winger in his day and of course represented Wellington. In those days he was a leading track sprinter too. More recently he turned to the forwards for his rugby and from the flank played some excellent games, covering great stretches of ground in cover defence.”

He attended St Pat’s Silverstream in the early to mid-1940s, but it seems he never played for either the First or Second XVs – the St Pat’s Silverstream’s yearbooks of that era have him in the school’s 2A photo in 1944 only. Perhaps he left school after sixth form/year 12. His brother Bill Hourigan was in the First XV in 1945 and 1946.

Regardless, Mick Hourigan was soon playing for Marist Brothers Old Boys in town in club rugby and was in his club’s third grade team which won defended its Division 1 title in 1946.

In 1947, Hourigan was one of five players in the previous year’s third grade side that graduated to the Senior team. Marist fielded the youngest team in the Senior competition and finished down the table. Although, with a points for and against record of 129/150, they were highly competitive. Youthful exuberance and a winning culture brought forward were soon to pay dividends.

In 1948 the team was coached by 29-year old Jack Dive and his assistant Tom Corkill, former St Pat’s Town and Hawke’s Bay All Black, and was captained by Michael Ward. Fresh players such as Des Lyons and Ray O’Callaghan joined Hourigan and others in the backline and they gelled and swept to the Jubilee Cup title.

The 1948 season came down to the final match against Athletic, with Marist on 26 points and Athletic 24, so Marist had to win to capture the Jubilee Cup outright. Athletic had won their first round game 17-12.

Left wing Hourigan was the try-scorer of the opening try in this decider – then used as decoy for a spectacular try by Lyons. The Dominion reported: “D.J. Lyons engineered the try from his own 25 in combination with Hourigan, who swung in field in expectation of a pass which never came. Instead, Lyons made excellent use of little room down the sideline, while the defence hung infield, and scored in the corner.”

Donoghue and Dive in their 1969 Marist history also wrote that “Hourigan was considered one of the fastest wingers in the country by this stage. His spectacular tries by no means solely the result of his exceptional toe, for there was his sure handling and intelligent summing up in a split second, provided some of the season’s highlights.”

Marist were runners-up in 1949 by a solitary point to joint winners Petone and St Pat’s Old Boys – Mick’s brother Bill playing in the SPOB winning team.

In 1950 Hourigan and Marist returned to the Jubilee Cup winner’s podium, as coach Dive returned after taking 1949 off. They did so undefeated, winning 14 and drawing one, and won by five competition points. The 1950 Marist forwards were heavy and known as the ‘Steamroller Pack. The drawn game was 12-12 with SPOB – and it was Mick Hourigan who scored the match-equalising try after they were down 9-12.

That was Marist’s peak – at least for another decade when they next won the Jubilee Cup – but they were there or there abouts over the next few years of Hourigan’s Senior club career that saw Poneke win in 1951 and Jarden’s University from 1952-54.

Hourigan made his first seven appearances for the Wellington representative team in 1948 and would play another 24 times over the next four seasons.

He scored the first of his 15 tries for Wellington in the 1948 match against Wairarapa-Bush, which also doubled as a New Zealand trial match.

In 1950, the British Isles toured New Zealand and on 24 June of that year played Wellington at Athletic Park.  The tourists weathered the home side’s early onslaught and took a match-winning 12-0 lead by early in the second half (20-0 in today’s scoring).

Wellington fought back with a penalty and a try but it was too late and the visitors won 12-6. Hourigan, on the right wing, was Wellington’s try scorer, after a passing rush involving teenaged centre George Martin and Ron Jarden, playing on the left wing.

1952 was Hourigan’s most prolific year, playing in 11 matches for Wellington and scoring 10 tries, including a hat-trick in a 31-11 win over Auckland on 26 July and a double against Wairarapa in the next game a fortnight later.

He played in three matches in 1953, the year Wellington won the Ranfurly Shield off Waikato and defended it six times in as many weeks. It appears that Hourigan wasn’t in this team for unknown reasons, but he was in the side that beat Hawke’s Bay 18-16 a week after losing the shield to Canterbury because he scored two tries.

Hourigan continued to play throughout the 1950s, and as alluded to above, he moved into the forwards for a time and became a flanker.

He died on 20 October 2001 in Lower Hutt.

REFERENCES

• Akers, Clive. New Zealand Rugby Register 1870-2015. New Zealand Rugby Museum, 2016.
• Chester, R.H & McMillan, N.A.C. The visitors. The History of International Rugby Teams in New Zealand. Moa Publications, Auckland, 1990.
• Donoghue, Paul and Brian Dive.  Marist Brothers Old Boys Rugby Club, the first 50 years. Published 1969.
• Donoghue, Tim. C’mon Red! A Celebration of Marist St Pat’s Rugby. Tim Dongohue Publications, Raetihi, 2020.
• Rugby Weekly – various editions 1950s
• Swan, Arthur C.; Jackson, Gordon F. W. (1952). Wellington’s Rugby History 1870 – 1950. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. & A. W. Reed.
• Veysey Alex & Fox, Bob. Wellington’s Rugby History 1951-1979, Part 2. Tolan Printing Co. 1979.