Dave Gallaher, the legendary Donegal man who captained the Original All Blacks and was New Zealand ‘great of greats’

The first captain of the All Blacks, Dave Gallagher (Gallaher) was born in Ramelton. Some rugby writers argue he was the greatest wing-forward produced by New Zealand.

An All Blacks captain of a few years ago, Tana Umaga said Gallaher was a ‘great among greats’. According to Umaga: “He was instrumental in building the All Blacks tradition.”

So highly does New Zealand rugby hold their first leader of over a 100 years ago, that six of the 2005 touring All Blacks squad, including Tana Umaga, came to Donegal to honour their former captain and to officially declare open the Dave Gallaher Memorial Park, at the Glebe, which is outside Letterkenny, on the way to Ramelton.

The first New Zealand All Blacks team to tour Britain and Ireland was away back in 1905. Irishman Dave Gallaher was the captain. Several major books have been written about him and he’s seen as one of the game’s great thinkers and is credited with being the man who changed the game of rugby. The New Zealand Gallaghers changed the spelling of their name to ‘Gallaher’ because some non Irish emigrants put the emphasis on the g’ in pronouncing the name, whereas the family preferred the g’ to be silent.

Gallaher was the seventh child in a family of nine. His parents James and Maria Gallagher (nee McCloskey) of Ramelton were married in Ramelton First Presbyterian Church in June 1866.

James was a merchant and his wife Maria was a schoolteacher. Some of their children died in early infancy but in May 1878 Joseph, Maria, Thomas, William and David (Dave) moved to New Zealand with their parents.

Memories of the Great Famine were still vivid in the Ireland of that time and when an opportunity arose for migrants with small plots of land to move to New Zealand the Gallaghers took the gamble.

It was a scheme organised by a local landlord, George Vesey Stewart. They sailed from Belfast on the Lady Jocelyn in May 1878.

The future New Zealand captain was then approaching five years of age.

Their new home was on a farm in the Bay of Plenty. James ran the farm and his wife Maria established and taught at the local school.

The scheme wasn’t a success and soon the family was depending solely on Maria’s wages as a schoolteacher. They were forced to leave Katikati in the Bay of Plenty and move to John Street in Auckland, a tough part of town where only poorer people lived.

Meanwhile, as Dave grew up he showed a talent for rugby football. He was well suited to the sport. As a forward he measured more than six feet and was thirteen stone.

He later played for the Ponsonby club and was an outstanding performer when they won the Auckland Senior Championship in 1897. He also played provincial rugby for Auckland.

His first game for the provincial side was as a 23 year-old in 1896. He went on to play 26 representative games for Auckland between 1896 and 1909.

Gallaher was by all accounts a born leader and it may have been that desire to lead men that led him to enlist in the New Zealand army. He put his age back by three years to join up in January 1901.

That move took him to the Boer War where he saw active service in the Transvaal, Orange Free State and Cape Colony (Cape Province).

During that conflict, the man who was to lead the first All Blacks rose to the rank of squadron sergeant major in the 10th New Zealand Mounted Rifles. Gallaher returned unscathed from the war in South Africa just as New Zealand was preparing for a first go at international rugby.

In 1903, at the age of 29, he won his first New Zealand cap. It was New Zealand’s first official international outing against their great southern hemisphere rivals, Australia.

The match was played in Sydney and New Zealand scored a convincing victory. In Gallaher’s second international outing against D.R. Bedell-Sivright’s touring British Isles team New Zealand again scored a decisive victory.

Gallagher was a ferocious competitor who never stood off a challenge. His obituary in the Auckland Star in 1917 summed up why he left behind such a formidable, pioneering reputation.

“Standing six feet in height, thirteen stone in weight, hard as nails, fast and full of dash, he bolted from the mark every time, played right up to the whistle and stopped for nothing big or small.

“The Britishers stood aghast at his style of play. They only saw Gallaher descending like fury on the British halves, bumping them and robbing them, and opening up the lightning passing bout that ended in big scores for the black-garbed stranger team.

"The critics cried out the loud protest, the crowds roared with indignation and the air of the playing fields rang with thunderous complaints of unfair play in which the name of Gallaher was shouted continuously.”

Gallaher represented New Zealand in 36 matches and scored 11 points: 3 tries and one conversion.

He was appointed captain of the 1905 New Zealand team - the first to tour the British Isles, Europe and America.

They were generally written off in this part of the world but their Donegal-born captain had other ideas. He believed the forwards should be more flexible; their role should not confine them to the scrum and the line-out as had previously been the case.

It meant they could win possession, move the ball about quickly and generally support the play around the field, linking with the backs.

This desire to get the backs more involved led to Gallaher creating a new position in the game: the winging forward. At that time all teams put eight men in the scrum - Gallaher’s ploy was to make the scrum 2-3-2. He used himself as a scrum half at the set pieces so the backs had an extra man. And being freed from the scrum he could get at the opposition immediately.

British and Irish rugby soon adopted the flanker as part of their play. The results were startling. In the 33 fixtures itinerary New Zealand won every match on the 1905 tour except for a controversial, narrow 3-0 defeat by Wales, when New Zealand had a try disallowed by the Welsh official. Their trip to Landsdowne Road - Gallaher was injured in the defeat by Wales, so he didn’t play - resulted in a comfortable 15-0 triumph.

It was on that tour that the name All Blacks originated and it came about in a most unusual way. During the tour a headline was ready to roll in one of the English newspapers.

It announced ‘All Backs’ had outplayed yet another team but an observant sub editor convinced the headline writer was referring to the colour of the New Zealand shirts immediately altered it to ‘All Blacks’.

The rest, as they say, is history. Donegal born, Gallaher, the man who pioneered the all-backs’ style of play, is now remembered as the first captain of the All Blacks.

On his return to New Zealand, helped by his vice-captain Billy Stead, he produced a coaching manual, ‘The Complete Rugby Footballer,’ and became an All Blacks selector.

His did not have to join the army but the death of two younger brothers in the Great War, when raging in Europe, convinced him he too had to answer the call to arms.

He joined the 2nd Battalion Auckland Infantry Regiment, service number 32513 and was on his way to the battlefront by June 1916. David Gallaher was killed at Passchendaele, in the third battle of Ypres on 4 October 1917.

He was leading an attack in the mud of Flanders when he was shot in the face. It was less than 4 weeks before his 44th birthday.

He is buried at Nine Elm’s British Cemetery, Poperinge,

Belgium. His gravestone, which bears the silver fern, gives his age as 41.

The great rugby writer Terry McLean in his book on New Zealand legends said of him: “In death he acquired a mystique. His grave (in a war cemetery) became a shrine.”