Maritime Football Club
Their club colours eventually settled on red, white, and blue though they in fact wore maroon in their first two seasons at least.
Their first ever senior squad was listed as “A Cross, Campney, Dufty, Lynne, Barchard, Haddon, Brett, Kingi, Hira, Welson, Williams, Herb Lunn, Doran, Hemming, E Stallworthy, Wheeler, Newdick, Hunt, Martin, and Avery”.
[4][5] They put up a good showing in their first ever official match and only lost to City Rovers 15–13 on Victoria Park with an estimated crowd of 5,000.
Maritime had issues themselves with playing numbers and withdrew their junior team from the competition early in the year due to a “lack of players”.
[7] Maritime did put up a strong showing in the Roope Rooster competition however when they defeated Grafton Athletic 16–11, and then Newton Rangers 13–8 to make the final.
[10] Sadly during the first season their club secretary, Charles Albert Brett died of influenza on November 21, 1918, aged just 29.
T. Wilford, Messrs W. Evans, Jack Endean, Captain Fox, Dingley, C. Weaver, H. McLeod, R. Bromwich, W. Ryan, W. Meredith, J. Brasier, W. Morrow, Foreman E. Davis, T.R.
Baillie, Jim Gleeson, T. Hayes, C. Seagar, W. Ah Chee, M. Saunders; secretary and treasurer, William James Liversidge; committee, Messrs. Sutton, Sheenan, Bert Avery, Lynee, Stallworthy, George Davidson, Roberts, Mitchell, Brady; delegate to the league, Mr. E. Stallworthy; hon.
The 1919 season was also notable as they played a benefit match against City to raise money for Opai Asher who had been injured in an accident.
[18] Eric Grey who had joined Maritime in 1919 represented New Zealand during the season in two test matches against the touring England side.
Jim O'Brien who would also go on to represent New Zealand in one test match against Queensland in 1925 also was in his debut senior season after returning from World War 1 the previous year aged 23.
[22] During the season Maritime made history when they were the first team to ever play on Carlaw Park on June 25 alongside City Rovers.
[23] Future New Zealand representative Ivan Littlewood had joined the side and finished second in the try scoring lists with 12 tries for the season.
[24] They could only manage 6th place in the 8 team competition with a 6 win, 8 loss record and astonishingly lost the Roope Rooster final for the 5th consecutive year, this time losing to Ponsonby United by a single point, 11–10.
[25] They had gained the services of New Zealand international Craddock Dufty in 1922 and he was to remain with the club until the end of the 1926 season.
[26] Athletic continued their miserable record in finals by losing 8–7 at Carlaw Park in front of 11,500 spectators.
In August he played for New Zealand against the touring England side in the first test along with Maritime teammate Craddock Dufty.
Joe Hadley was the leading try scorer in the senior competitions with 12, while Craddock Dufty top scored once again with 91 points.
They were not helped when towards the end of the season Bert Avery and Ernie Herring departed for England to play for New Zealand on their tour there.
Champion Auckland sprinter, Harry Hudson joined the senior side and scored a try on debut on the wing in their opening round loss to Marist.
[32] Rather than remain in the B Division again Grafton Athletic decided to amalgamate with the Kingsland Rovers club and apply to enter a team in the Monteith Shield competition.
They decided to change their club colours to be a maroon jersey with a blue and gold shield and a “K.A.” monogram.
