Rugby league player Maggie Moloney’s four granddaughters Karen Heard,Tracey Heard,Margaret Heard and Maureen Black stand at a mural dedicated to their grandmother in Redfern.Dean Sewell
The newspapers reported that many spectators,initially sceptical of the idea of women playing rugby league,“came to jeer and stayed to cheer”.
Historian Katherine Haines said many of the cheers were for Moloney herself,the youngest and lightest member of the Metropolitan Blues,playing against the Sydney Reds. The cry of “go Maggie!” went up as she scored two impressive tries in the second half,she won medals for highest scorer and best and fairest,andThe Sundubbed her the “Dally Messenger of the Blues”.
Perhaps Moloney could have gone on to be recognised as a pioneer of rugby league like Messenger. But the women’s league launched amid public debate and great opposition from the men’s league. It was disbanded by 1923. The very fact that women’s rugby league existed as early as 1921 fell into obscurity,along with the name of Maggie Moloney.
A century later,Haines has ensured Moloney has been rightfully celebrated with the launch of a mural in a back street in Redfern – the very lane where Moloney practised her kicking,around the corner from the terrace that was her childhood home.
The mural on the wall of a St Vincent de Paul Society building was painted by street artist Sharon Billinge and based on a real archival photograph,showing Moloney dressed for a game with a Dally M ball.
‘[Moloney would] be going ‘what’s all this hoo ha?’ because it’s just something she did naturally.′
Karen Heard,Maggie Moloney’s granddaughter
In fact,Haines said Messenger launched the Dally M Match Football at the women’s game,defying the NSW Rugby League,which tried to stop the match going ahead and threatened to expel the then-retired Messenger and two men’s team who played the curtain raiser.
“I think it’s really nice to have Dally M’s name there[on the mural] because often with games like rugby league,we focus on the opposition of men to women playing,” Haines said. “We also have to normalise the fact that there have always been men supporting women’s play too.”
The mural was officially launched on Saturday. The event featured 30 members of the Moloney clan from age 92 to 7 months,and dignitaries including the Irish Consul-General to Sydney Rosie Keane and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.
Moloney’s granddaughter Karen Heard said her grandmother was a great sportswoman and also nearly made the Olympic squad for running in 1928 but later in life had her leg amputated after an infection and used a prosthetic limb.
She passed on that love of sport including her passion for the South Sydney Rabbitohs to her son and five grandchildren,Margaret,Maureen,Karen,Tracey and their late brother Brian.
“I’ve tried to think how she’d feel about the mural and she would be very humbled by it,that’s for sure,” Heard said. “But she’d also be going ‘what’s all this hoo ha?’ because it’s just something she did naturally.”
Haines,who spearheaded the project along with 107 Projects and a grant from the City of Sydney,said there was a second mural in the works to recognise Indigenous women who helped revive women’s rugby league in the 1970s.