Early XXth century Photoshop...

Here are the 1905 All Blacks during their famous tour.  A pretty casual photography as we see some of the guys in rugby kit, some in "half" rugby kit, some barefoot, some wearing hats, some wearing jackets... the end of a training, may be ?

Then a Photoshop artist came in, didn't like the background and transformed this picture into another postcard...



Fine work, indeed... And good news : he didn't erase any player...

As often, the back of this postcard shows the list of fixtures (past and future) and the players' stats. The stats from the beginning of the tour (9 games played, out of an initial schedule of 32) are just impressive and explains the newspapers craze for that "colonial" team : 9 games played in one month... 9 wins... 386 points "for" and ... 7 points "against"...



Nota : the bootom card is signed "G.,W-S-M". Does anyone know what it stands for ?

(larger pictures : top, middle, bottom)

rugby, All Blacks

Comments

[Phil Atkinson]

Hi Fred
W-S-M almost certainly Weston Super Mare in Somerset,
G probably the initial of the publisher. Almost everywhere the All Blacks stayed, someone seemed to publish a postcard!
Cheers,
Phil Atkinson (Akky)

[Frederic (www.rugby-pioneers.com)]

Thank you Phil - what a wonderful name for a city ! (btw the stats on the postcard were printed just before the feature in Sommerset)