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The Otago Daily Times counts down the 150 greatest moments in Otago sport.
No 97: Otago league's big year (1924)
Plenty of interest - and some scoffing from the rugby establishment - surrounded a game at Tahuna Park in 1924.
Dunedin got its first look at international rugby league when the Kiwis were beaten 31-18 by Great Britain in the third test in the series.
It was a dead rubber, with New Zealand having won the first two tests, at Carlaw Park and the Basin Reserve.
But about 14,000 people, some of who had come on special trains from the country districts, crammed into Tahuna Park to get their first taste of "the northern code".
The match was played there because the Otago Rugby Football Union, annoyed at the encroachment of rugby league, had refused to give up Carisbrook.
Great Britain scored seven tries to two against a Kiwis side missing outstanding captain Tom McClymont.
The Brits were back four years later, when they beat the Kiwis 13-5 in the second test at the Caledonian Ground.
After that first test, in 1924, the Otago Rugby League was formed in response to the boost in interest in the sport.
Through the enterprise of some superb administrators, especially Harry Divers, the ORL soon became one of the richest sports bodies in New Zealand after founding the Art Union Lottery.
In 1927, the ORL loaned the New Zealand Rugby League 820 to keep it out of the red.
Sadly, the early death of Divers in 1931, coupled with the Great Depression, negative media reports and players drifting away, led to the ORL disbanding in 1934, but not before it had produced five Kiwis and six clubs.
The ORL re-formed in 1953, and Australia and Great Britain played in Dunedin a couple of years later.
Rugby league has battled away ever since, with Otago winning on the West Coast for the first time in 1998, and claiming the Rugby League Cup for the first time in 2002.
The Otago club competition was revived last year after a short hiatus.