On Saturday, 6th October 1923, a crowd of around 10,000 spectators, motivated by curiosity more than any kind of footballing enthusiasm, piled through the gates of the Jubilee Oval in Adelaide. They were there to watch an Australian national side, captained by Gilbert Storey, play against a touring China side. Ahead of the latest meeting between Australia and China this week, Front Page Football looks back at this game between the two nations, which was also the first international football match in the city.
The Maths Lawn at Adelaide University (pictured in 2017) where, roughly, the centre spot of the Jubilee Oval (1895-1945) was located. (Image: David A Grant)
The game finished in a 2-2 draw, with Albert Phillips scoring both goals for Australia in a “Man-of-the-Match” performance. Unfortunately for Phillips, Australia’s governing body, The Commonwealth Football Association (CFA), did not consider the game a full international match. The CFA, formed in 1911, had shown interest in supporting the event but was wary of the financial risk and was reluctant at first, then ultimately unwilling, to be involved.
The Chinese Football Association did not form until 1924, so Phillips’ goalscoring exploits—as well as his arduous, long overland journey from his native Sydney to represent his country in Adelaide—are largely now forgotten. He never subsequently won a full international cap.
Ahead of China's visit to Adelaide for a vital 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifying match against the Socceroos on Thursday night, it is coincidentally just over 100 years since China became the first international side to play in Adelaide. The 1923 game was played on the Jubilee Oval, and the story of this first international football match is interesting. It begins with one Henry “Harry” Millard.
Henry “Harry” Millard. (Image: “The Soccer News”, 18th August 1923)
Born in Ballarat, Millard was a Second Lieutenant in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, serving with the Labour Corps in France. Since then, he has been described as the “forgotten of the forgotten.” His battalion comprised Chinese volunteers who carried out mundane and laborious but vitally important tasks such as loading and unloading ships.
Millard was impressed by the Chinese and became aware of the contrast between what he saw and the racial prejudices back home. At the end of World War I, Millard returned to his civilian life as a journalist with a new appreciation for the “Orientals”. He argued against the racial restrictions on migrants in his adopted home country, including those contained in New Zealand’s “Immigration Restriction Amendment Act” of 1920.
Eventually, Millard’s employment took on a sports focus, and when, in 1922, Great Britain’s rugby league team cancelled their 1923 tour to the Antipodes, he saw an opportunity—perhaps entrepreneurial, it must be said—to promote Asian sporting prowess and bring a Chinese rugby team to tour.
Through contacts within his local Chinese community, he was assured that the Chinese people in Hong Kong played rugby. Millard was planning the logistics of bringing a touring team to the southern hemisphere. However, he faced several issues, including financial support, migration restrictions, and the lack of a national Chinese side.
Receiving financial backing from a rugby league business syndicate and providing guarantees to government officials that all incoming Chinese players would return home at the end of the tour, Millard then boarded a ship towards the end of 1922 to accomplish his last final task: find or make up a national team.
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When he arrived in Hong Kong, he realized that little of what he had been advised was accurate. The locals did not play rugby at all. They played football. Indeed, football was the only code the Chinese played (the British introduced it to Hong Kong in the last years of the 19th century, from where it spread). Millard was duped, so his first approach was to convert Chinese football players into a rugby team.
But after a trip to Shanghai, where they appeared to excel at the round-ball game, he was further convinced that a Chinese football team would be more competitive in Australia than any rugby team. Scrambling, he then cabled home, confirming the change of codes before then, awkwardly, returning to his backers and rugby enthusiasts and persuading them - in the same way you might convince a kiwi or an emu that flying is a good idea - that football would be a better option.
Further quandary ensued. Millard wanted to select players from multiple regions across China to have a representative “China” national team, but the Hong Kong-based South China Athletic Association (SCAA) football team that competed in the 1923 Far Eastern Games was so successful (beating both Japan and the Philippines at the Games) that he was persuaded to build a team around them.
After weeks of politics, persuasion, and preparation, 17 departed Hong Kong in July 1923, with 15 from Hong Kong and two from Shanghai. They were accompanied by Millard, who had spent almost ten months in China by this point. By the time of departure, too, Millard had made the decision to only tour Australia and not include New Zealand, although the exact reasons behind this are unclear.
The China team pictured on arrival in Sydney in 1923. Harry Millard is the first from the left in the front row. (Image: Sydney Mail)
In his brilliantly researched 2010 thesis “Kangaroos and Dragons: The 1923 Chinese Football Tour of Australia”, Nicholas Gouth says that "the Chinese left Hong Kong not knowing what reception they would be afforded upon arrival in Australia. They knew nothing of the groundwork that had taken place, in Australia, prior to their arrival. Yet, these players were intent on showing themselves as athletes and upholding the pride of their country. Little did the Chinese players know that they would be an instrument of numerous forces within Australia as that country’s White and Chinese populations tried to evaluate a tour of this kind amidst the heydays of White Australia.”
Back in Australia, the CFA was aware of Millard’s endeavour but maintained a distance, waiting like the second bungee jumper in a queue to see how things go for the first to leap. The organisation had previously considered sending a side to the 1916 Berlin Olympics, but even if the War had not dashed that notion, the funding of such a trip was almost certainly going to be prohibitive. They were too cautious and overly wary after football had lost its foothold, as a majority sport, to Australian Rules in the south and rugby in the east.
However, the CFA had sent an Australian national team to tour before 1923. An Australian team had travelled to New Zealand in 1922, where they had played their first-ever official international match at Carisbrook in Dunedin (a stadium demolished only as recently as 2012). Then, just before the Chinese visit in 1923, they hosted New Zealand in a series of return matches. These games were successful, but New Zealand was a familiar foe regarding sporting events. China was a whole new ball game.
Millard tried various options to have the CFA on board, including splitting gate receipts. But he was ultimately abandoned and left to organise the tour independently.
Australia vs China in 1923 in Sydney. Wong Shui-Wah and James “Judy” Masters in action. (Image: The Sydney Mail, 22nd August 1923)
The endorsed games in New Zealand in 1922 had used players only from New South Wales and Queensland. Furthermore, these players had taken to the field in strips of those two states’ colours – light blue with a maroon trim (Australia would not adopt green and gold until the 1924 series against Canada).
But Millard’s international games would, for the first time, include Australian sides that featured players from other states (except Western Australia, who were excluded only because of the distance). For example, Jock Cameron of the Cheltenham club in Adelaide travelled to Sydney to play for the Australia team against China.
The Australian squad selected to face China in Adelaide included Gilbert Storey (captain and cap 26), Tommy Oliver (cap 32), Harold Winter, Albert Phillips, and Percy Lennard (cap 16), all from New South Wales. Jim Robinson from Victoria. Selectors added South Australian players only after the state team had played China (losing 6-2) in the days before the international game.
From South Australia, they were S. Gore, Jock Walls, J. Wright, and Wallace. Additional local players were added to the Reserves pool, including Kirk (goalkeeper from the South Adelaide club), E. Lowe (also South Adelaide), Rowe (the Sturt club), and H. Denman (Cheltenham).
No substitutes were permitted in 1923, so the Reserves were essentially a group of players on standby until the day of the game. Indeed, Wallace picked up an injury in the South Australia-China game and was replaced by fellow South Australian Lowe. Jim Orr (cap 44), travelling from Victoria, was also a late call-off so H. Denman took his place.
The Australia team that faced China at Jubilee Oval in 1923. (Image: The Observer (Adelaide), 13th October 1923)
The Chinese tour was a success in terms of spectator numbers. A total of 134,000 people watched the 24 games played across five states. These numbers alarmed the other codes, with many rugby and Australian Rules authorities making their grounds unavailable for football in an overreaction pressed by anxiety and a weird sense of self-preservation.
The success of the 1923 series also paved the way for more to come. The following year, the Canadian national team toured Australia with players receiving full caps. The Adelaide leg of the tour, also played at Jubilee Oval, ended in a 4-1 win for Canada in what was the first full and official international played in the city.
However, in many ways, the 1923 Chinese tour was more remarkable than the 1924 visit by Canada. Gouth says, “In the second half of 1923 Australians witnessed an extraordinary event. A team of 16 Chinese athletes and a manager came to Australia to participate in a soccer tour. Over the three months of the event, the Chinese would travel to all States except Western Australia and contest a total of 24 matches, five of which were classified as Internationals. Their results were on par with the Australians as they won eight matches, drew seven and lost nine. Yet what is exceptional about the tour is the fact that the Chinese were welcomed enthusiastically, more or less, everywhere they went.”
In summary, there had been nothing quite like it.
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