James Thomas (Jim) Wylie

1913 All Blacks Rugby team.

Profile by Lindsay Knight. Source: http://stats.allblacks.com/asp/Profile.asp?ABID=991

Jim Wylie was one of the first rugby players to become a globetrotter with his involvement in the game touching three countries, New Zealand, Australia and the United States of Amierca.

Extremely tall for his era at 1.90m, Wylie played on the side of the scrum and because of his height was an excellent lineout player.

While studying at Auckland in 1910 Wylie came into the Auckland representative side. He played in six matches that year, including four defences of the Ranfurly Shield and a game against a touring American Universities team, which undoubtedly did much to arouse his early interest in the USA.

In 1910 Wylie was also in the North Island side. But in 1911-12 he was in Australia and from the Glebe club in Sydney he played four matches in those two seasons for New South Wales against Queensland.

In 1912 he was included in the Australian side which made a tour of the USA. He did not play in the one international which Australia won narrowly. The Australians lost other matches on the tour and those results led to New Zealand treating the tour the following year with the All Blacks with extreme caution.

But either the American rugby standard had suddenly dropped away or the All Blacks were a much stronger side than what Australia had sent for all of the matches they played in 1913 were won easily.

Wylie returned to New Zealand in 1913 and after playing another six matches for Auckland, including three more shield matches, made the All Black side which played Australia in the first test at Wellington.

From there he went on his second tour of the USA in consecutive years, this time as an All Black. He played in 11 matches on the tour, including the international against All-America to give him two test caps. In the 51-3 thrashing Wylie scored one of the 13 tries.

Clearly infatuated by the United States, Wylie stayed on in California where he studied at Stanford University and both played and coached rugby. He then entered business as a fruit exporter and wholesaler.

In 1954, when the All Blacks played in San Francisco on their way home from a tour of Britain and France, Wylie, then 66 years old, kicked off the game against the California All Stars.

• Residence: 1940 - 2315 Cowper, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, California, USA
• Race: White
  • Reference: 1940 United States Federal Census - SmartCopy: May 28 2020, 5:04:06 UTC