Joe Warbrick

Joseph Astbury Warbrick (1 January 1862 – 30 August 1903) was a Māori rugby union player who represented New Zealand on their 1884 tour to Australia and later captained the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team that embarked on a 107-match tour of New Zealand, Australia, and the British Isles.

Born in Rotorua, Warbrick played club rugby for Auckland side Ponsonby while boarding at St Stephen's Native School. In 1877, he was selected to play fullback for Auckland Provincial Clubs as a 15-year-old, making him the youngest person to play first-class rugby in New Zealand.[a] He played for Auckland against the visiting New South Wales team, the first overseas side to tour the country, in 1882. Two years later, he was selected for the first New Zealand representative team, and playing mainly as a three-quarter, appeared in seven of the side's eight matches on their tour of New South Wales.

In 1888, Warbrick conceived of, selected, and led the privately funded New Zealand Native team. The squad, which included four of Warbrick's brothers, was originally envisaged to contain only Māori players, but eventually included several New Zealand-born and foreign-born Europeans. Although the team played 107 matches, including 74 in the British Isles, Warbrick took part in only 21 matches due to injury. The tour, the first from the Southern Hemisphere to visit Britain, remains the longest in rugby's history. In 2008, Warbrick and the Natives were inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame.

Warbrick effectively retired from rugby after returning from the tour, with the exception of an appearance for Auckland in 1894, and went on to work as a farmer and tourist guide in the Bay of Plenty. In 1903, he was killed along with several others by an eruption of the Waimangu Geyser.