Darcy and Messenger were alike in many ways: they were humble and straightforward, with a high sense of duty to family and friends. Their personal behaviour was exemplary. Through relentless practice and playing, they were self-taught, though Darcy acquired trainers as his boxing career blossomed. Both athletes thought they should be recompensed for their skills. Messenger had few qualms about playing rugby league for money. Darcy was the second son of a large Irish Catholic family. With a father who could not resist alcohol, he became the family’s breadwinner.

Their fates, however, were remarkably different. Messenger retired from rugby league and lived quietly, dying at the age of seventy-six in 1959. Les Darcy was a constant source of controversy during World War I, often becoming enmeshed in its politics as increasing numbers of Australians lost their lives in Gallipoli and France. Prime Minister Billy Hughes responded to Britain’s request for more soldiers by increased recruitment drives. Hughes, unable to attract enough recruits, sought to introduce conscription via a referendum, in 1916. This was denounced by Melbourne’s Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix, who proclaimed his pride in his Irish heritage. Beside the misery of the increasing death toll, Australia was riven by sectarian hatred between Protestants and Catholics. The referendum was defeated, as was a second one in 1917. Darcy was criticised for not enlisting. His mother, because Darcy wasn’t twenty-one, refused to grant him permission. The war reduced the fighting game in Australia. Darcy hoped to go to America for some big bouts. Wartime legislation required permission to be given for men wishing to leave the country. His requests were blocked. Prior to the 1916 referendum, he stowed away and headed to the United States. There he was vilified as a coward, and various fighting engagements were blocked by state governors. Boxing promoters, H.D. (‘Huge Deal’) McIntosh and Sandy Baker, whom Darcy antagonised by his decision to go it alone, acted behind the scenes to stop his fights. When Darcy eventually found a way to fight, he was struck down with ill health and soon died from septic poisoning. (In a fight approximately eighteen months earlier, his two front teeth had been knocked out; his mouth became infected, and poison slowly spread through his body.) More than 250,000 people lined the route of his funeral procession in Sydney. Peter FitzSimons observes ‘the once popular hero to beat them all was now being feted in death in the manner of a martyr – a secular saint of extraordinary courage who’d been brought low by evil forces’.

The Master, by sports historian Sean Fagan and Messenger’s grandson Dally Messenger III, mainly provides an account of the various games that Messenger played and his numerous tries and goals. During his youth in Melbourne, Messenger had played Australian Rules football, which improved his kicking and positional play, skills that made him famous in both versions of the rugby game, with a reputation as a phenomenal kicker.

The major weakness of The Master is that the recounting of his scoring of tries and goals becomes repetitive. While it provides titbits of information on the rugby split in 1907, the emergence of rugby league and the importance of representative tours by teams from New Zealand and England, it lacks any solid contextual analysis.

The Ballad of Les Darcy, by FitzSimons, is a more accomplished work, for two reasons. First, Darcy’s life and death were more complicated than Messenger’s; second, FitzSimons is a more accomplished writer. Books Alive, an initiative of the Australian Government, invited FitzSimons to write 40,000 to 50,000 words on a topic of his choice. He chose Les Darcy, his object being to ‘introduce’ him to a new generation of Australians. He set out to make this story ‘interesting’ by creating ‘a non-fiction book [that] at least feel[s] like a novel’. FitzSimons provides an accessible record of Darcy’s short life. The book is at its best in the second half, when Darcy battles with officialdom. FitzSimons, like all Darcy scholars, is fascinated by the depth of emotion that accompanied his premature death. He quotes D’Arcy Niland, who regarded the loss as representative of a generation of young men lost in World War I. Our leaders told us that participation in the Great War would announce the arrival of Australia as a great nation. Australia lost its innocence in the killing fields of Gallipoli and France. Les Darcy was seen as one of many innocents sacrificed on the altar of nation building. His funeral provided a vehicle for the collective mourning of this loss of innocence. Australians feared there would be many more Darcys, young men cut down in their prime.