Aware of the tour's lucrative potential, New South Wales captain Charles Lawrence invited the team to stay at his hotel on Manly Beach. Their first match against his club at the Albert Ground in Redfern halted dramatically when policemen entered the field and arrested Wills. He and W. E. B. Gurnett, the tour promoter, had been vying to take over as manager, and Wills ended up in gaol for a breach of contract. Within days of his release in March, Gurnett embezzled some of the funds and left the team stranded in Sydney, dashing any hopes of a trip overseas and confirming Wills' suspicion that he was a con artist. Lawrence set up a "benefit" match for the team and joined them on their travels outside Sydney. By the end of the New South Wales leg of the tour, he had usurped Wills as captain. No longer attracting significant crowds or media attention, they returned to the Western District in May; Lawrence stayed with the team while Wills went to Geelong to play football. It has been said that, due to his drinking habit, Wills exercised a "bad influence" upon the players, four of whom died from illness during or soon after the tour; the inquest into one death, that of Watty (Bilvayarrimin), and a follow-up police report found evidence of alcohol abuse among the players. The surviving members formed part of the Aboriginal XI which Lawrence took to England in 1868, making it the first Australian sports team to travel overseas. Wills resented Lawrence for reviving the team without him; his exclusion from the landmark tour has been called the tragedy of his sporting career. Ambiguous professional Without career prospects beyond sport, Wills joined the MCC as a professional at the start of the 1867–68 season; however, he was not openly referred to as such. Instead, the club devised the title of 'tutor' in order that he maintain the prestige of his amateur background. Played on the MCG, the December 1867 intercolonial between Victoria and New South Wales ended in a sound victory for the former, principally due to Wills' nine-wicket haul and Richard Wardill's century. Wills had been Victoria's preferred captain for over a decade. Writing in his sports column, Hammersley claimed that, as a paid cricketer, Wills lacked "moral ascendancy" over amateurs. When he lost the captaincy to Wardill, an amateur, on the eve of the March