INTRODUCTION
Timing is everything!
Fate is paramount and will govern and dictate circumstance to the finer detail, but timing is the neo-pendulum, the piece of apparatus required to ensure that all links in the chain are correctly connected. Nothing happens without timing.
At time of writing, as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century, it is now surreal to look back on life and times in my native New Zealand during the 1960’s. But it was into that period in history that I was born and would spend my formative years.
It was indoctrination into a culture of relative geographical isolation, although the recent advent of jet travel had at least promoted an opportunity to travel further afield quicker and to feel some sort of connection with Europe or North America, in particular.
Life was simple. It was the early 1960’s. I was a boy.
There is a relatively commonly played sport called rugby union, although in New Zealand you don’t have to bother adding ‘union’, in order to further differentiate the code.
The game of rugby definitely helped shape and define my very earliest years. Perhaps I had a genuine interest in the sport, I surely must have, but all was tantamount to my immediate surroundings and the foster-ship of those who influenced me in those inaugural years of kinship to the species.
My father, Alex, had been a very fine rugby player and like most kiwi men of his generation, was rugby mad! An open-side flanker, he had graduated from the 1st XV at Wellington College in 1956, to the senior ranks of the Athletic club in Wellington within two seasons.
In that side were three All Blacks; Nev MacEwan, despite the claims of many others, simply the finest line-out ball winning lock in New Zealand at that time and through most generations, J.R .(Russell) Watt and T. R. (Rod) Heeps.
In 1957, Rod and Alex had been captain and vice-captain of the Athletic 3rd Grade, 2nd Division side, who swept all aside to win their competition. In their final match they defeated Hutt, the only other unbeaten side, by 17-0.
Another couple, halfback, Barry Cull and lock, Dave Harker, are players that carry that ignominious fate of ‘should have been AB’s’, especially with many local followers of the game at the time.
My father played for Wellington Juniors (1958 and ’59), Centurions (1960, marking AB legend, Brian Lochore) and was often mentioned as a rising star. Unfortunately for him, his career was cut short by a shoulder injury, that in modern times, would have been fixed by surgery. Not so in 1961.
My father, Alex, in support of his halfback, Barry Cull, in a senior rugby match against Taita at Fraser Park in 1959. No. 3 is Maori All Black, Jimmy Taitoko.
My family had to endlessly endure the recounting of the day that Nev MacEwan had told him that, had he not been so small, he would have been an All Black too.
When I last saw big Nev, at the funeral of an Athletic club stalwart (also my Godfather) Len Kitching, he put his immense hand on my shoulder and said to me; “You know, your father would have been an All Black too, but he was just too small!”
W. A. B. (Bruce) Gibson of Hastings, my mother’s father, was also besotted with the game and it was he who indoctrinated me into the Ranfurly Shield arena as such, by taking me to my first challenge, between Hawkes Bay and Wellington, at McLean Park in Napier, 1969.
A quick and nuggety wing three-quarter, Bruce had been a member of the competition wining Waipukurau HSOB senior side during the mid-1930’s, He too was rugby mad and a fanatical supporter of the Hawkes Bay Magpies.
The Waipukurau HSOB senior side of 1936. My grandfather, Bruce Gibson, is fourth from the left in the standing row.
My first actual rugby associated memory is also from the fair city of Napier, being in the back yard of my great uncle Bob Thorpe, in Vigour Brown Street. Literally right over the back fence was McLean Park. September 30th, 1967. Coincidentally, it also involved a Ranfurly Shield challenge involving the same two unions.
At but four years of age, I had been left with the Thorpe’s, while my parents, the Perrett boys and grandparents attended the match.
I was as close to the action as one could get, without actually being there.
Uncle Bob was sitting in his outdoor shed, intently following the crackly broadcast, emanating warmly from the valves of his Gulbransen radio.
The chickens were out in the back yard. It was an overcast but mild spring afternoon, the sun often leaking through the layer of cloud, with electricity from the highly charged atmosphere next door filling the air.
All at once, a noise, an eruption of which I had never heard the like of before, exploded out of McLean Park and simultaneously, Bob Thorpe was off his seat and in the air. Even his chickens appeared to be in raptures.
For over the fence, the Hawkes Bay first five-eighth, Blair Furlong, had just drop kicked a goal in the dying seconds of the match, which ensured that the Magpies would retain the ‘Log o’ wood’ over the summer months ahead and then prepare again to be resolute in going about its defence in 1968.
My father and his best mates, the Perrett twins (Malcolm and Hugh), had travelled from Wellington with the family, especially for the match. In the final fortnight leading up to the challenge (which would be big Nev’s 133rd and final appearance in a Wellington jersey, a record at the time), Wellington had knocked off Auckland (in Auckland) and then Canterbury on the Park. So it was with some confidence that they faced the Shield holders in the Napier showdown.
Bruce, a personal friend of Hawkes Bay selector/coach, Colin Le Quesne from their days in Waipukurau, had organised a caravan, which he parked outside his residence in Gallien Street, to accomodate his visitors from the capital.
What transpired on the Friday evening in that caravan became almost as infamous as the match would itself, although at the time, no-one could foresee how events would be mirrored on McLean Park the following day.
Fuelled by beer and the odd dram of whiskey, Alex and the Perrett boys drank and farted for Wellington, while my Grandfather and his great mate, Don Hagensen, drank and farted for Hawkes Bay. At the end of a long and boisterous evening, all concerned decided to call it a draw.
The match the following day turned out to be (and still is) one of the greatest Ranfurly Shield matches ever played and for Wellington, for all the wrong reasons.
Hawkeye & Leo circa: 1967
Ian Stevens, 1968
Once again (when fancied) they were on the wrong end of the result. When Furlong, slammed over that pot, which sent Uncle Bob and his chickens into exaltation, it enabled the holder to squeak home with a 12-12 draw. The challenger must win the game to claim the trophy.
The match was loaded with personalities and two players in particular, the rival captains, were great All Blacks and already true legends of the game. The Hawkes Bay leader, Kel Tremain and his opposite, Ken Gray, would both play significant roles in the contest. In the end, Tremain’s rearguard rallying of his troops in getting up to earn the 12-12 draw, eclipsed Gray’s adoption of a defensive approach in trying to hang on to a 12-6 advantage.
There was a 19 year old halfback in the Wellington ranks, Ian Neal Stevens (13/04/1948-), who had earned a lot of praise for his excellent displays at scrum-half throughout the season, with swift recognition of his courage and ability. He had good all round skills, a quick pass, an accurate boot and a breaking ability round the fringes of rucks and mauls which made him a most dangerous attacking weapon.
This time Wellington’s gain was Hawkes Bay’s loss, with Stevens having been born and raised in Waipawa and Takapau respectively. Furthering his education, he moved south and attended Palmerston North Boys High School, making the 1st XV in 1965 and 1966, where a ‘bright future’ was predicted for him.
The team, ably lead by Jerry Rowberry, went through both season’s unbeaten, the sole blemish a solitary draw and are still regarded as one of the finest 1st XV’s fielded in PNBHS history. The team produced three All Blacks; Ian ‘Nectar’ Stevens, John Loveday and Bob Burgess.
In search of even bigger smoke, young ‘Nectar’ moved into the Wellington region early in 1967 and joined the powerhouse Petone club, instantly making the senior XV. After a handful of impressive performances, Wellington coach, Freeman, whisked the lad into his representative unit to cover for the injured incumbent, Brian Coulter.
The tongues were now really wagging regarding the snowy headed half-back and following some sound performances against some of New Zealand’s best, he turned out for the ‘Black’ team in the second NZ under 23 trial, then received a trial for the North Island, a precursor to the All Black trial proper. He was one of the brightest rugby prospects in the country.
Waipawa in the central Hawkes Bay was also near where my mother’s side of the family were originally from. Onga Onga (then Waipukurau) to be exact, although by the time of my arrival in 1963, their son, Bruce and his wife, Betty had settled in Hastings. Bruce worked as a company representative for Hawkes Bay Farmers Transport and toured the back blocks of the geographically vast province as vocational routine.
During school holidays between 1970-77, I attended many sale days with him, from Dannevirke in the south, to Wairoa in the north. The biggest regional sheep sales were on a Monday and Wednesday in Hastings though, at Stortford Lodge.
In the later years I was ‘unofficially’ employed at those yards in Hastings, droving sheep from a holding pen to the loading dock, branding cattle and running memo’s to auctioneer’s. I loved it.
The pay for this ‘unofficial’ position was principally two fold; whatever I could eat or guzzle down at lunch-time from the cafeteria and being able to meet the likes of stock agent, Doug Curtis and farmers, Robbie Stuart, Paul Carney and Hilton Meech, their legendary deeds in helping retain the Ranfurly Shield, etched in my mind by memories recalled through the words of my grandfather and ‘Uncle’ Don Hagensen.
Bruce and Don would always recall those heady shield days with verve and excitement. Two, usually reserved, quiet provincial types would burst into life like a Magpies forward rush and gesticulate passionately, as animated as a couple of Italians, hotly debating which was Mickey Duncan’s or Kel Tremain’s greatest try.
These two elder gentleman - and my Uncle Harry Clare (who was a team-mate of Kel’s at Napier HSOB) - infected me with an affliction, colloquially known as ‘shield fever’, a pandemic which will not be found in the universal majority of medical journals.
Droving a recently sold pen of sheep toward the transport holding bay at Stortford Lodge sale yards in Hastings, circa; 1972.
Inhabitants of Hawkes Bay, through two golden generations, had not only experienced ‘shield fever’ first hand, they invented it, and believed that the amulet’s true home was actually McLean Park. This was backed up thanks largely to the legendary deeds of two squad’s of men; one from the 1920’s and the then recent hero’s of the late 1960’s, both sides enduring long and gloriously romantic reigns with the shield.
Both had repelled all-comers while in possession of it. Most of the names, from both era’s, were not only legends of Hawkes Bay rugby, but also of the national All Blacks; Brownlie, Paewai, Nepia, Cooke, Grenside, Kirkpatrick, Mill, Irvine, Tremain, Davis, MacRae, Furlong, Thimbleby, Duncan.
For during the Bay’s first golden tenure, a New Zealand side toured the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Canada, playing 32 matches and winning the lot. The 1924/25 All Blacks were posthumously given the handle ‘The Invincibles’ and contained no fewer than six members of the Bay shield side, who contributed majorly to the on-field success of the team.
It had been a long time between drinks for Bay folk though and by the late 1950’s, their representative rugby side were often chastised and made the butt of jokes by their own supporters. Bruce’s mate, Colin Le Quesne, had taken over the reigns as coach and cracked the whip, on his way to earning the nickname ‘the Fuhrer’. A decade later they held the most prized trophy in New Zealand sport.
By 1974, the parochial Magpie supporters were starting to get stuck into their team again, over a few seasons with largely disappointing performances.
“They’ll come again,” Bruce would say, his eyes rolling into the back of his head and momentarily carrying him back to his seat in the main stand at McLean, the sun shining as it did on most occasions during the second golden era.
He had missed just two of the 22 defences between 1967-1969 and I still to this day, have his momento’s and keepsakes from the era. His programme collection had but one missing; a match he had missed against Taranaki in 1967. I was given a copy of that programme by Robbie Stuart in 1977, after I wrote to him from Firth House at Wellington College, to tell him how thrilled I was that he had become an All Black. And I was.
The other match he missed was the only mid-week fixture of the tenure, the 1969 clash with North Auckland (which wouldn’t have been a shield challenge, had Wellington been successful 10 days earlier). His company would not allow him the time off work to attend the match, after a decade of impeccable service to them. He’d hardly even taken a day of ill in that entire ten year period.
Hawkes Bay’s retention of the Ranfurly Shield throughout 1968, including another cliff-hanger, a 9-9 draw against Auckland in the last challenge of the season, meant that come 1969 (following a further four successful defences), when Wellington were in town once again, I would be there to witness the occasion.
Timing is everything!