What a great story this was at the start of another rugby season. The small hamlet of Mangatainoka, home of the Pahiatua Golf Club and the Dudley Arms Hotel (oh, and also a brewery which employs women; gorgeous women!) hosted the pre-season clash between the Blues and the Hurricanes yesterday. TVNZ featured the story last night as does the Herald on Sunday today.
Rugby doesn't get much more grassroots than the formerMangatainoka Domain! But yesterday, it was transformed into a stadium, and over 8000 turned up in dreadful weather. We hadn't realised that the season had rolled around so quickly, and by the time we enquired, the match was a sellout.
Rugby royalty was there. As well as the All Black-laden teams, Sir BJ Lochore and Sir Tree Meads were in attendance in what was a great day from all reports. The attendance of the latter duo was most fitting, given their patronage of the NZRU's Heartland Championship.
We played a match at the Mangatainoka Domain once many, many years ago. Memories of the match itself are hazy, but one thing will never be forgotten - the trays of freshly-filled flagons carried across from the brewery immediately after the end of play - it was the freshest, tastiest ale. So it's fitting that we close with a tribute to Mangatainoka's most famous export, and it's not the "gorgeous women" either!
Grassroots rugby is dead - yeah right!
8 comments:
Was going to post on this but your guys beat me to it.
I thought it was funny how cricket's biggest crowd of the season was around 6000 at the Mount (so far) and they were saying how pleased they were at that.
Shows that rugby still has mega pulling power at local level.
It also shows that people want to see matches between traditional rivals with their All Blacks on the pitch...that's what the punters want, not "expansion", "super" teams in bloody Melbourne.
Did Nick Rogers from the Tui marketing team pull this together. Seems a very unusual place for a preseason match to be played at.
Well done, sounds like it was a winner.
I do believe that this was a Nick Rogers initiative - they guy certainly has his finger on the pulse!
It also shows the rugby's biggest crowds (80k at the San Siro last year for a match of collapsed scrums) areon the back of the sponsors' power.
Grass-roots rugby? You've got to be joking.
A corporate circus. Not an evil circus, but a circus all the same.
Leg Break I am with you.
Given the Hurricane Boards aversion to games away from the Cake Tin it was a major coup to get them into the old Bush province. I suspect Sir BJ Lochore had a hand in that.
By the way it is still the cricket season - the rugby season starts on the 1 April or at Easter - whichever comes first.
@pdm,
Sounds like we're in agreement here.
I fail to see any excitement in a rugby game at the sponsors home on the 23rd of JANUARY.
BTW, when did the Hurricanes last take the game to the people by playing in Gisborne, Masterton, Whanganui, Hastings etc...
Or even Palmerston North for that matter.
lb - they don't.
I said it last year and I will say it again and again. Hawkes Bay should withdraw from the Hurricanes franchise and join the Highlanders.
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