Analysis: The damage to the Ranfurly Shield was an accident but what appears to have happened afterwards is devastating for those who understand its significance to the game in New Zealand, writes Scotty Stevenson.
“The party starts tonight, and that party goes all summer long!”
It was the most beautiful line on an epically ugly Christchurch evening. Veteran broadcaster Tom Conroy was behind the microphone, it was October 22, 2009, and the Southland Stags, courtesy of Robbie Robinson’s boot, had prevailed 9-3 over Canterbury to win the Ranfurly Shield for the first time in half a century. I was in the stands watching with my late wife, a Cantab. It was the first time we’d been to a game together.
Earlier that day a Southland fan had pinned a prayer to the wall of the Christchurch Cathedral. “Please,” he had written, “Let Southland win the shield".
Three months earlier, the shield had been in Wellington’s possession. The Lions had taken it north to Masterton for a pre-season fixture with Wairarapa-Bush.
It was 18-year-old Charlie Ngatai’s debut for Wellington, it was my debut as a first-class rugby commentator. Wellington would obliterate the challengers 90-19 and every detail of that afternoon is imprinted in my memory; the two team lists and the points-scorers preserved in Biro on loose leaf A4 paper, stuffed in a plastic sleeve along with the match programme.
Wellington saw off challenges from Whanganui, Otago, and Auckland that season, before Canterbury turned up and did them over on their home patch. They in turn would see off Otago, Taranaki, Northland and Manawatu, before the Stags roared in the rain and the wind and set off with their loot for the City of Dreams, Invercargill.
The place went nuts, as places used to about this sort of thing, before provincial rugby was pushed down and beaten up and forced into fringe venues so the headline Super Rugby stadium show could hog all the headlines.
Stevenson said accidents happen, but it was sad to see people laughing about the damage and posting it to social media. (Source: Breakfast)
For more than a century, a shield challenge was the biggest gig in rugby. Provincial rivalries festered on shield slights real or imagined. Ironically, the most acrimonious relationship in Ranfurly Shield history remains that between Hawke's Bay and Wellington.
There were others of course. Manawatu have never forgiven North Auckland (now Northland) for taking the Log O’ Wood off them in 1978 with a 12-10 victory. Manawatu had defeated Auckland by the same scoreline in 1976 and had kept the shield for 13 successive defences before the Kauri in Cambridge Blue nabbed it in controversial fashion.
More controversy was courted when North Auckland refused to put the shield on the line against Otago and Southland that season.
Such were the politics of New Zealand rugby’s most prized possession in those days. The shield was a big deal. Defences defined eras. Successful challenges created legends. In 1973, Marlborough successfully challenged Canterbury and, on the drive back to Blenheim, left a ‘gift’ in Grizz Wylie’s letterbox. The Red Devils held on for five defences that year, and another in 1974. It was South Canterbury that ended the reign. South Canterbury’s own reign lasted 17 days.
Yes, there have been politics all right, but let’s not get started on the Battle of Solway in 1927.
There is nothing in New Zealand sport like the Ranfurly Shield, and now it is in at least two pieces.
Its incredible legacy is almost a footnote to the tawdry scenes scripted on Saturday night, captured for Snapchat and then, of course, shared everywhere. Since that 2009 Southland win, the Log has moved 17 times, three times to Hawke's Bay. The Magpies are the most successful Shield team in that period. They have defended the Shield 25 times. They will defend what’s left of it again next season.
What’s harder to defend is how a team can so flagrantly disrespect such a treasured possession. Dropping it is one thing - accidents happen, but everything that appears to have happened after – and is now being investigated - shows a blatant disregard for the last truly inspiring narrative thread in New Zealand provincial rugby. It may well have been the thoughtless hangers-on at fault. My comment on that: Get better friends.
The decision by New Zealand Rugby kaumatua Luke Crawford to take the original shield out of circulation as a sign of respect for its value as a taonga of the game now feels more prescient than ever. The decision made by those involved in this debacle to laugh about the damage, and perhaps do worse still, feels like a betrayal of all those who have fought for the right to be a shield winner, and of those of us who have spent large parts of our careers caring for the stories that defined its meaning.
I know there will be players and administrators in Hawke's Bay who are devastated by what has unfolded over the weekend, by the abject desecration of a symbol that has defined the province’s rugby more than any other.
I hope they get answers to the questions they must have. Many of the greatest players in this nation’s provincial rugby history spent years trying to win that hunk of lumber. Many never did. To watch it seemingly treated like some throw-away prop at a B-grade party actually hurts.
I remember standing on the sloping lawn of South Otago High School with Dick Knight and David Latta back in 2013, after Otago ended a 56-year shield drought by dusting up the Mooloo men in Hamilton. They held the shield between them, and there were tears. Knight played 170 games for Otago and Latta 161. In all that time, neither had ever won it.
Had they ever done so, I know both would have shown the Ranfurly Shield the respect it deserves.
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