Analysis: As the NPC kicks off tonight, with Waikato hosting Bay of Plenty, Patrick McKendry says the competition still retains huge value - and a whole lot of memories - for rugby fans.
In ancient times in New Zealand – before Super Rugby, even – the National Provincial Championship was the rugby competition you played in if you were a good enough club player and from there you were selected for the All Blacks.
The NPC, as it was called (and still is, mostly), was once the envy of the rugby world for its quality, the way it attracted and engaged supporters, and the way it prepared its players for the international arena. It was widely accepted, here and abroad, as the world's best provincial rugby competition.
It is 50 years old this year – a number that tends to prompt nostalgia – and if anything qualifies for a sentimental yearning for the return of a so-called golden age it is the NPC, which is no longer what it used to be but retains value (and memories, obviously), even if it has been overtaken by its flashier younger and bigger brother Super Rugby.
Watch every NPC match live and free on TVNZ+ with three games also broadcast on TVNZ 1 each weekend.
I’ll get into the memory side of it shortly but its current value is clear when you consider that new All Blacks loose forward Semisi Tupou Ta’eiloa, a 22-year-old originally from Auckland who was sent to Otago Boys’ High School and made several highlight reels with his powerful ball carrying there, made his reputation representing the Southland Stags.
Indeed, it is said that Southland pulled all the strings they could in getting Tupou Ta’eiloa to the now defunct Moana Pasifika where he continued his development and impressed one Ardie Savea and one Tana Umaga enough for the pair to recommend him to All Blacks head coach Dave Rennie.
One could say that Richie Mo’unga is at the other end of the scale – a returning All Black who is poised to play a key part in next year’s World Cup but who first must play for Canterbury in the NPC to qualify for a return (despite intensive lobbying by head coach Rennie to go to South Africa instead).
Putting aside the knots that New Zealand Rugby have tied themselves into by insisting Mo’unga play for Canterbury rather than travel with the All Blacks for their hugely important and potentially arduous tour, the 32-year-old’s appearance against Auckland in Christchurch on Saturday night will attract a much larger audience as a result.
So, yes, memories, and here are just two or three because otherwise I'll keep you too long.
Growing up in Christchurch, I was never good enough to play anywhere near provincial level but I did play senior club rugby and that meant training with and occasionally playing alongside Canterbury players who would go on to represent the All Blacks.
I wouldn’t have been the first to miss a tackle against Fijian wing Paula Bale but I swear I didn’t get within five metres of him during a training session one afternoon at South Hagley Park, a wide expanse of grass within smelling distance of the Canterbury Brewery nearby on St Asaph Street.
Before that, as a teenager I was heartbroken at the injustice of Canterbury losing the Ranfurly Shield to Auckland at Lancaster Park in 1985. I wasn’t there. It must have been the school holidays so I was on a relative’s farm in South Canterbury and I couldn’t face hearing the fulltime whistle (I think I was listening to the match on the radio) and so I went outside to literally kick rocks.
In 1994, I was at Lancaster Park to see Otago just fail to take the Shield from Canterbury due to a last-minute penalty awarded against hooker and captain David Latta. I was on the famous old embankment with a group of friends, including one who turned up wearing cricket whites and pads – just for a laugh. He would later work for New Zealand Rugby for a considerable period.
I should add here that for some reason after I left school I was invited to play in a touch rugby competition over the summer months for a team containing Mark Hammett (with whom I went to school), Andrew Mehrtens, Angus Gardiner, Daryl Gibson, Tabai Matson and others. Mehrtens, Gibson, Hammett and Matson were all All Blacks. The latter pair and Gardiner were clubmates of mine.
I watched some old YouTube footage of that Canterbury v Otago match recently featuring all five of those names above, plus Mr Bale, and it showed Lancaster Park (RIP) at its finest and wildest. Also playing were Todd Blackadder, Mike Brewer and Graeme Bachop (Canterbury), plus Jamie Joseph, Aaron Pene, Stephen Bachop, John Timu, Stu Forster and Jeff Wilson (Otago) - just a few of the New Zealand game's greats.
Keith Quinn’s TV One commentary said there were 40,000 there but the embankment was a heaving mass of humanity and one wonders how they counted them back in the day.
In the latter stages of the match, Quinn revealed that beforehand a man in his 30s showed him a box which he said contained his late wife’s ashes – he wanted her there to celebrate Otago making history by winning the shield for the first time in 37 years.
The Wizard of Christchurch was there of course, and prominent on the sideline for some reason. “The Wizard is delighted,” Quinn noted after Mehrtens kicked what turned out to be the winning points.
The crowd, not hindered by modern-day security guards, briefly invaded the field before being told to get back by the match-day announcer. They say the past is a foreign country, but this was on the other side of the world compared with what is deemed acceptable now.
In 2011, the Otago Daily Times wrote of the match, which it felt qualified as one of the greatest moments in Otago sport: "The mayoral parade, pencilled in for the Monday, had to be cancelled. Latta lay flat on his back, his hands clasped to his head in anguish, as [referee Colin] Hawke penalised him. He felt sick and all Otago felt sick with him."
Later that year I was living and working (and playing club rugby alongside an All Black or two) in Invercargill and watched Southland play the touring Springboks on Rugby Park's own embankment, a far smaller version of Lancaster Park's but usually containing just as many "characters" and with wits to match.
The difference in class between the teams was obvious, the Boks winning 51-15, but talking to and drinking with the gracious Chester Williams, Francois Pienaar and the late James Small in the Frog and Firken afterwards was something else I’ll never forget.
Williams was good enough to give a me a couple of Boks tie pins which I've since lost. Small, a nuggety little wing with immense physical strength, died at the age of 50 in 2019.
A year after our meeting, in 1995, the Boks, led by Pienaar, beat the All Blacks in the World Cup final in Johannesburg.
And a year after that, in 1996, the All Blacks won a Test series in South Africa for the first time.
Over the next few days, the All Blacks are set to go back and attempt to do the same thing.
I don't know, but I guess that sums up the NPC – a hugely important part of the New Zealand game’s circle of life and one that many of us ancient types will never forget.
The Hilux NPC kicks off tonight at 7.10pm when Waikato host Bay of Plenty.
TVNZ will broadcast all NPC matches live and free on TVNZ+, with three games broadcast on TVNZ 1 – a flagship Saturday primetime match at 7pm, alongside Saturdays at 2pm and Sundays at 2pm.
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