Goal of a century

Gisborne Thistle’s Adam Hair (above) slides in for a tackle against Eastern Union in a 1964 match. Eastern Union became Gisborne City and Hair’s contribution to Gisborne football Thistle was recognised in an annual clash between Thistle and City for the Adam Hair Memorial trophy. Herald file pictures

Players and supporters of Gisborne Thistle AFC will celebrate the club’s 100th anniversary at Easter Weekend next year. Gisborne Herald journalist John Gillies sets the scene by looking back at the Jags’ history.

A hundred years of history counts for nothing in the 90 minutes of a football match.

If the other lot are better than you — fitter, faster, better coached, more skilful and more determined — they’ll usually win.

Where a hundred years of history will count is in the clubrooms . . . on the honours board, in the team photos, in the club pennants, in the faces of members who’ve been regulars for decades and who remember the generations who’ve gone before.

The people sitting at those tables, picking apart the good and the bad of the latest crop of Gisborne Thistle “Jags” players, comparing them with those of yesteryear, are part of a football family tree with deep roots.

If this family tree had a taproot, it would be Jock McLean.

In 1924, he and the likes of Jim Easton and brothers John and Dick Watt banded together to form Thistle.

They weren’t the first football club in Gisborne, but they’re the oldest still standing.

I have a vague memory of Jock McLean. He lived just along the road from us, on the other side of Chalmers Road on the way to Flinders Dairy.

He’d be sitting on his veranda with a big lime tree nearby and Dad (Iain Gillies) would stop and talk to him and obviously thought a lot of him.

I remember when Jock died. We heard he’d been watching Steptoe and Son, a popular English comedy TV series of the mid-1960s. He would have had a last good laugh then, we thought.

Years later, Dad said that Jock would occasionally suggest that he (Dad) should give his Scottish brethren a season or two at Thistle.

In 1964, Dad gave them only one season but two brothers — him and Archie. They went back to Eastern Union the following year, but the seeds were sown for a return down the track.

That came in 1973 after Sandy Johnstone and one or two other Thistle stalwarts active in junior football had buttonholed Dad following one of the summer training sessions that he and fellow Gisborne City player Maurice Tillotson put on for youngsters at the Gisborne Boys’ High School ground off Roebuck Road.

“What’s going to happen to these players when they leave school,” Sandy had said.

The gap between Eastern League and National League football was a chasm that few could bridge, and Gisborne City — competing weekly against the best in the country — were dominated by British ex-professional or semi-professional footballers.

Dad had played his last National League game in 1972 at the age of 37. He took on the role of Thistle player-coach for the 1973 Eastern League, a competition that in those days included teams from Hawke’s Bay.

The three sons he had coming up through the grades probably had something to do with his acceptance of the job.

Again, brother Archie was recruited, along with experienced hands such as goalkeeper Stephen Wright, fullbacks Bob Dunn and Colin Kenny, and — over the next four years — brothers and forwards Robert and Len Cudd, midfielder Jim McMillan, target man Alan Paley, centreback Ian Sim and attacking midfielder Peter Sutherland.

Established Thistle stars such as fullback David Morley, midfielders Ken Morrow and skipper Ronnie Lightfoot, and winger Wilson Pears were still there, and club senior statesman Ray Morrow was the ideal player-coach for the Thistle Juniors.

Younger local players developed as Thistle won the Eastern League in 1973 and ’74, then won a playoff series in Masterton to join the third division of the Central League in 1975.

Ronnie Young, Willie Watson, Fred Robertson, Ian Brooks, John Whitley, Paul Rickard, Kenny McCrae, Barry Johnstone, John Lange, Ian Mustard, Graham Elliott and Roger Broughton were among the younger brigade who grew in stature during this period.

The Central League third division at that time included teams from Wellington, Manawatu and Taranaki.

Thistle had established a staging post for young players who wanted to go beyond local football. It was a development that would have impressed Jock McLean. He and his teammates became the first Gisborne team to enter the Chatham Cup — the knockout competition that is the New Zealand equivalent of England’s FA Cup.

They left Gisborne at 5am on a Friday in June, 1929, for a game in Auckland the following day against Auckland Tramways, then one of the best teams in the country.

Because the Chatham Cup was a national competition, football clubs in the district had agreed that a select team should enter the cup to give them a chance against the big boys of the larger centres.

Thistle were the strongest Gisborne club, so the selected players were transferred to them for the occasion and Thistle’s name had gone into the draw.

As a young Scottish reporter in self-imposed exile in the Antipodes, Dad was drawn to the stories of these Thistle pioneers, and he used them in a preview to the club’s 50th jubilee celebrations in 1974 and in his book Class of ’84: Gisborne City.

Continued on page 20

Jock told him about the wet and wearying 21-hour journey to Auckland in two service cars (they arrived at 2am on the Saturday).

Jock and Tom Hill, normally a goalkeeper, were the fullbacks in that game. Much later Tom Hill — who was still a regular spectator at Childers Road Reserve — became a city councillor, and Dad was on the council round.

He told Dad that Tramways had five internationals in their side and that Thistle had given them a tough game, even though they lost 8-2.

All other football in Auckland had been cancelled because of rain, but Thistle’s game was allowed to go ahead because they had travelled so far.

Regular venue Blandford Park was under water so the match was switched to Victoria Park, which was “a sea of mud”.

Centre-forward for Thistle that day was Ernie Bridge. He recalled that the team had changed at the Tepid Baths and left their clothes there. After the game they were so muddy the taxi-drivers wouldn’t take them, so they jogged along the tramlines in full gear, with the rain still lashing down. Then they had to have a cold shower before they were let into the Baths.

One of the match highlights for Thistle was goalkeeper Jim Easton’s penalty save, but the overriding success story was that, against daunting odds, Thistle had arrived in time to play the game and then performed with spirit.

They had shown that Gisborne’s isolation was not an insurmountable obstacle to footballers keen to test themselves against the best teams from beyond the enclosing ranges.

The founding of Eastern Union in 1939 and that club’s rise to prominence with the help of imported players from the 1950s onwards might have affected Thistle’s prestige in the local football pecking order, but not their popularity.

Bill Wilkie — a granite-hard Scot who played fullback for Eastern Union and Gisborne City at local, Central League and National League level — used to say that the best football was to be had at Eastern Union, but Thistle had the best parties.

The people in the club were so friendly that outstanding players from Eastern Union were sometimes drawn like moths to a flame. Notable examples were inside-forward Bert Ormond and goalkeeper Ron Leakey.

Even while playing for Eastern Union, Bert Ormond joined with friends Sandy Johnstone, Dave MacFarlane, Jack Crawford, Jim Fletcher, Eric Wilkes, Alex Ramsay and Ron Humphries to revitalise Thistle.

Bert organised head tennis sessions for them, and it wasn’t long before he was playing in Thistle colours.

Ormond and Leakey ended up in Auckland, where they had notable coaching careers.

Ormond — with the help of another former Gisborne footballer, schoolteacher Dave Metzger — guided the powerful Blockhouse Bay side of the 1960s and ’70s, and his sons Ian and Duncan played for New Zealand.

Adam Hair and Ronnie Lightfoot had spells at Eastern Union before they joined Thistle and settled in for the long haul.

Adam came to Gisborne from Wellington Railways to join Eastern Union, having impressed in a match between the teams.

His contribution to Gisborne football and Thistle, in particular, was celebrated with the staging of an annual match between Gisborne City and Thistle.

The Adam Hair Memorial games typified the player they honoured . . . competitive, with an edge.

Over the following decades, Gisborne City crowd favourites Len Cudd, Les Todd and Martin Ryan held the coaching reins at Thistle.

And Sean Byrne, once a City skipper and assistant coach, joined Ryan at the Jags to build something positive from the bitter disappointment of being overlooked for the City coaching job following Steve Sumner’s departure after the 1987 Chatham Cup win.

Sometimes the migration went the other way. Grant Thomson, son of Thistle player Willie, left the Jags for Gisborne City in the National League, won two player-of-the-year awards and returned to Thistle, where he eventually coached the first team to promotion out of the Pacific Premiership.

He is the middle representative of three generations of Thomson men to have played for Thistle, the others being his 18-year-old son Cory, who enjoyed plenty of first-team game time this year, and Grant’s late father, Willie.

Dave Watson is another who shifted from Thistle to City (in the Central League) and back. He is a third-generation Jag, following his father Willie and grandfather Dave.

Roger Faber did the Thistle-City-Thistle shuffle and showed he could hold his own against National League strikers. Down the road, he played alongside sons Stefan and Jared in Thistle Eastern League sides.

A family link of a different sort belongs to Peter “Legend” Stewart. He was player-coach when Thistle went through a lean patch in the Central League third division, and he held them together from his central defensive position. He had been in the first team squad in the heady days of Central League second division competition under Ryan, and learned all about the highs and lows of amateur sport . . . just as his club-founding great-grandfather Jock McLean had, generations before.

Incidentally, Stewart says his nickname “Legend” came from Gisborne City, Marist and Thistle midfielder/striker Stuart Owen. During his Thistle days, Owen laid on a ball for Stewart to score a particularly good goal.

When Stewart, then among the youngest in the team, arrived at the next training session, Owen greeted him with, “Peter Stewart: the man, the legend”. He repeated that greeting whenever they met. Eventually it was shortened and passed into general use as “Legend”.

Any schoolboy footballer growing up in Gisborne in the 1960s and ’70s could hardly fail to fall under the influence of a Thistle junior coach at Anzac Park. Alex Ramsay, Neville Millar, Henry Cudd, Chum Sharples, Sandy Johnstone, Sam Stopford, Bert Cattle . . . the Jags had junior football sewn up through the grades.

And as the 20th Century drew to a close, Martin and Colleen Ryan oversaw enough young footballers to build their own village at Watson Park.

Thistle have enjoyed the services of dedicated volunteers throughout their history. Initially many of them had a Scottish back-story, but the sociable nature of the club drew people from all parts of the world . . . even Sassenachs (Englishmen).

And some of them proved more than useful.

Eric Toplis was a journalist from Hereford, in the West Midlands of England, persuaded by The Gisborne Herald to bring his wife Chris and two children to the other side of the world.

He was an outstanding chief sub-editor and the paper’s first sports editor, but his superpower lay elsewhere. As Thistle chairman he saw the club into the long-awaited clubrooms next to the No.1 ground of Childers Road Reserve.

Committee members Ian Gordon and Laurie Heavey drove the nuts-and-bolts detail of the project and the club’s army of tradesmen rallied to the cause.

By then, Kiwis playing for Thistle outnumbered Brits . . . had done for some time. But the Scottish influence was woven into the fabric of the club.

Nevertheless, the death of patron Campbell Goodwin in November 2021 at the age of 85 reflected the changing make-up of the membership.

Most clubs have their workhorses.

Thistle have had Paul Rickard, Ron Young and Mark Pearce.

Numerous others have contributed to the running of the club and its teams, but club patron Rickard, past president Young and club manager Pearce have gone way beyond what was expected of them.

Women have also been vital to the club’s existence. People like Chris Fletcher, Doris Farndale, Doreen Hair, Judy O’Rourke, Mandy Owen and Lorraine Dolman have been active across practically every facet of football club life.

President Matt Feisst, chairman Shannon Dowsing and their committee carry the responsibility of leading members into the club’s second century.

Thistle may not have set the world on fire with their football over the past 100 years. But being part of the club helps light up the world of those along for the ride.