Editorial: Lesson for the lolly seller - legacy for rugby

Sir Brian Lochore playing golf at Napier Golf Club in 2017. Photo / File

The days since the passing of Sir Brian Lochore have focused on achievements as an All Blacks captain, coach and manager.

But it's important to record his provincial legacy, particularly in the east and centre of the North Island.

He was the last survivor of a triumvirate that backboned mid-and-late 1960s rugby, both provincial and the All Blacks — he of Wairarapa, Hawke's Bay's Kel Tremain and King Country giant Sir Colin Meads.

An era where rugby greats were true role models, particularly within provincial communities to which they remained loyal and part forever.

While mainly national and international rugby identities joined bereaved family on Thursday's funeral paepae on Memorial Park in Masterton, about 2000 watched from the Sir Brian Lochore grandstand and the embankments.

Mainly locals, many of whom had watched the career unfold from similar vantage points, from about the time the stand opened as BJ was making his first steps towards an All Blacks jersey in 1963 to his last match for Wairarapa-Bush in 1971 — four days before the more-famed sudden international recall and last match for the All Blacks.

It was at the other end of that park that another side of Brian Lochore could be seen on Saturday mornings, refereeing kids games before heading off to play for Masterton or even Wairarapa in the afternoon. He'd gift one of his jerseys to be presented to his club's junior rugby player of the year.

Matches, including twice-annual Wairarapa-Hawke's Bay games, were heaven for a kid who having sold lollies from a tray during the afternoon was rewarded with a role passing flagons and jugs, saveloys and hot spuds, to rugby idols at the aftermatch function.

BJ graduated through local administration and coaching to a remarkable three years coaching Wairarapa Bush (1980-1982), a union struggling to win in the second division, promoted to the first division, drawing with champion Wellington in the debut, propelled into a seven-season first division era, peaking 4th in 1985 — Canterbury, Wellington, Otago and Waikato among the defeated.

Pre-season 1982, Lochore would take the team to play in Brisbane, where he would deliver a memorable teamtalk to that lolly seller and a gathering of other supporters who mistakenly, he made clear, reckoned their trip was to soak up sun and suds with the boys, and the players' duty was to join in.

But BJ's boys were there for business, a lesson for the lolly seller, whose heart would drop years later whenever the Napier club side he helped manage would tend to drop its own lolly amid halftime pitch invasions by friends and supporters mistaking the break for social time with the boys.

Sir Brian would detest the distancing of modern All Blacks from their most loyal, but there's a legacy for the game to consider just how and when it embraces its greatest fans.