Hawkeye gets a bit of 50th-birthday TLC from Simon Tremain (right) in 2015. Now, he needs a tow to Saturday's Ranfurly Shield challenge in Wellington.
Hawkeye gets a bit of 50th-birthday TLC from Simon Tremain (right) in 2015. Now, he needs a tow to Saturday's Ranfurly Shield challenge in Wellington.
The chance of Hawke’s Bay’s most experienced Ranfurly Shield player having a role in Saturday’s Magpies challenge against Wellington hangs in the balance, as it’s not certainly whether he can travel.
At almost 60 years old, giant mascot Hawkeye is fit and ready to go, and his trailer’s registered road-worthy with Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency, but he’s got nobody to take him to the big match Sky Stadium (AKA The Caketin) in Wellington, where another 80 minutes (or so) of Ranfurly Shield history starts at 2.05pm on Saturday.
Owner and custodian Simon Tremain, whose father, the late Kel Tremain, was a hero of the great 1960s Hawke’s Bay Ranfurly Shield era, can’t make it, and said: “If anyone wants to take him, they’re welcome.”
Simon Tremain missed the 1966-1960 shield fever (being born in 1968), but has had a lot to do with the mascot lately. He helped to rescue him from a yard at Whakatu, and had him painted up and the trailer restored to roadworthiness, mainly for trips undertaken by a social golf team, also known as the Magpies.
Hawkeye, reputed to have been the biggest mascot in teams sport worldwide, is almost 60 years old, hasn’t been to the capital since 1982 and is most commonly seen taking more of a rocking-chair role during games at McLean Park, almost out of sight on his trailer near the eastern end of the concrete edifice that is the Harris Stand.
Created from a sketch on a shoebox by late Napier visionary Ian Mills, the giant mascot was first paraded by the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Supporters Club (AKA the Hawkeye Guys) for Hawke’s Bay’s challenge against Taranaki in New Plymouth in September 1965.
The scene when Hawke's Bay relinquished the Ranfurly Shield in a 19-12 defeat to Wellington in Napier last year. It's game on again for the shield on Saturday as the Magpies try to get it back.
It’s recorded that as Hawkeye was towed up State Highway 3 to the game, dead magpies were seen hung on fence lines through Southern Taranaki as a form of welcome for a match in which Hawke’s Bay was beaten 21-17.
He had his biggest day just over a year later on a trek to Hamilton, where the Magpies beat Waikato 6-0 in a triumph not only for Hawke’s Bay rugby, but also the business community and the region as a whole, as New Zealand’s most prized sports trophy returned to the Bay after an absence of 32 years.
Hawkeye would play almost as big a role in Ranfurly Shield history as the players in three years of shield fever, as the Hawke’s Bay Magpies turned aside 21 challengers before losing the shield to Canterbury at the end of the 1969 season.
A famed match of that era, and one of the most famed in almost 120 years of Ranfurly Shield history, was the September 1967 match in which Wellington were about to hand the shield off to Wellington after an apparent 12-9 loss when Hawke’s Bay first five-eighths Blair Furlong kicked a drop-goal in the last few seconds to save the shield with a 12-all draw.
Hawkeye would feature in public campaigns over whether he would be allowed to cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge or whether he could be insured during expeditions into enemy territory, one of which saw the ties of his wings come loose, as if he were ready to take flight into oncoming traffic on the Rangitaiki Plains.
Hawke’s Bay went close the last time Hawkeye ventured to Wellington in search of the shield, being beaten 13-12 by the Lions at Athletic Park, but it wasn’t ‘til last year that the Lions, with the Magpies in their third shield reign since 2013, finally put to bed any revenge from the 1967 twist by nabbing the shield with a 19-12 win over Hawke’s Bay at McLean Park.
The opportunity for revenge is now back on the other boot, but whether Hawkeye can be there is up in the air because no one’s available to take him on that winding trip over the Remutaka Range, or an inaugural glide through Transmission Gully.
The Wellington Rugby Union was late yesterday in considering whether Hawkeye would be allowed on to the field at Sky Stadium for what is Wellington’s last defence of the season, with the Lions unbeaten to date in their defence, also of the NPC title, and Hawke’s Bay looking for a win - which, if third-placed Taranaki or fourth-placed Tasman lose their weekend matches, could see Hawke’s Bay claim a home quarter-final.
The union was seeking details about width, weight, tyre type, movement process, and whether the wind rating would allow for gusts it could withstand, given that the forecast for Wellington at the weekend is for “strong southerlies.”
