It was a colourful and quite delightful celebratory occasion which left me carrying home my own portion of colour, which I discovered about a week later when an awful smell began sifting through the closet. I tracked it down to a very rotting sausage, one of the boys had slipped it into the pocket of my blazer at some stage.
Ratbags, one and all... but oh how I dearly enjoyed their company.
Our boys in blue did battle for this fine cup last weekend but were unable to wrest the thing from a side which doesn't even have a home ground or recognised clubrooms.
Quite remarkable, and in an odd way all rather wonderful, because if anyone had to take the thing I'd rather it was a side which had a colourful spark, although I'd much rather we had brought the thing home, just to once again experience the aroma of a fortnight-old sausage after what would have been a wonderful celebration.
But hey, as they say, there's always next year.
And so... with the first part of the possible great sporting double dissolved, it was on to the Ranfurly Shield.
It's also a trophy I have held close to my person, and it would be fair to say that the Moroney family actually held the Ranfurly Shield longer than teams like Taranaki or Bay of Plenty or Southland ever did.
For while the wonderful Magpies bore it aloft for one day a week over three glorious seasons in the 60s, we had the thing for every other day... tucked under a bed and wrapped in a blanket.
Security?
Of course we had security. Dad locked the back door every night and Mum sorted the front door.
When match day arrived Dad would drag the shield out from under the bed and put it in the back seat of the Morris Minor and head for McLean Park where he worked, voluntarily I have to add, as the custodian of the old (now demolished) HB Rugby Union rooms.
Although I recall sometimes someone would call on the Friday evening and pick it up if the boys had a parade on Saturday morning.
And every Saturday night Dad would arrive home with the shield, grinning like a Cheshire cat after another bunch of "big city bastards" had been put to the boot, and he'd wrap it in the blanket and slide it under the bed... and occasionally, such was his happy state, he wasn't far behind it.
Yes, we held the Ranfurly Shield, and while it was there pretty well every day we never took it for granted.
Oh, and all this dreadful commercially-driven hoopla and nonsense surrounding the professional game today is nothing new.
Hell, we brought professionalism to the game 44 years ago when our family held the Ranfurly Shield. I'd let mates of mine come round after school and hold it, but those I didn't know so well, or particularly like, I charged 10c.
For 20c I'd take a photo of them with it with my little Kodak Instamatic, and after a week at the chemists the little cassette would be transformed into pictures. They were delighted.
Oh yes, we were making money out of rugby... and I daresay in the year of 1968 I may have made more cash in the hand from the Ranfurly Shield than the likes of Neil Thimbleby and Ian MacRae. It was an amateur pursuit back then of course.
On Sunday evening the second half of the great sporting double also dissolved, the mountain men of Taranaki too strong at home for the Bay team which, to put it in perspective, was missing a clutch of first-string players. But those who took the field wore the black and white stripes with pride and they put everything they had into it.
My pride in them is equal to my pride in Napier City Rovers.
Hey, we were contenders in the two major trophies for winter's two major sports.
You don't win those chances in a raffle. You earn them.
Well done those chaps, and well done those supporters who made the journeys and bore the colours well.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
