Dave Jurlina, from Taipa’s Eastern United Rugby Club, has organised the Northland Tarara Croatian rugby team to travel to Croatia in October for a four-match tour. Most of the players have Croatian/Dalmation ancestry.
Dave Jurlina, from Taipa’s Eastern United Rugby Club, has organised the Northland Tarara Croatian rugby team to travel to Croatia in October for a four-match tour. Most of the players have Croatian/Dalmation ancestry.
That long association will be further strengthened when the Northland Tarara Croatian rugby team travel to the southeast European country to play four games in the land of their forefathers.
On October 10, 24 players with Croatian links from rugby clubs across the Far North and down to Wellsford, and 34 supporters will leave for the two-and-a-half-week trip, with up to a dozen other supporters making their own way there.
Dave Jurlina, who along with wife Nada, organised the trip – and the $150,000 fundraising effort needed – said the trip is rekindling connections between Far North rugby and Croatia from the 1970s and 80s when four trips were organised to the country for rugby games.
Jurlina went on two of those trips, which also included players with Croatian descent from Auckland, but they had to stop when Croatia went through a bloody civil war in 1990.
He has been thinking about trying to revive the trip back to the homeland ever since, but had to settle for the annual Srhoj Cup contested between Northland and Auckland Croatian selections. However, with that event also consigned to history he decided to get the trips back to Croatia going again.
The club rugby season may be over, but the Northland Tarara Croatian rugby team is practicing once a week to stay fit for their four-match tour of Croatia
The problem was he only had about 14 months to raise the $150,000 needed to get there. So a major fundraising effort, including getting major sponsors, ensued and the trip is now a goer.
He got help from Auckland rugby coach Milan Yelavich, who had been the Croatian national team’s coach and had many contacts in the country.
“Milan was brilliant. We did the fundraising and he helped organise all the practical things on the ground there and with the Croatian rugby union and we’re all ready to go. I can’t wait.”
Jurlina said it was important to rekindle the games with Croatia as it was a chance for the players to see where their ancestors came from.
The players have to find the home villages of their forebears and they would be visiting them while there to strengthen their links.
The Far North’s Dalmation heritage is well known, with Kaitāia having welcome signs in English, Māori and Dalmation.
“The plan is to go back to those villages to reconnect with their ancestry. Many came here for gum digging in the gum fields and made a new life here. It was hard work. We are their descendants and this is not just a rugby trip, it’s a cultural trip to share the two cultures and show the players where their forefathers came from.”
He said the players had been training once a week to keep in shape.
Jurlina’s three sons – Branden, Mitchell and Hayden – the latter of whom who has played NPC for Northland and qualified to play for Croatia, were all involved in the trip.
He said it was an amazing effort to raise the $150,000 needed for the trip (each player has to supplement the trip to the tune of around $3000) and it was only due to the support of the generous local community and businesses that it could be achieved in such a short timeframe.
“Milan initially said we should aim to go there in 2025 but we said 2024 is the time to go so we really got stuck in to fundraising and here we are, ready to go. It’s actually been very humbling to see the level of support that we got. The connections with Croatia in the Far North are huge and that’s illustrated by the support we received.”
Jurlina said for some of the players this may be the only opportunity they will have to go overseas and visit their Croatian roots.
The Auckland and Northland teams get together after the 2012 Srhoj Cup challenge between teams with players of Croatian descent.
The three main sponsors were Westpac Mussels, Vuksich & Borich Engineering and Yelavich Transport, and Jurlina said while they were the main sponsors, the trip could not go ahead without the many Far North folk who dug deep to help out.
While here, Dr Kusen also visited Gumdiggers Park and Ancient Buried Kauri Forest, north of Kaitāia, to see the conditions many of those early gum hunters came to work in. The Dalmatians came to work the kauri gumfields of the Far North and now more than 100,000 New Zealanders list themselves as having Croatian heritage. Dalmatia is one of the four historical regions of Croatia.
(Māori coined the word Tarara to describe the new immigrants as that was what they heard when Dalmatians talked when they first arrived in the Far North.)
