? Frew simply made of the write stuff - Garry Frew
Many Northland sportspeople, of wide and varied ilk, have etched their names into the record books with audacious performances, memorable feats and record-breaking efforts.
Among their ranks are Olympic gold medallists, world championship winners, national title-holders, All Black rugby stars and world record-breakers - sporting giants who have accomplished too many feats to mention here.
But for the majority of these high achievers there is one common denominator: A man called Garry Alexander John Frew.
The former sports editor of The Northern Advocate is a name synonymous with Northland sport, even now, six years after he died of a heart attack at his home in Kamo, aged 64.
But it isn't just his duties as prolific sports writer that set Garry Frew - Frewy to his mates, Fru-Ju to his friends - apart and sees him ushered in to sit alongside Northland's sporting greats.
Because, before Frewy began a sports-writing career that spanned 40 years, a career that encompassed an All Blacks tour to the United Kingdom, Commonwealth and Olympic Games and two North Auckland Ranfurly Shield tenures, he was an international sportsman in his own right.
Frew was a New Zealand Table Tennis representative at the tender age of 17, touring with the national team to Scotland and China in 1961 during which he became the Scottish singles champion. He held his place in the New Zealand team for many years.
But his time in the New Zealand team was just a small part in his table tennis career that included a hatful of national titles (in singles, doubles and mixed doubles) and so many Northland titles that it would be impossible to list them here.
This was at a time when the sport of table tennis was at its peak and was being played in every nook and cranny of the country.
The thing is, Garry Frew, the sportsman, was far more than just a table tennis player. He was also one of the best tennis players in the region, managed to play premier grade club cricket and senior club rugby as well.
It must be noted that Frew, in 1965, was named Northland sportsman of the year.
It was after his playing career started to abate that Frewy's real legacy showed though.
Frew was an uncanny coach. He served several years as a New Zealand table tennis selector. Frewy was an outstanding administrator. He became a confidant to the stars. Frewy sometimes masqueraded as a publicity agent. He was, of course, a sports writer and correspondent.
Frew helped organise the several hardcourt tennis championships in Whangarei in the 1960s. He was also the invisible draws adjudicator for a popular Northland-wide club rugby competition called `The Cock of the North', later known simply as `The Blackheart Rum'.
Fru-ju threw himself into fundraisers, was occasionally a draw steward, also an author, historian and, well, you name it, he did it for sport.
We need to say here, he did it for NORTHLAND sport. Which is why, in 1988, Garry Frew won the Brian Maunsell Memorial Award for service to sport.
It was these efforts, all of them unpaid (except for his regular job of course) and done with alarming efficiency, that has etched Garry Frew's name into the hearts of several generations of Northland sportspeople.
It was why he was honoured with life memberships to three different Northland sports organisations - Northland Table Tennis, Northland Tennis and the Northland Rugby Union.
Frew was a foundation board member of Sport Northland, our regional sports trust, and was serving as patron at the time of his sudden death.
It was all of these things that saw Frew awarded an MBE, a Member of the British Empire, for services to sport in 1992.
So it makes sense, doesn't it, that Garry Alexander John Frew is posthumously inducted into the Northland Legends of Sport?
? A mighty man among men - Joe Morgan
Over the decades, as North Auckland rugby changed to be called Northland, there have been many heroes - Johnny Smith, Peter Jones, Sid Going to mention a few - who stood as tall and strong as the great kauris of the North.
But for many Northland sports followers, even these fabled heroes finish in the shadow of a man called Joseph Edmund Morgan.
Joe Morgan, from Mid Northern, is North Auckland's most-capped rugby player, turning out 167 times for the province over a 15-year representative career.
He played 22 games and five test matches in an All Blacks career in the mid-1970s. North Island representation and an All Black trial in 1970 were Morgan's only matches above provincial level until 1974 when, after a further trial, he was chosen for the tour of Australia.
He appeared in six matches and was rewarded with selection for the third test.
After end of season trials and a second appearance for the North Island he was chosen for the Irish centenary tour, appearing in the one test match.
After retiring from the game, he coached Northland representative teams.
But it isn't Joe Morgan's impressive career as a rugby player that has left an indelible mark on Northland, because Morgan contributed so much to the community he lived in that his rugby was almost a mere distraction.
Almost.
Committed family man, dedicated member of school committees and the ultimate bloke at the dreaded working bee, Morgan was also a successful businessman, respected boss and talented member of a local entertainment group called "The Maromaku Players".
But it is Morgan's abilities as a rugby player, an uncompromising, rugged, talented and instinctive rugby player, that underscored his life.
For rugby officianados it is Morgan's unforgettable try against the South African Springboks that still reigns as one of the greatest All Blacks test tries.
Morgan scored his try between the uprights at Bloemfontein after receiving a reverse pass from his Mid Northern clubmate Sid Going and haring off on a swerving run to the tryline.
He dotted down without a finger being laid on him. The All Blacks went on to win 15-9.
But while that try lives on as a piece of rugby immortality, his performances in North Auckland rugby teams that won and defended the Ranfurly Shield, beat Auckland at Eden Park, and tested some of the best touring international teams have cemented his place in the hearts of every Northlander.
A midfield back, Morgan only weighed 77kg at his peak but was feared as an awesome defender and fiercely competitive opponent.
Stories of Morgan's ultra-competitive nature abound, one involving Morgan and the entire Southland forward pack at Invercargill after he took umbrage at a high tackle.
Morgan was 28 years old when he first made the All Blacks in 1974, and 36 by the time he retired from representative rugby altogether.
But upon retiring Morgan then took up rugby coaching, initally with the Northland under-18 side, a team that went on to win their competition, then the Northland 2nd XV and Northland Colts, whose players all swore by Morgan.
It was as a member of the Maromaku Players though, that Morgan put on public display the other less competitive side of his character.
It was his willingness to throw himself, and the resources of his business, Morgan Engineering, into various school and sporting projects that also endeared him to many other sects of Northland society.
Morgan helped build school tennis courts, upgrade community halls, install floodlights, lay drains and re-roof buildings. Often he would offer his employees to do the work, but end up doing the bulk of the labour himself, in his own time, at his own cost.
Joe Morgan died on December 22, 2003 five days after sustaining severe head injuries in a fall at a construction site in Whangarei.
? `Tuf' going past this goalkeeper - Ross James McPherson
`Tufty', aka Ross James McPherson, was a demon at defending goal.
Sporting nicknames can sometimes be cruel, are most often mundane and occasionally downright insulting. Think labels such `Hatchet-head' and `Four-bums', names for rugby players who, for legal reasons, we won't reveal here.
Every now and again they can also be entertaining and more often than not are brutally honest - take `Eric the Eel' as a classic example or maybe `Afghanistan', the nickname given to Australian cricketer Mark Waugh, as in `the forgotten Waugh'.
But, when a bunch of Northland representative teammates glanced at their colleague and came up with this particular sobriquet, they hit the nail on the head. As it turned out, almost literally.
Because the name they dreamt up in one of those team-bonding sessions was "Tufty".
It was a name that took a somewhat cruel reference to the state of the victim's hairdo, or in this particular case, a distinct lack of one.
But what might have started off as a chance for some lighthearted in-house ridicule soon became a thing of reverence. Because `Tufty' was a bloke called Ross James McPherson, and RJ McPherson is one of Northland's most underrated sporting greats.
As a field hockey goalkeeper who played at two summer Olympics - Mexico, 1968 and Munich, 1972 - McPherson played more than 100 games for his country, twice won the coveted Challenge Shield for Northland and is still regarded as one of the best goalkeepers the game has ever produced. Internationally.
But his sporting achievements were not restricted to the winter season, because McPherson was also a top-drawer cricketer. He was a talented lefthanded opening batsman who was good enough to represent Northland and graduate, albeit somewhat briefly, to the Northern Districts cricket side.
Even today, McPherson is remembered as an opening batsman who possessed a near flawless technique. It was a technique at the batting crease that also earned Tufty another nickname: "The Wall".
According to local sporting mythology McPherson's defensive technique was so sound that you might as well have been bowling at a wall such were your chances of securing his wicket.
But it is as a hockey player that McPherson truly made his sporting mark.
By virtue of being in his prime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, McPherson played hockey - in goal no less - before the advent of such needless accessories as face masks, chest protectors, knee pads, padded gloves, special goalkeeping boots and reinforced boxes to protect the crown jewels.
Instead he had light pads, custom-made kickers and wore a golf glove.
This was probably why McPherson, in his prime, was exceptionally quick on his feet. Sometimes skill comes through necessity.
McPherson could control the ball like a top soccer player and was able to kick it accurately to teammates in the field.
Of particular note, however, is the fact that he is the only goalkeeper to have never conceded a penalty stroke in international hockey.
Facing strokes, McPherson pulled off some absolutely brilliant saves, some of which were caught on camera. His trademark was his speed off the mark, and his uncanny ability to focus solely on the ball and use lightning quick reflexes to parry away shots on goal.
It was his ability to defend his goal that helped Northland win two Challenge Shields, in 1964 and again in 1967.
In 1964, in Christchurch, McPherson managed to keep Canterbury scoreless on a wet miserable afternoon, a feat all the more creditable as, that day, Canterbury had two penalty strokes, 15 penalty corners and 10 long corners.
In 1967, playing in a Challenge Shield final against Canterbury at Kensington Park in Whangarei, Tufty was heralded as a hero once more in a game that was drawn and the title shared after several periods of extra time.
The game was called off as it was deemed too dark to continue.
After starting his international hockey career on tour with the New Zealand hockey team in 1965, McPherson became a permanent fixture in the side until he opted out in 1976, just before the team was chosen to go to the Montreal Olympics.
It is somewhat cruel irony that Tufty would have won a deserved gold medal at Montreal had he chosen to tour.
But through it all Tufty had trouble retaining his hair, despite applying a mystery concoction that, his so-called team mates reckon, helped him keep patches of his hair. But it was a sparse and unusual hairdo, one that had him fondly known as Tufty, even by international opponents, including the Pakistanis and Indians.
Ladies and gentlemen, please acknowledge Tufty - sorry ... Ross James McPherson - as an inductee to the Northland Legends of Sport.
NORTHLAND LEGENDS - Jolly good sports
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