OBITUARY - KEN GOING: born Kawakawa 18/2/1942 - died Maromaku 6/8/2008

Here's a childhood memory that has a sense of destiny about it.
As a rather naive 11-year-old numbskull, I remember travelling north in a farm truck through a place called Towai, just north of Whangarei, for the first time in my life.
At this point rugby had already infiltrated my subconscious to the point where, after watching test match rugby on our rather unreliable black and white television, I used to imagine I was an All Black sidestepping his way to the tryline, while feeding the chooks.
The bucket of chook pellets served as the ball and the chooks would always lithely step out of the way as if they had been bewildered by the footwork of the strange child commentating his way around the pen. Against such rugby mastery, they had no show.
So when my stepfather casually mentioned that "the Goings live.... just down there" as we climbed the state highway past the Maromaku turn-off, you can imagine my reaction.
"The Goings?" I said breathlessly. "Like Sid Going and Ken? The Going brothers?"
"Yup," he said, "their farm is down there."
It was like glimpsing rugby nirvana. Anyone looking at the truck that day would have seen a child, nose squashed against the window with eyes of astonished wonderment.
This was where rugby lived then - "just down there".
So imagine how it felt 30 years later to be invited to the Going household for an exclusive interview with one of the Going brothers - All Black, NZ Maori and Northland rugby legend Ken.
Then contemplate the sheer astonishment of sitting on a verandah, sun blazing down on a cloudless winter's day, not only discussing rugby but drawing pictures of how to work that now famous piece of rugby magic, the triple scissors move.
Kid at a lolly shop? You betcha boots, mate. Now stop for a moment and wonder how strange it feels to be writing about his death to cancer, aged 66.
KT Going died at 10.25pm on Wednesday night at his home in Maromaku, surrounded by his family.
This is hardly an unexpected event, his battle with cancer was the reason sketches of the triple scissors move were ever drawn in the first place. But it is one thing talking about terminal cancer, then discovering it was just that. Terminal.
So as plans for a funeral at 10am on Saturday are formulated to include a club rugby final of KT's team Mid Northern and Hora Hora for a trophy called the Joe Morgan Memorial at 2.30pm at Okara Park - the place where KT did his stuff with his brothers Sid and Brian - tell me there isn't some plan to all this.
Northland Rugby Union chairman Wayne Peters says: "Ken Going was an absolute icon of the game, part of the great Going rugby dynasty who for more than a decade strode the provincial scene exhibiting those qualities that accompany all great sports people: absolute commitment, and, in Ken's case, a finesse which truly made him one of Northland's greatest players".
Mid Northern rugby club captain Glenn Williams says Going was "a cracker of a bloke".
A sad day, say I.