For the love of the game

The Wairarapa Rugby Union representative team 1950.

A FINE day at Lancaster Park, Christchurch.

Saturday, September 2, 1950.

Wairarapa v Canterbury - a log o' wood grudge match of folklore around these parts.

Nineteen thousand eager Canterbury supporters pack the ground, rubbing their hands together at the thought of their beloved team demolishing Wairarapa by an obscene score.

They're thinking about the celebration afterwards - a touch of the Ranfurly Shield alongside their favourite red and black players.

As far as they're concerned Wairarapa are there to attempt a few tackles and perhaps succeed with a couple.

The match is a mere formality, the Shield will remain theirs.

In 1950, it was a time of understated glory for rugby in Wairarapa, when the lads got fit by doing their daily duties or running the farm.

Prancing about in the gym, shiny blue boots and crop top haircuts had yet to be discovered when the team crossed Cook Strait and embarked on their South Island tour.

Their early form on the tour wasn't flash:

A loss to Otago 16-0, a loss to Southland 17-6, and a draw with South Canterbury 3-3.

By the time they were to challenge for the Shield, Wairarapa weren't given a hope in hell of coming out of the game with the log o' wood.

On paper, Canterbury were red-hot favourites.

Unfortunately for them, this bunch of Wairarapa lads hadn't come down by steamboat to dither about.

The previous games were a blotch on the record, sure, but when the Shield comes in to play past matches are history.

A surviving member of the Wairarapa team and former Greytown grocer Bob Lyster, 84, now living in Paraparaumu, remembers the players feeling like "distinct underdogs".

He was on the bench that day, but remembers impressive efforts by flanker Jack Ryan who "hassled all day" and John Geary on the wing, who tackled star Canterbury back Maurie Dixon (who later became an All Black) "all day".

It was an absolute slog of a game - Canterbury had better backs on paper and the Wairarapa forwards were outsized, but they made up for it in guile and tactics.

Lyster remembers coach and one-time All Black Keith Reid, a Carterton man, telling the team to keep the ball in close and using first five-eighth Ben Couch and second five eighth Garth Parker to kick the ball in behind the Canterbury defence.

A record of the game provides a detailed description:

"Lancaster Park was hard and fast, and the 19,000 present could hardly have expected to see the shield-holders so bustled and outplayed as to lose to insignificant Wairarapa. The lighter green forwards were far too mobile for their opponents, and were very quickly through to break up any attempt by the red-and-black backs to get going.

"Right throughout the Wairarapa forwards were more aggressive and lively, and when Canterbury did manage to launch attacks, an impregnable defence held them at bay."

According to Lyster, team captain Alan "Kiwi" Blake, a New Zealand representative, had a standout game on the day but was knocked out just before half-time.

Lyster said he was so committed to the team he was "desperate" to get back on the field but was eventually talked out of it.

The match report puts it more mildly:

"Alan Blake was a fine captain, who unfortunately had to retire at the interval."

The defining moment of the game was when fullback Alf, rather than money Mahupuku, slotted a drop goal in what turned out to be the only points in Wairarapa's 3-0 win.

This was before half-time and left the team a good 40 minutes to slog out a win.

Lyster remembers the drop goal vividly:

"He picked it up around halfway and kicked it. It went straight and true, through the posts."

Masterton carpenter Hori Thompson, 83, now living in Lyall Bay in Wellington, looks back on the South Island tour and the Shield win as a defining moment in his life.

He was 17 at the time, a utility back and the youngest member of the team and remembers the "privilege of playing alongside players like Ben Couch and Alan Blake".

Couch, in particular, took him under his wing during the tour and spoke "words of wisdom".

His voice is full of pride as he recalls the experience of playing with some of the greats, playing for the sake of the team and not for individual glory or money.

"You look back now and think, wow," Thompson said. "There was no money in it, we played for the love of the game.

"It was one of the highlights of my life."

As a non-drinking member of the team, Thompson was given the duty of looking after the Shield on the sailing back to the North Island - the others may have been otherwise occupied.

He chuckled as he remembered the loss to South Canterbury at Solway a week later after many days of celebration.

"We didn't think we would have to play," he said.

Rugby, Thompson says, has stood him in "good stead" for his life - teaching him lessons about how to conduct himself off the field that he has never forgotten.

He still refers to the Ranfurly Shield win as achieving the "unthinkable".