John Roughan: Club stalwarts left in the dust as Cup machine rolls into town

The Fiji rugby team, the first team to arrive for the Rugby World Cu. Photo / Richard Robinson

A rough goalpost of tree branches has been anchored in the sand at Ohope Beach. Young Maori, male and female, heaved a ball around in the Sunday sunshine and took dropkicks from difficult angles.

Far away, at the end of the beach, Fiji's Rugby World Cup team was in seclusion. They were having a "family day", their media manager explained.

They had been in town a week and hardly anyone had seen them, not even the president of the Eastern Bay Rugby sub-union, John Brophy.

At his home near Edgecumbe, Mr Brophy was disheartened. The sub-union had been given no role in hosting a team, he said.

"Every time something was being organised I phoned and asked to be included but was told, we don't need you," he said.

"Rugby has been left right out of it as far as I'm concerned."

It appeared the Eastern Bays Regional Development Agency was the moving force in bringing the World Cup to the district after Whakatane missed out in the allocation of teams to host towns. When Tauranga was awarded Fiji, the team was invited to come a bit earlier and acclimatise at Ohope, though media manager Vilikesa Rinavuaka said it was Fiji's idea.

The day after they arrived, they held a training session at Whakatane's Rugby Park and mixed cheerfully with hundreds of children given time off school. But since then they have trained in seclusion.

The Whakatane United Rugby Club's rooms are perched on one side of Rugby Park's grandstand. The club secretary is Dick Littlejohn, former Rugby Union councillor, former All Black manager and one of the instigators of the Rugby World Cup.

Late last Saturday afternoon he and three of the club's older stalwarts were there.

Recalling the battles he and his Australian ally, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, had with the International Rugby Board, Mr Littlejohn said rugby simply had to start a world tournament.

If the IRB wasn't going to take it on, New Zealand and Australia were prepared to do it themselves.

They feared an independent promoter in Australia was already waving money at players to set up a world tournament and take control of the game.

By then, professionalism was coming anyway.

Now, it had not only removed top players from much contact with lower levels of rugby, it had taken over the running of the World Cup and local body event managers had displaced club volunteers at the grassroots.

Eastern Bay's event manager Mike van der Boom said he tried to get local rugby people involved but it was a bit sad.

There seemed to be bad blood between the host union, Bay of Plenty, and its eastern sub-union.

John Brophy reckoned the clubs in his sub-union could have done a better job of hosting a team but he also said clubs could not depend on volunteers any more.

"Young people don't want to do the work that we used to do to raise money: painting houses, building things, demolishing things."

The clubs and the sub-union depended on grants from gambling trusts and even the unions blessed with Super Rugby franchises were competing with them for that money.

Littlejohn and his ageing companions took over the club a few years ago when it got into financial strife and a younger committee was about to sell its building.

The four of them were the only ones there on Saturday evening. After yarning over beers for a couple of hours they locked the doors and went home in time to watch the NPC final on television.