"If there's one thing I would like to see, it's the Greytown teams coming out with clean boots on."
Polly's clean boot ideology was instilled in her from a young age. A keen hockey player, her father never allowed her to leave home with dirty boots.
However, it is rugby that Polly has become renowned for, having married at the age of 24 to Kingi Matthews, who later went on to become a New Zealand representative and Ranfurly Shield winner. Polly has spent 66 years living in Greytown and, as you would expect, there have been many changes at the town's rugby club over the years.
Polly's earliest memory was the dirt floors and the tin shower shed with cold water.
"There was only a little hall and they used to come in their muddy boots. I can remember I had to clean up and I hadn't the faintest idea how they did it. I'll be honest, you had that big room and here's me with two buckets and I had to get down on my hands and knees and scrub it. I then found out they hosed it out in those days. So next time I just hosed it down.
"Me, Avis Farmer, June Strang and Mollie Mahupuku, we used to always do the afternoon teas. We used to do saveloys with bread and butter, and every year you had a ball at the town hall. We had some great balls. Kingi and I used to run Wairarapa Maori rugby out of Greytown Rugby Club. Every Sunday we used to get the bus to go and call round all the footballers' places to get them out of bed, because they'd still have sore heads. All they'd come out with was a towel and their boots, because all their gears were provided."
You have to wonder what Polly would be doing today, had she been born a little later. She certainly demonstrates a wealth of rugby knowledge and would probably have made an excellent coach or referee.
"I can remember telling the team how to set a scrum once. That was in Carterton. They were all huckly buckly. Scrums are supposed to be straight and strong. They said to me 'what do you know about it?' I said, 'you're supposed to set a scrum, not collapse it'. You could lay a person across the top of your scrum and if it doesn't collapse then that's a scrum! When they scrum they need their heads up."
The rugby legacy created by Polly and Kingi can be spotted throughout their family. Kingi played hooker and all her boys have played hooker. "They're all front row, that's why they've all got thick ears," she said.
All seven of her boys: Joe, Danny, Tony, Phillip, Fred, Albie and David, have played rugby for Greytown.
Fred now coaches the senior reserves, or the "Torus", and both his sons, Isaac and Sam, play for the team. They're joined by Albie's son, Tyler, and Polly and Kingi's great-grandson, Wiremu Aitken. The youngest Matthews in a senior team is Chaz, who plays flanker for the senior As.
JAB players Luani and Matai Ammunson are Polly and Kingi's great nephews and feature in the Greytown U13 and U11 teams respectively.
Last week, two of the newest and youngest members of the Matthews family to play for Greytown signed up to play for the U6 team. Kuini and Raniera Kenrick are Polly and Kingi's great-great-grandchildren. Their mum is Reiana Northover, whose dad is Todd Matthews and his dad is Polly and Kingi's son Joe Matthews.
On Polly's regular visits to watch club games you can hear her extended family of players, coaches and spectators fondly refer to her as "Grandma". She will have pride of place once again on the sidelines this Saturday as she celebrates Greytown's Past Players' Day.
As Greytown stages a festival of rugby on Saturday to celebrate one of the most successful periods in its 136-year history, we can only wonder whether any of those would have been possible if not for the selfless contribution of Polly and Kingi Matthews.
