Hori BOP: The Steamers' No 1 fan

The thing with Terry Leaming - aka Hori BOP - is you never know whether he's joking or not.

As we begin our interview at the rose gardens in Cliff Road, Leaming - who is wearing jandals - is suddenly conscious it's turned cold.

"I've been walking around the house naked all through May. Global warming, it's brilliant isn't it?"

Um, just as well we didn't do the interview at his house, then.

"I'm finding it hard with this bloke hovering around and trying to talk to you," he says of our photographer. "I can't concentrate.

"I used to be ADHD. I've got a very short concentration span."

A bit of a larrikin

Leaming is the jolly, pie-munching, number 1 Bay of Plenty Steamers fan. Over the years, he has been the official and unofficial mascot of the Steamers. Currently, he is unofficial and, as of last year, Steamie is the team's mascot.

He's a bit of a larrikin - always has been. He claims he was asked to leave town by the local police sergeant in 1975. "He felt it would be better for myself and the city."I was meant to play footy down in Otago and my father thought, 'oh young guy, keep him out of trouble; put him on a fishing boat'.

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Well, there's all sorts of highjinks that fishermen get up to when they come on shore isn't there?

"You weren't allowed to drink in pubs under 20 years of age in those days and fishermen were prolific drinkers of course, so getting caught in a pub under the age of 20 in Tauranga in 1975 was a huge affair.

"I used to ride through town on a Triumph sort of semi-naked.

"Tauranga was only about 40,000 people in those days. I was just a bit of a hard case, bit of a ratbag, not what you'd classify a criminal."

In 1975, Leaming went into the navy, instead of going to university.

"I was in the navy for four glorious years and three years too long."

He and his wife have been together for 30 years, although he refuses to name her.

"Oh no, no," he says. "My wife's very private. She'll slaughter me if she sees this in the paper."

He has four children - the youngest recently left for Victoria University.

Riddled with personality

After Leaming left the navy, he became a hippie. He drove launches, dredges and tugs for the harbour board before deciding there must be a world outside of the "nine to five".

He travelled and then came home to be "incarcerated" in Tauranga for the next 24 years.

This is either a bad thing or a good thing, depending on your liking or disliking of the Hori BOP character.

He may not be every rugby fan's cup of chai but he does have personality. Some would say he's riddled with it.

Leaming became the mascot for the Steamers in 2003. At that time, he says the team was languishing in the second division.

Leaming, an "ordinary, working class bloke", who liked a pie and a cup of coffee at the rugby and a drink "on special occasions", bumped into a guy called Craig Ross - the then chief executive of the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union - on the side of a netball court one day.

Leaming, being the good bloke he is, congratulated Ross on some recent initiatives he'd developed, but then added his 10 cents worth by telling Ross: "What we really need is that bloody Ranfurly Shield."

Leaming said Tauranga was in the process of going from a pimply-faced youth into adulthood, and Tauranga needed the shield for the rest of the country to stand up and take notice.

He suggested the Steamers bring back their mascot and, a few days later, got a phone call from Ross.

"We thought you would do it," Ross had said.

"You've got to be joking," was Leaming's reply. "I'm 180kg, overweight, and over the hill. You've got to be kidding?"

They weren't.

The crowd went ballistic

The Italian/Bay of Plenty game was three days out and Leaming agreed to do it "this once".

He wore a XXXL jersey "times two" and got his mother to slit the sides so it would fit. Special pants were flown up from Canterbury.

He wore jandals, a crazy grey wig from the $2 Shop, face paint, and was accompanied by his side kick, Honki.

"I bought some pizza and some bottles of wine and thought 'we'll act out a typical Italian cafe scene in the park before the game'."

Only trouble was, the Italian team ate half the pizza. When Leaming went to claim it, Honki took off after him and nailed him in a spot tackle.

"We both flew into the stand that was holding up the camera on the half-way line.

"We bounced into that then bounced back and I said 'are you okay Honks?' He said 'Yip but I think I broke my hand'. I said 'Well, you've broken my bloody back you dozy bastard."'

Leaming said the crowd went ballistic. They roared. Had a "bloody ball". And Hori BOP was born.

"We actually went along and poured glasses of wine to the ladies and gave kids pizza, which was totally unprofessional, and I'm sure the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union didn't realise I was going to do that, but they were having a party on the other side. They said 'what's your name?' and I said 'Hori' and they started chanting it."

Leaming has been to every Steamers game since. Honki lasted a year until his wife got pregnant. Leaming speculates: "I suspect it was because of winning the Ranfurly Shield."

In 2004, Leaming was downgraded to the "unofficial" Steamers mascot. He kept up his antics though with the help of the BOP mafia - a shadowy network of supporters happy to rouse the masses through intelligent debate behind the scenes. Leaming has developed a symbiotic relationship with the mafia.

"We got the shield (on August 15, 2004) and of course those were the glory days of Bay of Plenty rugby and that 2004 year was brilliant," he says.

Leaming says whether you like it or not, rugby is our country's religion.

"We've got lots of other religions like Buddhism and Islam and all these other weird and wonderful religions, but the real religion of New Zealand is rugby.

"Even little old grannies get their little port out, little bit of cake, and watch the All Black's play. It's as ingrained as that, and it's never ever going to change. I know soccer like to think they're going to be competition to the All Blacks, but it'll be long after my grandkids are dead."

Running for mayor

Making rugby even better, Leaming reckons, would be a 30,000-seat stadium in the middle of Tauranga, supported by council and a private partnership.

Leaming ran for mayor in 2007 and it was his main campaign platform.

"In 50 years' time I'll be 104 so I'll only have a little time to enjoy the benefits. I'll be out there on my Zimmer frame, at the stadium."

Leaming says in hindsight he should have run for council last year to pursue his stadium idea.

"If you haven't made a mistake a day, I'll call you a liar and if you've gone through a whole week and tell me you haven't made a mistake you're wrong 'cause that's the first mistake of the next week. That's the way life is."

BOP mafia co-ordinator Nick Baker says Hori BOP lives season to season and, love him or loathe him he's a figure everyone knows. "He's always very welcome at other grounds because he's instantly recognisable."

BOPRU chief executive Mike Rogers, says Leaming is a great cheerleader for the Bay of Plenty as a whole.

The next challenge for Leaming is starting a campaign to keep the Highlanders' colours blue and yellow, and, of course, the Rugby World Cup and managing Hori BOP's wayward cousin, Hori Black, who plans to put as much madcap support behind the All Blacks as Hori BOP does with the Steamers.

Leaming says we may also see his other cousin, Boris the Cossack, at the Russian game.

So how many games is he going to go to?

"Well at this stage I've got no tickets. I'll just take it as I come. I just ah ... I'm ah, I never thought of that. I've just expected I can rock up to places and get away with what I can get away with. I don't think that far ahead. You actually caught me on the hoppie."

Fans shaking in the stands

Tauranga sports journalist Jamie Troughton says behind the pie-eating buffoonery of Hori BOP is a rather more measured, though still pie-eating, Terry Leaming.

And Troughton for one, rates Hori BOP over Steamie.

"Steamie's about as likely to say something controversial as the Chiefs are of winning the Super 15, while just about everything that comes out of Hori's mouth could be construed as some form of outrage.

"That's what you need to promote a rugby team, however, and get the fans shaking in the stands.

"I know he's caught more than a few people out by coming out with statements that actually make sense - it can be unsettling. But there's definitely a brain lurking behind the bluster.

"He's politically cunning and has the remarkable skill of being completely self-promoting and self-depreciating at the same time. He's also a born clown and you feel a lot more comfortable laughing at someone when they're laughing too."