All Blacks 2023 Rugby World Cup squad. Video / Carson Bluck
Acclaimed sportswriter and historian Ron Palenski has died in Dunedin after a long illness.
A widely-respected authority on New Zealand rugby history, Palenski was also the driving force behind the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame as its chief executive.
He was inducted into the hall at a special ceremony at his Dunedin home late last year, which included a video presentation from sporting luminaries.
Palenski’s longtime publisher and friend Warren Adler - formerly of Hachette and latterly Upstart Press - said the 78-year-old was “embarrassed to say the least” about being inducted.
“It’s something that he never asked [for]. He was a journalist and it didn’t happen very often,” Adler told Newstalk ZB.
“He’ll be sorely missed. People like him don’t come along every day. He was a marvellous wordsmith with a deep understanding of New Zealand and obviously a deep understanding of rugby. He worked on a number of top-selling biographies, probably the best known of those was the Graham Mourie biography he did.
Ron Palenski. Photo / Otago Daily Times
“New Zealand’s lost a really a top-flight writer, a great chronicler of the sports, particularly rugby union, the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. He was a marvellous daily journalist too.”
Prominent sports journalist and broadcaster Phil Gifford said it was “entirely fitting” that Palenski’s legacy would live on, not only on bookshelves, but also in the hall, which he ran from 1998.
“Sharing press benches with Ron Palenski at rugby tests and Commonwealth Games from 1974, I saw how his intelligence and perception as a person were always reflected in his writing.
“You could rely on his stories to be accurate in every detail, which helped make his numerous books on rugby history totally credible, and forever an invaluable resource for other journalists.
“The respect Ron had from players is probably best illustrated in the fact 1970s All Black captain Graham Mourie, the deepest thinking rugby leader of the era, chose Ron to write his hugely successful 1982 biography, Graham Mourie Captain.”
Mourie referred to his friend and biography collaborator as a “good man, as well as a good journalist”, and Olympic rowing great Rob Waddell paid tribute to Palenski’s “incredible lifetime’s work”.
Palenski started as a journalist with The Evening Star in Dunedin before becoming a titan of the written word with the New Zealand Press Association and The Dominion.
Besides his contributions to journalism he was a notable author, historian and administrator.
Most of the 50-odd books he wrote focused on rugby - and he gained a doctorate at the University of Otago with a thesis examining the evolution of national identity, including the role played by the national game.
He also served as the chairman of the Otago Rugby Football Union.
