Rugby: Twenty years since the brutal 'Battle of Onewa'

Fighting erupts between Auckland Grammar and Kelston rugby teams in 2009.

This evening's clash between Auckland and North Harbour at Eden Park will struggle to trouble the memory banks given the fallen status of the national provincial rugby championship.

Not so the NPC final between these two teams 20 years ago, a match that lives on in infamy. As a Herald reader noted in an email this week, it was "the most brutal, rough, hard hitting rugby final ... plenty of feeling and fights". In a highly-charged atmosphere at the little Takapuna ground, star-studded Auckland beat a North Harbour team bristling with attacking weapons. As a 20th anniversary commemoration, the game headlines a potted history of notorious rugby clashes.

Chris Rattue looks at some classic clashes over the years.

Auckland v North Harbour, NPC final, Onewa Domain, 1994

Red cards for Robin Brooke and Eric Rush hardly told the story. There were so many players called to the judiciary that it was held at an Auckland hotel instead of rugby HQ in Wellington. Years later, Colin Hawke told the Herald on Sunday it was "the oddest game" he had ever refereed, with rugby's most famous players among those to lose their cool.

The setting was ripe for a grudge match. Auckland had a mighty reputation to uphold back then - Harbour lock Blair Larsen referred to a "certain arrogance" among their players. "Part of that arrogance was the ability to niggle away at you - guys like Fitzy [Sean Fitzpatrick] were pros at it. They knew they were good." North Harbour were sick of living in this shadow. The result was nastiness and mayhem. Violence can't be condoned of course, although in truth many footy fans like a bit of biffo now and then. The intensity of the old provincial rugby battles, epitomised by this ugly epic, is definitely missed.

Lions v Canterbury, Lancaster Park, 1971.

The most notorious game in New Zealand rugby, a bloodbath for the ages. It was so bad that All Black coach Ivan Vodanovich reportedly claimed the first test could be "another Passchendaele", blaming the tourists' allegedly illegal tactics in rucks and lineouts. Lions forwards Ray McLoughlin, Sandy Carmichael and Mick Hipwell were forced out of the tour by injuries and the great Irish flanker Fergus Slattery was severely battered. McLoughlin, the famous Irish prop, broke his thumb by punching Alex Wyllie's head. The British press saw the match as a planned assault to disrupt the brilliant Lions - many years later one scribe described it as among the "bloodiest, most premeditated assaults in rugby history".

Lions v South Africa, Port Elizabeth, 1974.

An outstanding Lions team, one making history on an unbeaten tour, had charged past allcomers and the proud home side was in a belligerent mood for the third test. This was the tour of the Lions' famous "99" call, a signal to get the retaliation in first, as they put it. In one incident, Lions fullback JPR Williams ran half the field to smack lock Moaner van Heerden. In another, Gordon Brown hit Johan de Bruyn so hard his glass eye came out, resulting in a brief truce between the warring packs in order to search for the lost peeper. The Springbok hard man then plonked it back in, with grass and mud poking out from the socket. It was an eye-for-an-eye game, which the Lions won to claim the series. De Bruyn had the glass eye specially mounted following the death from cancer of the much-loved Scottish rugby icon in 2001, and this bizarre tribute to old-school rugby camaraderie is kept by Brown's widow.

Auckland Grammar v Kelston Boys High School, at AGS, 2009.

The expanding pressures in First XV rugby exploded onto the front pages, with players and spectators involved in a brawl at the end of this semifinal although film of the incident also shows two opposing players embracing once the violence had died down. An unfortunate blame game between the two schools followed. Controversy and rancour continued over the way suspensions were dished out. KBHS principal Steve Watt, a former Auckland prop, reckoned: "It was an ugly incident but it is something that is part of society."

Ireland v Wales, Belfast, 1914.

We can thank a BBC report for uncovering some information around this one - a game dubbed "the most violent" in the history of Europe's premier international rugby competition which is now the Six Nations. The Welsh pack, known as the Terrible Eight, bumped into Irish players the night before the game and either fisticuffs and/or taunts were exchanged. It provoked the violent contest played out as World War I - which was to claim the lives of some players - loomed. Two of the main combatants in the rugby fracas immediately made up after the game, and many years later sat together to watch Wales play Ireland in Cardiff.