KEY POINTS:
Talk about turning back the clock. Talk about Bring Back Buck. Colin Earl Meads, also known as Pinetree, aka the Tree, arguably the best-known All Black there has ever been, made a comeback yesterday.
Well, of sorts. Meads kicked off at a game in Mangatainoka, signalling the renaissance of the Mangatainoka Rugby Club - defunct for the past 25 years but now bucking the trend of rural rugby clubs going to the wall by re-emerging as a going concern.
Not that Mangatainoka is re-entering the Wairarapa club competition or anything grand like that. It's small beginnings - their top team (actually, their only team) is a Golden Oldies side who will play up to eight matches a year.
And, as homage to the No 8 wire mentality of rural rugby, they had to clear the cows off the paddock before the game started. The field, framed by a small grandstand, is also a working paddock, leased to a local farmer which means that while most rugby pitches see pats on the back after the game, Mangatainoka has to take care of its pats (cowpats) before the game.
The new club side will play invited teams and will only play at home - an understandable decision when you realise the ground stands almost in the shadow of the Tui brewery (by far the dominant feature of Mangatainoka) and that the brewery is the clubhouse.
Meads, a champion of grassroots and rural rugby, was the obvious choice to start the match and, given the Tree's familiarity with a bit of foaming fluid, to stand in the clubhouse/brewery afterwards with his mighty paw wrapped round a beer.
"Oh, look, I think it's great and it is something different from what we've heard over recent years with clubs and small unions facing hard times," he said. "It's a start and a step in the right direction."
The Tree was invited to kick off but plumped to punt the ball to start the game.
"I didn't think, at my age, a place kick would be advisable," he said.
Asked if he'd considered playing in the Golden Oldies match, wearing the appropriate-coloured shorts (which denote age and how much physical contact is allowed), Meads produced his rumble of a laugh.
"I'm not that stupid," he said.
The prime mover behind the renaissance is Tui marketing manager Nick Rogers who moved down from Auckland a couple of years ago and was quickly moved by the plight of local rugby - still a mightily popular game but with nothing to quench the thirst for rugby.
"We had to cap the number of players at 45 - but there were 70 applications to join the team," he said.
Rogers, along with local identity Alistair MacDougall, was also behind the raising of $60,000 over two years to do up and maintain the grandstand and says the leasing of the paddock is also central to providing funds for ongoing upkeep.
"People really love their rugby down here," he said, "and when I came down from Auckland, I found it amazing just how much people would do for others. I found it pretty humbling. Just the other day, I passed the field and saw one of the local farmers rolling up and down the field on his tractor with a roller, making sure the field was as flat as could be - unbidden. That's the sort of thing that happens, people just get stuck in and help each other."
After the game, it was off to the very-close-by Tui brewery for a soothing libation and some social discourse with the Tui girls.
So did the Tree think the crowds would keep coming back after the Grand Opening and give the Mangatainoka Rugby Club a new, consistent lease of life?
"With a brewery as a clubroom, I think they'll have plenty of support," said Meads.
Then there was a rumbling sound, like an approaching thunderstorm. The Tree was laughing.
