The top 10 oddest trophies in sport

Auckland captain Benson Stanley inspects the John Drake Boot. Photo / Greg Bowker

When Auckland take on Bay of Plenty on Sunday, at stake will be a new trophy: the John Drake Boot. It's the slipper the late former Herald columnist wore in the 1987 World Cup final - and whichever captain has the thrill of lifting this high-cut footwear can consider himself privileged indeed.

It's a fitting award (no pun intended). There's something humble and everyman-ish about a used boot that once piled into rucks and anchored the All Black frontrow. We think the no-nonsense John Drake would have appreciated the simplicity of it.

But odd trophies are nothing new in the world of sport, a realm where talismanic gesture harks back to primal instincts. Here we've gathered together the best of the trophy oddities from around the sporting globe. But none comes close to the Drake Boot.

1 England finds a new way to lose the World Cup

Trivia question: Who was the first Englishman to lift football's World Cup?

Answer: David Corbett.

Corbett's dog Pickles found the stolen $100,000 Jules Rimet cup before the 1966 World Cup kicked off in England.

England, who were to win the trophy that year, had displayed it at a rare sports stamps exhibition in a Methodist Church Hall where it disappeared.

Presumably, the security had been distracted with a nice cuppa and a couple of well-buttered scones.

One thief was snared attempting to collect the $50,000 ransom, but the trophy remained at large ... until Pickles discovered it under a hedge, wrapped in newspaper.

The stress of it all led to the fatal heart attack suffered by the head of English football soon after.

Pickles, an instant celebrity, quickly perished when choked by his lead while chasing a cat, and the ransom villain died a couple of years later.

A curse was born, but Corbett lived on to tell the tale every World Cup year.

Footnote: The 1962 champions Brazil scoffed at England for treating the trophy so shabbily saying that even its thieves revered football. In 1983, the very same trophy was stolen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and never found.

2 American College Football Trophies - a pork chop

Weird trophies abound in this sporting sphere. They include a telephone and a milk can.

Some of the trophies look like they were thought of after a wee session down at the local.

Others, such as a wagon wheel and 10-gallon hat, are straight out of American lore. Only in America.

Up until 1943, Wisconsin and Minnesota University rivals played for a little slab of wood that represented a piece of bacon. This slice of history was lost and replaced by famous lumberjack Paul Bunyan's giant axe after World War II.

Shed no tears, however, because the bit of false bacon miraculously turned up in a Wisconsin University storeroom in 1994 and in a remarkably good condition.

Wisconsin ain't about to let go of it either. Their coach at the time said: "We took home the bacon and kept it." Which sounds from this distance like a fairly belligerent confession.

Footnote: Paul Bunyan is a mythical figure, surprise, surprise.

3 The Ashes - great balls of fire

The urn and its contents rank as the tiny tot of world sports trophies at 150mm high, and is probably the most famous and enigmatic of them all.

Indeed, during test cricket's darkest moments, what was a mock obituary to the English team has helped keep the game alive.

Australia and England battle gloriously (usually) in the name of this vessel and its charred remains within every couple of years.

The obituary appeared in a sports newspaper in the late 1800s after England snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against Australia at The Oval.

The English captain swore he would regain the "ashes" in Australia, and the famous urn was presented to an English side by a group of Melbourne women.

Its contents are probably a burnt cricket ball.

The actual urn lives at the Lord's ground in London, and replicas are presented to the series winners.

Maybe the most truly, incredible, remarkable thing about The Ashes is that England have won them twice in the past four years.

Footnote: After digesting the initial shock of defeat, the Victorian era crowd at The Oval carried two of the Aussie bowlers from the field. Magnificent. Warnie never got that sort of ride.

4 Classic golf trophy - getting rub of the green

The Dubai Desert, this is an Aladdin's lamp sort of thing, although a heck of a lot bigger.

It is definitely not a trophy to go waving over your head in triumph because the giant pourer could easily take an eye out.

You might have difficulty drinking champagne out of it as well without dislodging a couple of teeth belonging to someone on an adjacent fairway.

5 The Stanley Cup - forget about putting it on the mantelpiece

Supersize me baby, because this is one of the big daddies of trophies, symbolising ice hockey supremacy in North America. A lot of us have trouble seeing the puck, but you can't miss the 15kg Stanley Cup.

It started off at about 18cm high and now it's just about tall enough to start going to school at 90cm.

The reason: winning coaches, players, management and club staff all get their names engraved on it. Naturally, there are more than a few engraving errors and who is to say that they have found them all.

Players from the champion club need a minimum of 41 games in the season to get their name on the trophy, while the canteen manager must churn out at least 10,000 hot dogs with mustard to make the cut (okay, I made the second bit up).

At this rate, the Stanley Cup might block out the sun around the turn of the next century although the cup has endured at least one operation to stunt its growth.

Footnote: One bloke has had his name misspelled on it five times.

6 The Ranfurly Shield - rugby is moved by goalposts

The most famous New Zealand sports trophy. This wooden, challenge shield was presented by the Governor-General, the Earl of Ranfurly, around the turn of the last century.

It initially sported a picture of a soccer game on the centrepiece. These days, an independent inquiry would be needed to sort the picture out, but back then, they simply drew in a couple of goalposts on top of the soccer goals.

(There might soon be calls to take the goalposts off since there is so much kicking in rugby).

Ranfurly legends are plenty, but not from recent times. The Log o' Wood has lost its revered place in New Zealand life.

The most famous upset occurred when Marlborough beat Canterbury in 1973. Controversies included North Auckland refusing late season challenges in 1978 - a move which led to their famous shield coach Ted Griffin boycotting games in protest.

The rest of the country has been getting its own back ever since by stealing Northland's best players and threatening to throw the team out of the first division. Forgiveness, guys. It's time to let bygones be bygones.

7 The Calcutta Cup - it could have saved a lot of bad blood

Scotland's John Jeffrey and England's Dean Richards took the Calcutta Cup - the trophy that these two giants of running rugby compete for - on to the streets of Edinburgh in 1988. The poor old cup suffered quite a few dings in the process.

The omens were never promising, since the pair had earlier filled the trophy with whiskey and poured it over England hooker Brian Moore's head.

Memories are said to be hazy but Richards confessed that the pair had played a game of football with the cup. There were no reports of them actually passing it to each other.

It needed about $3000 of repair work and led to Jeffrey being banned for six months by his union; Richards copped only a one-match ban.

If only English rugby had been a little stricter with Deano back then it might have saved itself an awful lot of embarrassment over the Harlequins "bloodgate" scandal.

A smashed-up trophy today, a fake blood bin disgrace tomorrow.

8 The Borg-Warner - knobs and knockers

The Indy 500 trophy is probably the biggest of them all, at nearly 1.65m and 50kg. It is so huge that you wouldn't even fit it in the boot of your average American family saloon, which is saying something.

It might also be the only trophy in which the winners get their faces etched on to the trophy (I'm prepared to be corrected on that one).

The overall effect is ... drum roll ... uuuuuugly. It's tempting to suggest that someone should knock all the knobbly bits off with a sledgehammer, until you find out that they are the sculpted faces of the winners.

The winners get to take away a little replica, which must be an enormous relief.

9 The America's Cup - breaking tradition

The Auld Mug is commonly referred to as the world's oldest sporting trophy and it represents a competition that has been filled with protest.

But yachting, New Zealand, the world weren't prepared for the sort that occurred in 1997, when a loony with a grudge and a sledgehammer walked into the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and gave the trophy a right smashing.

Famous trophies have been subjected to all sorts of things over the years - some of which cannot be repeated in this family newspaper. But it's doubtful if one has ever been beaten up like this.

Months of painstaking work by the original makers in London - it was crafted in 1848 - put the cup back together again. No wonder America was so reluctant to let anyone else get hold of the America's Cup when it gets looked after like that.

10 The Also Rans

The Lance Todd Memorial Trophy - the man of the match award for English league's Challenge Cup final is named in honour of a former rugby player from Otahuhu who ended up playing for Wigan. Very romantic, but not sure why.

The Tri-Nations Cup: The original in 1996 was so big that even Sean Fitzpatrick had trouble lifting it up. Apparently the makers got the measurements wrong.

Acapulco Tennis Open: A boring silver pear with a tennis ball stuck to it leaves just one question - why?

Hamburg Tennis Open: A big silver whirly thing that looks like a fan. Being German, it probably works.

Croatian Open tennis title: Just can't describe this one but think two-dollar shop meets giant sink waste unit. No, make that one-dollar shop.