Clive Akers is stepping down as editor from the Rugby Almanack.
Clive Akers is stepping down as editor from the Rugby Almanack.
The editor of the world’s longest-running rugby book of record is stepping down.
After 30 years working on New Zealand’s Rugby Almanack, Clive Akers has made the recently published 2024 edition his last.
Akers, one of New Zealand’s foremost rugby historians and statisticians, is stepping back as a full-time editor and will instead become a contributor to future editions.
The Ōpiki farmer, local historian, author and long-time supporter of rugby is also the chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Museum (since 1994) and has been involved with the Palmerston North-based entity since 1975.
Akers became editor of the Rugby Almanack in 1994 after producing several centennial books for provincial rugby unions.
In the 2024 Rugby Almanack, highly respected sports journalist and author Lindsay Knight pays tribute to Akers’ outstanding contribution to not only the Almanack but to the game of rugby itself.
“When he joined the Rugby Almanack in 1994, Clive Akers followed in a long line of admirable servants in chronicling New Zealand rugby.
But Clive didn’t just maintain the standards set since the Almanack’s inception in 1935 by Arthur Swan, Arthur Carman, Read Masters, Neville McMillan and Rod Chester. He enhanced them.
Not only was he as meticulous a statistician as his predecessors but he brought a more literary touch to some of the prose than what had been the case previously, especially in the Almanack’s earlier years.
Though not a professional journalist Clive was a competent writer, as was shown in his many other publications as well as his various Almanack pieces.
The 2024 Rugby Almanack, edited by Clive Akers, Campbell Burnes and Adrian Hill.
There is a certain irony to the years in which Clive has been so closely involved with producing the Almanack.
For they have coincided, almost within a year, of rugby’s lurch towards undiluted professionalism, which has been traumatic for so many because it has caused a diminution of many of the structures which once underpinned the game.
Adapting to the challenges posed by professionalism would have been particularly daunting for Clive as he exemplified many of those values which have come under such threat.
By his own description he was a player without distinction, but he developed a deep love for the game through his involvement in the first XVs of his Masterton boarding schools and his membership of clubs in Manawatū, Hawke’s Bay and King Country.
His affinity for the game at its various levels, particularly in its rural environment, have been reflected in his editorship of the Almanack.
Clive has always ensured that provincial and Heartland rugby, club, age-groups and, more recently, women’s rugby have enjoyed almost as equal focus as the All Blacks and the Super competitions.
This writer for one will always appreciate Clive’s respect for the giants of the past and under his direction the Almanack’s obituaries have been expanded to do them justice.
Before joining the Almanack, Clive was a stalwart of that other great institution which has also done much to preserve New Zealand rugby’s history and heritage, Palmerston North’s New Zealand Rugby Museum, of which he has been curator, chairman and life member.
Clive himself has been a prolific author, with histories on Manawatū, Horowhenua, a biography on New Zealand rugby’s founder CJ Monro, another on rugby-playing war-time heroes and his extraordinary Rugby Register, which records every single player who has appeared in New Zealand first-class rugby.
It is a reference book without parallel, the product of monumental research and a definitive argument settler.
That Clive has been able to achieve so much is remarkable because his real job is as a farmer and successful stud breeder of Cheviot sheep. He also has actively followed the notable careers in equestrian sport of his five daughters.
There may have been times when, like others battling to preserve those strands which were the basis of New Zealand rugby, Clive has felt it was an exercise in whistling against the wind.
But to his credit, he kept the faith and rugby in this country is in his debt.
Clive was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to rugby and historical research.”
The Rugby Almanack was first published in 1935 to cover the previous season’s first-class rugby in New Zealand. Since then it has been published uninterrupted, apart from two combined issues during World War II.
