Isaac Te Aute scored two tries in the 2017 Baywide Club Rugby final between Mount Maunganui and Rotoiti. Photo / Andrew Warner
Rotoiti hosts Mount Maunganui for a historic double-header tomorrow but it’s not your standard Baywide Premier Club Rugby clash.
This year both clubs celebrate 100 years in existence and, thanks to a scheduling fluke, both the women’s and men’s premier sides will play to mark the occasion.
Rotoiti Rugby Club chairwoman Tammy Gardiner told the Rotorua Daily Postthat to many, the club was “the central hub of our community”.
“Being a rural whānau-based club ensures we grow homegrown talent and passion and commitment to and for our club.”
She said it would hold centennial celebrations on Labour weekend in October, acknowledging past and present players, “as well as our whānau who were instrumental in developing our club that we are extremely proud of”.
Life member and club historian Davey Gardiner said Rotoiti’s affiliation with rugby dated back to the early 1900s.
A Rotoiti rugby team first entered the Rotorua sub-union competition in 1923 and the following year won the Meihana Cup and Mitchell Sheild.
Gardiner said many family names from the 1924 team were still associated with the club, including Sam Emery (Rotoiti’s home ground is Emery Park), Rewhati Vercoe, Morehu Te Kirikau, Tom Gardiner, Meke Tukuru, C Sargeant and R Williams.
“The 1924 photo that proudly hangs in our club of the Rotoiti Rugby Football team left a legacy, where we see today the great-great-grandson or -grandsons of those players from the 1924 team keeping that legacy alive today with the club.
“The Rotoiti club took some time to develop, through the hard work of the many committees and volunteers over the decades.”
Many of the early players were forest workers, labourers, teachers, farmers or mill workers.
Since coming out of recess in the 1960s, Rotoiti had maintained rugby teams, Gardiner said.
“The pinnacle of any club is how successful our competition teams have performed through the decades.
“Our rugby teams did have some success over the decades, winning the odd competition trophy, making Baywide finals several times and our Colts team winning the Baywide competition in 2002, but our 100-year celebration is about those who played from the 1923 team to the 2023 players of today.”
After a year’s hiatus, Rotoiti’s women’s team was in development, with new players and coaches coming in.
Laurie Meredith, a Rotoiti stalwart, coached the team alongside assistants Jimi McLean and Fred Cox.
McLean said the squad had a good blend of “youthful exuberance, with our experienced warhorses”.
“Terri Temoana is having a great season in the tight exchanges for us, along with Ada Te Are and Gabby Waiariki. Chevy Crean has been a strong ball carrier for us all season in post-contact metres.
“Hope Parata-Kingi has led her team around the paddock with control and confidence.”
And its younger players Chetique Hohepa, Rakaia Milner and Dailee Hay, in their first year of senior women’s rugby, had made “positive real contributions”.
Mount Maunganui Sports Club patron Graeme Coley told the Rotorua Daily Post its official centenary was not until Matariki weekend (July 15-16) but both clubs decided to celebrate tomorrow.
It first started in 1923 when a group of men, mostly railway workers, formed the Mount Maunganui Rugby Club.
“The very first game they scraped together 15 players,” Coley said.
“They were pretty hard doers — anyone working on the railways, they’re hard workers, outdoor types that put their bodies on the line.”
The club has come a long way since then, transforming into the Mount Maunganui Sports Club with the squash courts built in 1973 and facilities for netball, touch rugby, sevens and cricket following.
“It’s basically a 365-days-of-the-year-type sports club,” Coley said.
Its talent over the years had included former All Blacks Frank Shelford, Mike Delany and Scott Robertson - the next All Blacks coach - and former sevens player Brad Fleming.
Coley said it had “had a tremendous number of sevens players representing New Zealand”, with plenty of talent coming through the ranks.
Coley said its rugby sides had enjoyed plenty of success, too, with the men’s and women’s teams both winning numerous championships.
Bay of Plenty Rugby Union community rugby general manager Pat Rae said the growth of the women’s game was a highlight of the competition, with 11 premier sides this season compared to six last year.
Rae said it was “riding the wave” from the Black Ferns’ successful Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign last year and had seen a “significant rise” in teenage players.
He said the next big challenge for the union was getting more women referees and, in particular, coaches.
“A lot of women manage teams but we need them to put down the team washing basket and pick up the clipboard and whistle because it’s critically important that we have them.”
Rae said it was “sheer coincidence” the draws lined up together.
“Nobody planned it because both draws were compiled at completely separate times of the year,” he said.
“The men’s draw was assembled in November last year before we even knew how many premier women’s teams we were going to have.”