We'd wait as spectators gulped down the last of their Cokes, then pounce.
“You want that bottle, mister?”
That was one of my first memories of Rugby Park — a regular haunt for us kids, whether it be a Saturday when the Park was abuzz with game-day action, or other days when we got bored and biked down there to run around the grandstand and listen to our squeaky voices echo across the empty field.
Rugby Park is the stronghold of the game here — a battlefield where dreams were realised, legends were created and our district's most important rugby history was made.
As rugby players, most of us got a taste of onfield action at the park, whether it was as 15th-grade barefoot kids during halftime breaks, club players vying for Lee Bros Shield glory or representative players proudly wearing the Poverty Bay scarlet.
For me, son of a man possessed by the game, the Park was a regular destination.
I was running around the ground when the Phil Bennett-led 1977 Lions beat Poverty Bay 25-6.
I was standing on the embankment in a wide-eyed state of shock as protesters clashed with diehard rugby fans in the opening game of South Africa's infamous tour of 1981.
I had the pleasure of watching an 18-year-old rising star called Jonah Lomu give a hint of what was to come at an All Black trial game in 1994.
My spine tingled as Gisborne Boys' High School and St Stephen's College exchanged ferocious haka in the national top-four secondary school final won by the world champion Gisborne team.
I saw budding All Black Rico Gear make his Poverty Bay first-class debut in 1997, then return and don the Bay jersey 17 years later.
Heck, I even witnessed rugby league on the hallowed rugby turf as the Warriors and Cronulla Sharks did New South Wales Cup battle in front of a crowd of thousands.
Last year I sat in front of the now-closed grandstand with my 11-year-old son and his mate slurping on ice-creams, as Poverty Bay fended off Ngati Porou East Coast in the latest edition of their local derby.
It wasn't a classic but there was no shortage of the passion that embodies what grassroots rugby is all about — the blood, sweat and tears spilled on this sporting battlefield for decades.
The future is hazy for Rugby Park in the wake of Covid-19, the game's struggles at domestic level and the earthquake-prone state of the grandstand, which resulted in its being closed in 2019.
Let us hope it returns somewhere towards emulating the glories of its past.
