FOOTBALL
TWO trophies with names that have become indelibly linked with Gisborne football will be presented on Saturday.
Lytton High School and Carpet Court Thistle Massive will play the final of the Chris Moore Cup at Childers Road Reserve at 2.30pm.
The final of the Braybrook Cup, the women’s knockout competition, will have been played already. Gisborne Laundry Services Riverina and Heavy Equipment Services United kick off at Harry Barker Reserve at 11.30am. They are the curtain-raiser for the men’s Federation Cup semifinal between Heavy Equipment Services Gisborne United and Wanganui City, which starts at 2pm.
In the mid-1960s, Dawne Moore (now Abraham) presented a cup to Poverty Bay Football Association in memory of her late husband Chris, who died of an asthma attack a little short of his 28th birthday in 1963 when Dawne was 26 and they had been married two and a half years.
In the mid-1980s, Susan Braybrook presented a cup to be contested by teams in the women’s competition. Susan (nee Hogan) was secretary of the Poverty Bay Football Association and the women’s association, and played until 1988, the year before the birth of her daughter Rebecca.
She played for Gisborne Girls’ High School, United and Thistle, first as a striker and later as a defender, playing in front of Judy O’Rourke.
She had married Barry Braybrook in 1984, and her donation of the Braybrook Cup meant the name of a family associated with local football for over half a century would be kept before the Gisborne football community.
Traditionally, the Chris Moore Cup has been the knockout competition for the second division of the Eastern League.
This year it has been contested by first-round losers in the Bailey Cup, the traditional knockout competition of the Eastern League first division. Teams in the new, 11-team Gisborne Championship (now split into two divisions) were all entered in the Bailey Cup.
Chris Moore came from Kilmarnock and played for ThistleChris Moore came from Kilmarnock, Scotland, and in Gisborne played for the Thistle club when the Scottish influence was particularly strong.
The likes of Bert Ormond, Adam Hair and Dave Watson on the field, and Dave McFarlane, Sandy Johnstone, Jock McLean and Alex Ramsay off it meant the Jags had a “good Scottish base”.
Moore held his own in this company. He was an “exceptionally talented player who could play inside forward or deeper, in the wing-half berth”, according to one old stager who played against him.
“He was one of the cleverest ball players we had in the district when local football was very strong.”
Dawne Abraham said Chris had arranged to come to New Zealand in the 1950s to be with a girlfriend who had come to Gisborne with her father and two sisters. The woman sent him a “Dear John” letter calling things off, but he had gone so far with his arrangements that he decided to make the trip anyway.
He and Alex Ramsay were boarders with the Amann family in Salisbury Road, and he worked as a painter and then at Cook Hospital as a porter.
Chris and Dawne were married in September 1960, and Chris died in the week before the start of the football season in 1963.
Dawne travelled to Scotland with May Thomson, mother and grandmother of Thistle stalwarts Willie and Grant, to see her late husband’s family. Chris’s mother died before Dawne arrived, but Dawne stayed with one of Chris’s two sisters for the next eight months.
The family of that sister got in touch with Dawne on Mother’s Day this year and have arranged to visit in November.
One of Dawne’s memories of those football days is of making the cups of tea with Chris Fletcher in the old wooden shed on the Disraeli Street boundary of the Childers Road Reserve.
The experience stood her in good stead for her role as one of the tea and lunch providers at the Poverty Bay Bowling Club, where her second husband, Herbert (Hub) Abraham, was a keen bowler.
Dawne was the first president of the Poverty Bay Women’s Bowling Club. The men and women later combined in one organisation and last year Dawne became its first female life member.
Braybrooks have been associated with local football since 1953 when Childers Road Reserve became their 'backyard'The Braybrook family have been closely associated with local football almost from the time Betty and Guy Braybrook brought their growing family from Waipaoa to Disraeli Street — across the road from the Childers Road Reserve — in 1953.
They had six sons — John, Kevin, Trevor, Ross, Barry and Graeme — and they all played football.
“The Reserve was our backyard,” Trevor said.
He recalled “quite a group of ladies with kids who enjoyed athletics and football, like the Owens . . . Vern, Royden and Lester”.
Hockey was played at the Reserve then, too.
“It was pretty intense. Hockey balls were flying everywhere. I saw a St John Ambulance guy get hit on the back of the head with a hockey ball. It knocked him out. I think his name was Williams . . . he was there every Saturday, for both codes.
“If you were watching football you had to keep half an eye on the hockey.
“Dad was a surfaceman (on track maintenance) at the railways. I don’t know how he and Mum managed. We never had a day we went without food. We had a big garden. Mum always seemed to be able to make something . . . meat and three veg.”
Trevor was in the Gisborne City national league squad of the early 1970s, but stopped playing in 1972, as he did not want to play on Sundays.
His mother and her friend Marie Lee enjoyed watching Gisborne City games, and long after City fell from the sporting limelight, Betty Braybrook was sending in $50 a season to help the club pay its bills.
Younger Braybrook brothers Ross and Barry gave Gisborne United outstanding service. Ross was a founding member of the club, and Barry joined when he was 20, after a six-year break, and was a key member of some powerful United sides during their time in the Central League third division in the 1980s.
Betty supported her sons’ sporting endeavours, and Susan recalled helping her make the pikelets and egg sandwiches for after-match functions.
Betty Braybrook died a year ago yesterday.