Mark Story: Hawke's Bay Magpies' deserve apex spot

The Magpies past two years deserve more noise, writes Mark Story. Photo / File

OPINION

Full credit.

The Hawke's Bay Magpies are sitting atop the premiership table.

Let that sink in for a bit.

We're the top guns, the peloton's yellow jersey, the elite, the apex, the zenith, the summit, the spire and the trig station.

In my lifetime of following the Bay, which is nearing half a century, I can't recall the black and whites ever holding top billing.

Sure, we've had a Covid-frustrated NPC with uncertainty and the withdrawal of teams.

But let's not forget that same fragmentation has also impacted the Magpies.

Take a gander at where the Magpies are. Just look upwards. Graphic Supplied

As a kid in the McKenzie Stand watching out-of-town big boys meting out 10-try towellings I'd never have believed that in 2020 we'd defend the Shield, beat Canterbury for the first time since 1982 and jump a tier.

Fast forward to this year where, Shield still in tow, we're at the steeple of the best domestic provincial footy competition in the world. As it implies, it's world class.

That's the sunny side.

The flipside of what's transpired this year is also worth a conversation.

Arguably the two biggest contributors to said success, captain Ash Dixon and head coach Mark Ozich, are exiting.

Dixon will leave a chasm - but Ozich even more so.

Given he mentored and moulded some of the current team's biggest names from high school and seems to have tapped into something special here, there's an air of inevitability that a few of his charges will follow suit.

I hope I'm wrong.

In his teenaged years, staunch Magpies fan and recently passed colleague, Roger Moroney, through his father's connections in the great Shield era of the 60s, would kept the Log o' Wood under his bed. "For which I would charge fellow schoolmates 10 cents to get their picture taken with it," he wrote.

Napier's late Roger Moroney (pictured here at 14 with the Log o' Wood in 1968) stored the Shield under his bed during the Magpies famed 60s era. Photo / Supplied

Anyway, time to focus on the beautiful present, which if you hadn't heard, was at the top of the table.

Rog will be loving that view.