Tag football: Hawke's Bay speedster eyes third World Cup

Hawke's Bay's Shane Foster in action for the Hutt Valley over 45 tag football team at the weekend. Photo / Supplied

Former Hawke's Bay Unicorns rugby league winger Shane Foster has been the province's No 1 referee for well over a decade and that status is unlikely to change in the near future.

Foster, 48, boasts fitness levels which are the envy of most of the Bay's premier players he referees. He again proved how fit he was with some outstanding displays for the Hutt Valley over-45 tag football team which won their division at the Wellington-hosted nationals during the weekend with a 20-1 drubbing of their Wellington counterparts in the final.

"There were three over-45s teams and three over-40s. So they combined the grades which meant we played six games over the weekend. We had two losses against two of the over-40s teams and both were by one point," Foster recalled.

"Hutt Valley are new to tag and most of the guys in our team used to play for Wellington. A lot of the players were league mates of mine when I played in Wellington when I was at university. Blokes like Yogi Rogers and Warren Doughty," Foster explained.

"That final was just one of those games where everything clicked. We still don't know why we were so good in that game," the Hastings Intermediate School assistant principal said with a laugh.

Six of the Hutt Valley team including Foster are regarded as certainties for the New Zealand over-50s team for the November 1-4 World Cup at Coffs Harbour in Australia.

"I'm turning 49 in April and if you are 49 within six months of the tournament you are eligible for the 50s," Foster explained.

The father-of-two has been a New Zealand tag football rep since 2012 and has been to two World Cups where his team was beaten by Australia in the final on both occasions.

"Hopefully this year it will be a case of third time lucky and we return home with gold. I know I will be in peak condition then as the tournament starts a week after our Hawke's Bay rugby league spring competition ends and I referee three games a day each week during that comp," Foster said.

Foster was a member of the New Zealand Universities rugby league team which played at two World Cups. They won bronze in 1996 and gold in England in 1999.

A former Flaxmere Falcons league speedster, Foster played for the Unicorns from 1992-1994 before heading to the capital. While in Wellington Foster played for Wainuiomata, the Wellington Dukes and Wellington Pumas.

Foster was the second Hawke's Bay sportsman to win a national title with a Hutt Valley team within a week. The previous weekend Hawke's Bay softball pitcher Adam Woon was a member of the Hutt Valley team which won the country's most prestigious inter-provincial softball competition, the National Fastpitch Championship, in Auckland.

For those not in the know tag football is a non-contact game derived from rugby league. Teams have a maximum of eight players on the field at any one time.

A defender must remove one or both tags to stop an attacker's progress. Six tags or plays are allowed to play the ball before changeover and a player with the ball must stop and play the ball if he or she is in possession with only one tag on.

Two point tries are awarded when the ball is grounded in the 5m two-point zone in the middle of each tryline. Kicks are allowed in general play but cannot be above the shoulder height of the referee.

Meanwhile Rugby League Hawke's Bay secretary Mike Tamati confirmed this week there will be no winter senior club comps in the Bay this year.

"The spring comps will again be our main ones. Most of our players play rugby and they told us it would be too much to play rugby on Saturdays and league on Sundays. It's not like it was in the old days when a lot of them could take Mondays off work to recover," Tamati said.