Seven years ago when the McLean Park embankment was last packed for a Magpies match. Photo / File
Seven years ago when the McLean Park embankment was last packed for a Magpies match. Photo / File
The Hawke's Bay rugby union has stepped up planning for a Ranfurly Shield defence it hopes will attract McLean Park's biggest crowd for a Magpies game in seven years.
As if it needed any added spice, the match against Northland starting at 7.05pm on Friday, the first defence since theMagpies' 28-9 challenge win over Otago in Dunedin on October 4, doubles as a Mitre 10 Cup championship Week 6 battle for the competition lead, putting the winner into the box seat to claim home-match rights in the playoffs next month.
But wait…There's more. The curtain raiser, a Farah Palmer Cup women's competition match between Hawke's Bay and Manawatu, starting at 4.35pm, will commemorate 40 years since New Zealand's first inter-provincial women's rugby match, which was also between Hawke's Bay and Manawatu, in Palmerston North on September 14, 1980.
As an added bonus, fans will get the chance to share in the celebratory recognition of the 100 matches played for Hawke's Bay skipper Ash Dixon.
There's also, in some Northland fans' view, a 51-year-old score to settle, since the now-late Kel Tremain scored a controversial try in the last minute for the Bay to beat the then North Auckland 10-8 in a defence just two matches before the end of the Bay's 1966-1969 shield era.
Northlanders have never believed Tremain grounded the ball over the line – photos being published in Auckland and Whangarei showing the Magpies hero short of the line, while, with Tremain claiming he had been dragged back after scoring, photos were published in Hawke's Bay and Wellington purporting to support the referee decision to award the points.
The only other shield match between the two unions did nothing to requite the northerners, with the Magpies turning away another challenge with a 39-10 win in 2015.
A_HBT132566-11.JPG The Ranfurly Shield, on the line when Hawke's Bay's first and only defence in 2013 attracted 16,000 fans to McLean Park. Photo / File
Friday night's match is part of a big weekend in Hawke's Bay, along with the last day of Hawke's Bay Racing's Spring Racing Carnival in Hastings on Saturday, featuring the $250,000 Livamol Classic at 4.25pm and glamour mare Melody Belle, going for a 5th win in five HB Spring Carnival feature-race starts, including the first-ever Triple Crown last year.
HBRFU commercial manager Dan Somerville believes the crowd for the rugby will exceed 8000, the biggest for a Magpies game in Hawke's Bay since 16,000 saw the Magpies lose the first defence of the shield after just six days with the prize in 2013.
He would, of course, prefer to crack 10,000 and says: "Wouldn't that be nice."
By late morning Monday about 5400 tickets had sold, with a win likely to boost crowds even further for later defences, against Manawatu on October 24 and Wellington on November 8, if the Magpies have kept alive the dream of locking the Log o' Wood away for the summer.
Somerville said indications are at least 200 challengers' fans will be travelling from Northland, with their currently well-performed Taniwha hoping to be the first Northland team to claim the Ranfurly Shield since a controversial win over Manawatu in 1978.
Tickets for the 10-race galloping carnival climax in Hastings are now being sought by fans on social media, with new HB Racing chief executive Darin Balcombe forecasting a crowd of 5-6000 for Saturday's races.
Only some hospitality package deals remain on sale, following the selling of all 2000 general admission tickets – the last 200 disappearing in just four minutes of selling last Wednesday.
The first of the 10 races starts at 12.20pm and the last at 5.37pm, leaving about an hour and 20 minutes before the other big event of the weekend – the closing of General Election voting and the start of the triennial countdown to finding out who has won.
