Flaxmere lauds its rising star

HAMISH BIDWELL
It wasn't so much a celebration of Eddie Tauranga as it was of the community that spawned him.
Sure, yesterday's special assembly at Flaxmere College was ostensibly designed as an opportunity to honour Tauranga, whose deeds of the rugby and rugby league fields in recent months have been nothing short of outstanding. But it was much more than that.
It was a chance to show Hawke's Bay, and the rest of the country for that matter, that Flaxmere is a suburb that remains largely undeserving of its tatty image. It is a place full of life, love, hope and athletes like Tauranga and Black Ferns rugby player Amy Williams, that continue to do their school and their community proud.
That's why so many people came out to pay tribute to Tauranga himself and to urge his schoolmates to take inspiration from his recent selection in the New Maori under-18 rugby league team and Hurricanes under-16 and New Zealand under-17 rugby union teams.
From Rugby League Hawke's Bay chairman Denis O'Reilly to Watties Unicorns and New Zealand Maori under-18 coach Alan Mason and Hawke's Bay Rugby Football Union rugby manager Dave Stevenson, each spoke in glowing terms of the potential of Tauranga and of the rest of the 370 children on the college's roll.
O'Reilly presented the school with a rugby league Tri-Nations ball, signed by Kiwis captain Ruben Wiki, and Tauranga was given a gift on behalf of the school by staff members Raewyn Falcon and Wirihana Raihania.
But it was the impromptu efforts by Mason and Western Suburbs Rugby League Club manager John Young that made yesterday such a life affirming occasion.
Mason launched into a spine-tingling performance of Tika Tonu, prompting Tauranga and his Western Suburbs teammates Peter Ioane, Richard Eagle and Leon Harmer to rush from their seats to join him, while pupils from the school replied back to them in kind. It was the kind of moment where the actions really did speak louder than any words of praise.
In the end, it fell to Young to sum up the mood of the day. A recent addition to the community, he said it was Tauranga who had been the catalyst for the change in the public's perception of what Flaxmere is all about.
He spoke of the way society had written his suburb and his club off as nothing more than "druggies and gang members."
But with Western Suburbs - or "West Side" as they refer to themselves - making last week's Rugby League Hawke's Bay grand final, the tide was clearly starting to turn.
Tauranga, the humble, soft-spoken 16-year-old, was the face of that change and with him as a role model for the youth of Flaxmere, Young said the sky was the limit.