Te Wero: Historic rugby tournament signals start of season in Hawke’s Bay post Cyclone Gabrielle

Two of the clubs which take part in Te Wero - Tamatea and Ōtane - pictured in a Hawke's Bay Rugby Union Premier and Division Two promotion-relegation match in 2018. Photo / NZME

An historic rugby tournament established to enhance Māori rugby and its clubs in Hawke’s Bay will stage its 50th anniversary in Hastings on Saturday after a club which had to pull out told organisers it still wanted the tournament to go ahead.

Hosts and Hastings-based Hawke’s Bay premier club Tamatea considered cancelling Te Wero because of the ongoing impact of Cyclone Gabrielle, which among other issues meant that with State Highway 2 between Napier and Wairoa closed Northern Hawke’s Bay clubs Nuhaka and Mahia would struggle to be able to take part.

Nuhaka withdrew, and Mahia is calling on its central and southern Hawke’s Bay “Mahitians” to man up to represent the maroons for the tournament at the Mitre 10 Hawke’s Bay Reginal Sports Park.

Te Wero – a challenge to the clubs and aiming to prepare them for the club season ahead – is normally a four-team quadrangular, and Tamatea wanted to include all six clubs which have taken part over the years to appear in the tournament.

Nuhaka’s withdrawal resulted in an invitation to Bridge Pa Sports, and the six clubs now in the draw will also be represented by wāhine in a netball tournament, which has also been part of Te Wero for many years.

The tournament opens with a powhiri at 8am, and the first games will start at 10am, with Dannevirke club Aotea playing Ōtane and Tamatea playing Maraenui.

With two pools of three played to find the finalists, Mahia and Bridge Pa get their starts at 11am against Otane and Tamatea respectively at 11am.

Each team will get three games during the day, including the final starting at 3.30pm.

The netball starts at 10.30am.

Meanwhile, Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union chief executive Jay Campbell says as far as the union has been informed, clubrooms among the Hawke’s Bay competition clubs appeared to have escaped mainly with little damage, apart from the Maraenui Rugby and Sports Association’s Maraenui Park home in Onekawa South.

The buildings were extensively damaged in the November 2020 Napier floods, and association president Vicky Julian says that while the damage is not as severe this time - with carpet replacement, other flooring considerations, and damage to lower-wall space - the association now has to think about the future of the facilities, which had had little or no other significant issues with adverse weather in the 35 years since being developed around a former scouts hall in the late 1980s.