Connor Franklin introduced the nerdy combat sport of jugger to the AUT campus after playing the game in Whangārei. Photo / Dean Purcell
It’s a curious sport: a group of young people chasing after a foam dog skull and whacking each other with augmented pool noodles while someone drums from the sidelines.
It’s known as the sport of jugger and can often be viewed, from a safe distance, in Auckland’s Albert Park on Sunday afternoons.
Although jugger is a long way from filling Eden Park, or any stadium for that matter, it does have a worldwide fanbase. They may be eccentric, but they are dedicated.
Jugger arrived without fanfare in Whangārei 10 years ago and has now spread to Auckland. And how to explain it? A mixture of Rob the Nest (or Capture the Flag), touch rugby, (foam) sword fighting and medieval combat.
Jugger matches begin with two teams of five who rush into the centre of a field, try to grab a round object (a dog’s skull made from foam) and then try to get the object into the other side’s goal.
Only one player can pick up the “Jugg” and score. Meanwhile, most players carry weapons to whack each other with, and each round is timed to 100 beats of a tribal drum. The drummer is positioned next to the referee but sometimes, if numbers are short, the referee also drums.
When a player is tagged/hit they need to stand still for five slow drum beats (with two-second intervals between beats) before they can move again.
Much like J.K. Rowling’s Quidditch, jugger was invented in a fictional world; in this case, a 1989 post-apocalyptic Mad Max rip-off called Salute of the Jugger in which desert warriors brutally compete to score goals with a dog skull.
The forgettable film had, at best, a small cult following until a pair of eccentric Germans started playing the game for real in 1993, leading to the first European tournament in 1995. It wasn’t long before an International Jugger Council was formed, as clubs sprang up around the world.
It wasn’t until 2015 that Kiwis Alex Mason and Regan Morgan formed the ambitiously-named New Zealand Jugger League in Whangārei. Morgan had seen medieval enthusiasts play jugger in Hamilton, so he gathered friends from Whangārei Boys’ High School and a handful of medieval weapons enthusiasts to get Northland games going.
New Zealand sent a representative team to Brisbane in 2017 and in 2018 two Kiwi jugger teams, the Black Swords and the older Silverbacks, took on the Drop Bears, a visiting team from Australia.
Connor Franklin, who grew up playing jugger as a Whangārei teen, moved to AUT in 2024 to study paramedicine and brought the geeky whacky-ness with him.
“When I arrived, there was an Auckland University club that had been playing in the [Auckland] Domain. That club was dead so we restarted it.”
Franklin, 19, says AUT Jugger Club Inc is slightly behind in terms of international-quality skill but thriving in terms of popularity. Thanks to Auckland’s huge population, even the small fraction of Albert Park passers-by who like the look of being whacked with modified pool noodles means dozens of new players have joined up.
Franklin set about sourcing a load of pompfen (weapons) including swords, staffs, shields and a six-metre ball and chain, all of which are made from foam, yoga mats, plastic pipe and held together by PVC tape. That padding means players can hit “pretty hard” without injuring anyone, he says.
He tracked down prospective players through online chat rooms, stalls and promotions around the university.
“We also reached out to the board game club, your nerdier types, and the club just started exploding from word of mouth. We have 80 in the chat and 25 people show up for each game.”
Jugger players can take the sport very seriously, so while make-your-own-weapons workshops are popular, Franklin made sure to ship his team’s “professional grade” chains from Germany for $380 for two.
Franklin concedes it’s almost impossible to walk past a game of jugger without stopping to ask, “What the hell is this?”
“Initially people think, ‘What the heck is going on on the field?’ It’s quite an alien sport. There’s nothing else like it. You have to give it a go and you either love it or decide ‘It’s not for me’. A lot of people get into it really quick, go home, research it, get caught up with the rules, build their own pompfen then come back next week and tell me what to do!”
Happy to play in mud through the winter, the AUT club will experiment this year with playing indoors and has opened its doors to 16-year-olds (accompanied by a guardian). Players don’t need to be AUT students to join.
The nerdy sport certainly comes with its own lingo. The runner is called a qwik, and the ball is called a jugg. Franklin makes sure to keep it all welcoming.
“My colleagues gauge the level of interest and nerdiness and adapt the terminology from there,” he says.
“When I explain it’s like rippa rugby, people get their head around it.”
Jugger is often a family affair, with Whangārei’s gatherings featuring whānau battling it out.
Lynnell Greer got involved as an organiser and referee after her young kids joined, in 2014, alongside dad and co-founder Adam Goddard.
A typical Sunday gathering in Whangārei’s Kensington Park has Greer packing in and packing out weapons, refereeing and beating the drum. Greer has helped Whangārei take on two Australian tournaments and hosted the visit of Australia’s Drop Bears.
She’s seen plenty of families stop, stare and join in over the past decade, and turnout continues to be good. After all, what child doesn’t love whacking their parents with a pool noodle?
“I tell interested people, ‘You look like you need a weapon in your hand!’ Children are always keen to have a go against their parents,” Greer says.
Her advice for hesitant newbies?
“Just give it a go. You can do it at your pace. It’s about skill, not speed, and if you’re smart you can outwit the athletic.”
Jugger jargon
Qwik: the runner, who can score in the enemy’s goal
Enforcer: a player with a weapon
Mal or mound: the enemy’s goal (a rubber tyre)
Pompfen: weaponry (plural)
100 Stones: 100 beats of the drum (the duration of each third ) – a full game is 300 beats
Jugg: the ball, made of foam, representing a dog skull
Invasion: an exchange or visit, such as when Aucklanders “invade” to battle Whangārei
Mercenary: a lone warrior looking to join a team
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