Northland ITM Rugby training. Photo / NZME.
Maybe it was the bellyful of blue cod and oysters, or perhaps it was the 14 layers of clothes I had bundled myself into but, whatever the reason, there was a warm glow in the commentary tower at Rugby Park, Invercargill, last weekend.
Then again, you could say there was a warm glow in commentary boxes up and down the country last weekend: under the roof of Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, or in the rain at Baypark, Tauranga; upstairs at Yarrow Stadium in New Plymouth, or up more stairs at Waikato Stadium in Hamilton.
There was certainly a warm glow in Pukekohe on Sunday, as the afternoon sun made a mid-winter appearance and Poppy the Goat grazed behind the fence at the back of the big grass bank. The night before, 48,000 people had farewelled another GOAT at Eden Park. It was a good weekend for ruminating.
On Sunday, the Taniwha tried to win a slab of timber. They came up short, again. But hey, what's another year when you've been waiting 36? Manawatu were trying to get a win at Pukekohe earlier in the afternoon. What's another year when you've been waiting 35. History makes for a tough opponent. Even when none of the players were alive to remember "the last time".
So many of them were having their first time. There was Taleni Seu in Invercargill on Thursday, replacing a bloke not long out of rugby nursery school himself. Blake Gibson limped from the field and Taleni took over. Taleni Seu will be a household name soon enough. He joked on his Facebook page that the entire population of Niue had liked something he had shared. The entire population of the commentary team liked how he played.
Shaun Stevenson (no relation) looked at home in Waikato colours. It seems like only yesterday when he was running around at the back of the Auckland Grammar School team. It may as well have been yesterday. It's a young man's game now, they say. Well, it is in the Tron. Robbie Melneek boasted more caps for Tasman than the entire Waikato side on Friday night, or so it seemed.
Mind you, there is still room for the veterans: Toby Morland made his debut for Manawatu on the weekend. Toby Morland! I remember him sitting on the sideline of Loftus Versfeld as the Chiefs got torn apart by the Bulls in 2009. Wee man Morland has no business making another debut! But there he was, on Sunday, scoring the last of the Turbos' five tries. And he was still smiling. He's always smiling.
They were smiling on those grass banks at Rugby Park and Pukekohe too. The kids were playing games of tackle and getting their clothes dirty. In Invercargill they were in T-shirts: They are either the toughest kids in the country or we now know why the roll their "Rs" - they grow up saying "brrrrrrr".
Most importantly, they were having fun. Which surely is why we write and talk about and watch and play this game. Ma'ama Vaipulu was having fun smashing people. Whoppa Mackintosh was having fun whinging at the referee. Marty Banks was having fun getting sin-binned - everyone was having a ball trying to figure out what North Harbour and Bay of Plenty were trying to do ...
You can say what you want about the state of provincial rugby - and it is tough, and it's getting tougher - but it's still, hands down, the most fun 10 weeks of rugby every year. This is when the Mike Lawrensons and Richard Judds and Shaun Stevensons and Taleni Seus are made. This is when we get to watch Papa Wharewera's negative sideburns and Jono Hickey's epic kicks.
This is when we get to watch a kid called James Schrader run from nowhere to pull off one of the great try-saving plays in the history of the game, denying Lolagi Visinia the score. It was his first touch of the ball in Southland colours. He would have been toasted in the sheds all night, practising his Stag roar and copping an earful from Doc Finlayson.
It has me beat, how a tournament with all that, could ever leave anybody cold.