Auckland celebrate winning the Ranfurly Shield from Canterbury in 1985. Photo / NZME
The wonderful thing about the Ranfurly Shield is that it breeds local heroes. There was, it’s true, not a massive crowd in New Plymouth on Saturday night to cheer on Taranaki in their first defence of 2025, as they beat Northland 23-3.
But in three weeks, they face Waikato, and that’s when fans should start to identify with their men in amber and black, whether it’s cinder blocks in jerseys like front-rowers Bradley Slater and Reuben O’Neill, or a mercurial flier like fullback Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens.
In the Shield’s glory days, when crowds from 20,000 to 50,000 poured into grounds in Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, star players became household names.
There were often great stories, too. Here are four that resonate with me.
Accolades and honours have rightly poured down on Sir Wayne Smith, the coach. But as a player for Canterbury, he was special, too.
Smith scored the try that sealed victory for Canterbury against Wellington in 1982 and brought the Shield to Christchurch for a 25-defence run until 1985.
It hadn’t looked that promising in ′82. With eight minutes to go in the Canterbury challenge, Wellington were ahead 12-10 and Smith was feeling terrible.
“I’d just lost a try for Craig Green. I passed too late and the chance was gone. I kept thinking to myself that my mistake had cost us the Shield. You don’t always get a second chance in a game, but that afternoon, I did.”
Minutes from fulltime, Canterbury won a ruck 10m inside the Wellington half. Canterbury halfback Bruce Deans passed to Smith.
“I get it and I run,” Smith recalled when we were working on his 2023 autobiography. “Like Forrest Gump, I just kept running, and scored out wide.”
Robbie Deans kicked a difficult conversion, Canterbury were leading 16-12 and the Shield was heading to Christchurch.
In 1985, with a crowd of 52,000 jammed up against the touchlines at Lancaster Park, came an epic Auckland challenge. Amazingly, as he had when the Shield was captured in Wellington three years before, Smith almost won another late victory for Canterbury.
Down 24-0 shortly after halftime, Canterbury fought back so well that with three minutes to go, the score was 28-23 to Auckland. A converted try would save the Shield. Smith hoisted a high, hanging punt that descended on the Auckland tryline.
“I can remember wishing it was going to hit the post. That would have been interesting,” Smith said.
But Auckland wing Sir John Kirwan got his fingertips to the ball and slapped it out of play.
The game and the Canterbury Shield reign was over. The memories have a life of their own.
Loved as a player from Paris (the French called him Le Panther Noir) to Papatoetoe, Waka Nathan, an All Blacks flanker from Ōtāhuhu, was as likeable and easy-going off the field as he was dynamic on it.
To get the best from Nathan’s magnificent physique, honed working on the chain at the Westfield freezing works, Fred Allen, who coached Auckland to 25 Shield defences from 1960 to 1963, always made sure Nathan was angry when he ran on to Eden Park. In 2006, Nathan told me how Allen did it.
“I always sat in the changing shed with my best mate from school days in Ōtāhuhu, [first five-eighths] Mackie Herewini. Fred would come to me and say, ‘I see you got a good write-up in the Herald, last week but you missed two tackles and were late to three rucks. You’re just hanging on to your place in this team’.
“Then he’d pat Mackie on the shoulder and say, ‘You’re a genius, Mackie, just go out and play your game’. I’d run on to the field with steam coming out of my ears.”
A year or two after Nathan told me the story, I ran it past Allen, who went on to become an unbeaten All Blacks coach.
He chuckled and said: “I’d had a bit of experience about how to manage men. The experience I had as a soldier [he was a major in World War II] certainly helped me.”
Controversy was always close at hand with All Blacks lock and lineout wizard Andy Haden, to the point it’s easy to forget what a superb rugby player he was.
In 1972, when Auckland took the Shield from Northland in Whangārei, Haden was the key to victory, despite being a fresh-faced kid from Whanganui still adjusting to life in the big city.
Northland coach Ted Griffin begged his forwards at halftime to push, obstruct or elbow Haden to put him off his stride. Nothing worked.
By the time Haden captained the side that won the Shield for Auckland in 1985, he was as sophisticated, after playing club rugby in France, as he was shrewd.
It was, an Auckland teammate would say, “like having an expert coach on the field with you”.
Like many rugby fans, I’ll always have a soft spot for the team I followed as a child – Thames Valley.
So my special Ranfurly Shield memory came in 1989 at Paeroa Domain when Auckland brought the Shield to town. Auckland had 10 All Blacks, so the final score of 58-7 was no surprise.
But late in the game came a magic moment from Valley winger Kevin Handley, known to everyone but his parents as Jack.
The Paeroa truck driver streaked 30m past startled Auckland defenders to score. As he neared the line, he fired a two-fingered Winston Churchill salute to the visitors. Add the cheeky gesture to what was already a terrific try and Handley became a Valley legend for the ages.
Several years after the Shield game, I was at his Paeroa West club. An old VHS player was connected to a television on a wall. Press play and you could watch the try, the grin on Handley’s face, the startled looks of the Aucklanders and hear the delighted yells of 7000 local fans.
“I don’t think,” one of his teammates said to me later that night, “that Jack’s had to buy himself a beer for years.”