The Clive Senior 3 rugby team after a narrow win earlier this season. Photo / Supplied
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A senior Hawke's Bay rugby player with more than half-a-century in the game he loves has no plans to give up despite turning 60 just a few weeks after the end of the current season.
Robert Whaitiri, brother of Ikaroa Rawhiti MP Meka Whaitiri, started playing rugby for Clive while a schoolboy and first played in the Senior grades, in Wellington, in 1981.
On Saturday, he was there again playing for Clive against Napier Old Boys Marist in a Hawke's Bay Senior Thirds match at Park Island, Napier, most of the game, perhaps preferring he'd had a few less minutes on the field.
"But I love it," he said. "I do it for the camaraderie. We all do, everyone in this grade does. Every team. We all know each other."
It's unofficially the "Presidents" grade of Hawke's Bay Rugby, with seven teams this year and one of four adult men's grades headed by the Premier Rugby of the Nash Cup and Maddison Trophy.
Occasionally they mix with guys who perhaps should be playing Colts (Under 21) but may be drawn to the "Thirds" because of the appeal of taking the field alongside Dads and uncles, or simply because work and family commitments limit the ability to train and play in the higher grades.
Several others in the Clive Thirds are over 50, and most are over 40, said Whaitiri.
Several of those playing recent years had played for the Hawke's Bay Magpies, notably Orcades Crawford, now 55 and who has an extensive bio of over 200 matches in the front row of the scrum at first-class representative level from 1986 to 2003.
A New Zealand Secondary Schools representative in 1983, his first class rugby started with the New Zealand Colts, including 3 for the Maori All Blacks, 12 in Super rugby (for the Hurricanes and the Blues), 111 for Hawke's Bay, 11 for Manawatu, 26 for 1997-1998 Hawke's Bay-Manawatu merged team entity Central Vikings, 36 for Ngati Porou East Coast, and a couple for the New Zealand Divisional XV.
Many have tasted championship-winning success for Clive, and there may be more to come.
Among others who've played this year are Hallam Kupa, who played 61 games for Hawke's Bay from 1986 to 1992), Ben Trew (25 games for Hawke's Bay in 2002-2003), Matthew Bird (27 games for Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay 1994-2002), and school principal Shane Foster (a Hawke's Bay rugby league representative from the late 1980s to mid-1990s).
Coached by Mano Flutey, who scored almost 500 points in first class rugby for Hawke's Bay and East Coast from 1993 to 2004, Clive are unbeaten after four games in the championships round this season.
They include a 31-29 win to lift the grade's challenge shield from Taradale, by whom Clive had been beaten 23-22 in the first-round final.
There was plenty of movement in last Saturday's match, admittedly with preference for what is known as "the fatman's track" (avoiding over-exertion by sticking to a route up and down the centre of the field).
Clive won 45-31, Whaitiri saying that while some players were missing the team made a special effort to front-up in full as a tribute to a Napier OBM player who was seriously injured a week earlier.
Current Premier champion club Hastings Rugby and Sports was hoping to field a Thirds team this year, also with a history in fielding players still wanting to a Saturday's afternoon's footy beyond the glory days of representative and Premier football.
But club administrator Jack Sanders, who never had the chance after stopping and going into administration in his 20s after suffering a back injury, said there weren't "quite enough" to make up a squad guaranteed to be able to field a team each week, some of the hopefuls opting to go up to Senior 2, and some to clubs which did have Thirds.
Former Hawke's Bay halfback Neil Murphy was, along with several other former Magpies, in the team back in the 1990s when the grade was Senior "fives", after he'd played more than 300 games in the top grade.
He says it was "definitely" for the camaraderie as players wanted to keep on doing what they had been doing together every Saturday in winter for years.
The biggest problem was that the team kept winning and getting promoted, to what were then the more serious grades of the Senior 4 and Senior 3, and "train twice a week".
"I think some us thought 'this wasn't really what we wanted to do'," he said.
"We wanted to go the other way."
Grant Mitchison, who played 80 first class matches for Wanganui and Hawke's Bay from 1974 to 1982, was another who played with Murphy in the after-years.
He now prefers the weekly outings to watch the Hastings R&S games, mainly in the Premier grade. Whaitiri doesn't answer the question of when he might finally hang up the boots.
Recognising the dream of most to play rugby at some stage with the sons and nephews, he puts his arms around the shoulders of his grandson, who's been watching the game.
The jury's currently out on whether koro will stick it out long enough for he and the moko to be teammates.
On Saturday, Clive plays MAC at Flaxmere Park, while in the Premier grade Maddison Trophy 5th round, Clive has a home match against Taradale at Farndon Park, Clive, and MAC travels inter-city to play likely top-four contender Napier Old Boys Marist at Park Island.
A big crowd is expected at Whitmore Park, Napier, for the feature match of the Napier Tech Old Boys centennial weekend, against unbeaten Maddison Trophy defender Hastings Rugby and Sports, and Tamatea has a home match at Bill Mathewson Park, Hastings, against Waipukurau club Central.
But the biggest crowd of the weekend could be just a few hundred metres from Whitmore Park, at Napier Boys' High School for the big annual Super 8 first XV's match against Hastings BHS, starting at noon and preceded at 10.30am by second XVs and Under 15yrs teams.
Napier won last year's first XVs match 15-10 in Hastings lifting national secondary schools Ranfurly Shield equivalent the Moascar Cup.
The Cup was soon lost against Rotorua BHS, but Napier went on to the Super 8 semifinals where it was beaten by near-perennial champion Hamilton BHS.
Nathan Stephens, a Year 13 student, impressed with a stunning fullback performance.