The greatest rivalries in sport - Auckland v Canterbury and the battle for the 1980s

David Kirk passes under the pressure of Robbie Deans during the 1985 Ranfurly Shield match between Auckland and Canterbury. Photo / Photosport

The Alternative Commentary Collective’s Agenda podcast is launching four special episodes under the “Versus” banner in which they examine some of the greatest ever sporting rivalries. First up, we’re staying close to home to look at the once-magnificent NPC and the Auckland-Canterbury rivalry that defined the 1980s. The ACC’s series is powered by Bonds Chaffe Off Undies.

Way back when, in a time before moustaches became ironic, rugby was played using tan leather balls that were kicked by men in black leather boots.

They were simpler times. Cricket was played in summer, rugby in winter and for three months every year the big day out was a Saturday afternoon spent at footy. Provincial rugby was king, rivalries mattered and nowhere was that felt more keenly than Christchurch and Auckland.

But it wasn’t always like that.

Rugby, in fact, was relatively late to the idea of championships. New Zealand only got a national provincial championship in 1976, with rugby until then a series of traditional annual fixtures combined with ad hoc arrangements made between board chairmen. The Ranfurly Shield was both in the centre of the rugby room and frustratingly out of the reach of most.

When the NPC did arrive, it was not necessarily dominated by the biggest unions. Bay of Plenty won the inaugural championship under the guidance of Eric Anderson and in the first five years there were five different winners, with Canterbury, Wellington, Counties and Manawatū following BoP’s footsteps.

By the time 1982 rolled around, Auckland, the largest union in the country by some margin (it still had all the North Harbour clubs at that stage), had still to win. Canterbury had won just once. If anything, Wellington, with their star-studded backline, were the strongest of the main centres, though they were rudely shocked when Canterbury stormed Athletic Park to win the Shield in 1981.

As a country, the start of the ’80s was a time of monumental change. In 1981, the Springbok tour literally divided the country with barbed wire. In 1984, the Fourth Labour Government would start a process of deregulation that forever altered the country’s economics. Auckland, with its new skyline of construction cranes and high-rise buildings, was the obvious benefactor. The rugby and societal changes would combine to foster the domestic game’s greatest rivalry, one that with the gradual diminishing of the provincial game, will never be equalled.

It all coalesced with a match described with only the merest hint of hyperbole as The Game of the Century.

After years of underachievement, John Hart, a yappy little former halfback from the Waitemata club, who worked at corporate behemoth Fletcher Challenge, got his hands on the team in the blue and white hoops.

In the same year, the Ranfurly Shield holders turned their team over to a gruff Omihi farmer who’d come through the classic Canterbury path of boarding at a posh school, in his case St Andrew’s, before returning to the land. Alex Wyllie, a former All Black and part of the infamous ‘Black Hat Gang’ on the controversial 1972-73 tour to Great Britain and Ireland, had little time for yappy halfbacks.

This was the age of Grizz and Harty — two men who could not have been cut from more different cloth and who perfectly embodied their home provinces.

The teams they created were in many respects cast in their own image, but in other ways contradicted it. Auckland might have been slick and corporate in comparison to their Mainland rivals, but they were not soft. Canterbury might have been more hardbitten and callused, but they were not without flair and mischief.

They represented provinces with a natural suspicion of each other, though the disdain mainly flowed in one direction. This was the age when the pejorative term JAFA arrived, when the country perceived Aucklanders to be living in an episode of the show Gloss that would arrive midway through the decade — all big hair, shoulder pads, cocktails and lattes.

As Auckland seemingly boomed, the rest of the country wasn’t doing as well, especially those places that relied on manufacturing.

The rural-urban divide, magnified by the different attitudes to the Springbok tour, was widening. Auckland, with its multicultural, financial outlook, was increasingly seen as a land apart.

Wrote Grant Fox in The Game The Goal: “It is a risky business to be seen in some way to be defending Auckland these days. There has been, in varying degrees of intensity, a complex out there about Auckland and Auckland rugby. I think it has something to do with success… something to do with the big city thing. It is unmistakably there.”

As the rivalry developed, it was almost like Hart had Auckland, Grizz had The Rest of New Zealand.

In 1982, Hart took Auckland to their first NPC title. Canterbury were second by the barest of margins. They actually beat Auckland at Eden Park, but a draw against 1979 champions Counties proved costly as Hart’s men won the championship by a single point.

The following year the balance was restored, with Canterbury romping through the season unbeaten, the highlight being a 31-9 pasting of Auckland in the Ranfurly Shield challenge on Lancaster Park. Perhaps nothing illustrates how much rugby has changed as the fact this scoreline was seen as seismic. Said Wayne Smith, who was playing first five-eighth, in Grizz - The Legend: “We were in the tunnel, ready to run on to the field, and Grizz suddenly grabbed my jersey and said, ‘Run it from everywhere.’ You know, he just had a feeling, maybe he’d seen something in the Aucklanders’ eyes, maybe he just knew we were at our peak and could tear them apart.”

A lot of the country rejoiced at Auckland’s embarrassment, as this was a team that was just starting to gather a swagger. Grant Fox was controlling things with metronomic accuracy at first-five, while John Kirwan, a blond butcher’s apprentice plucked from third grade, was rampaging up and down the wing. Andy Haden, the Whetton twins and John Drake were marauding in the pack.

If Canterbury were great in ’83, Auckland were ridiculous the next year, winning nine out of 10 and compiling a points differential of +361. They put 50 on Waikato, 53 on Manawatū, 65 on both Bays, Plenty and Hawke’s, but most staggeringly of all, they scored 32 for the loss of just three when they smashed Canterbury. Fans were already salivating at the prospect of a Shield challenge the following year.

They got their wish. Canterbury were going for a record 26 defences when Auckland rolled into town. Lancaster Park was packed to the gunwales, with kids lining the dead-ball lines by the end of the game, which would create iconic images. It was such a febrile atmosphere that the Canterbury players ran to each side of the ground to thank the crowd before the match. It didn’t help. Auckland rinsed the home team in the lineouts and sauntered to an unbelievable 24-0 halftime lead.

From Grizz - The Legend: Wyllie wasn’t angry about his team being down 24-0 at halftime, more sorry for them. They weren’t losing with dignity. Victor Simpson noted there were no recriminations. “He came out, grabbed the ball, said, ‘Look, they scored their points with this, so can you’.”

Slowly, then quickly, the Cantabs got back in the match as Auckland started to fluff their lines. As time ticked down, Canterbury scored two tries in two minutes to close the score to 28-23. With time up Smith hoisted the ball to the heavens. It eluded flailing fullback Lindsay Harris and bounced high into the in-goal with Craig Green, Kirwan and Fox in pursuit. The ball bounced Kirwan’s way and he palmed it dead and referee Bob Francis whistled the game over.

Auckland celebrate winning the Ranfurly Shield from Canterbury in 1985.

The Cantabs were left to ponder their slow start while the rest of the country, watching live on Sport on One, marvelled at the spectacle. Wrote Graham Hutchins in Magic Matches: “Everyone won something at Lancaster Park in 1985. Auckland the Ranfurly Shield, Canterbury undying respect. And for once the media hype was right. It was, in all probability, that most elusive and ephemeral of any rugby promoter’s dream — the match of the century.”

The rivalry continued, though the main characters would soon shuffle off, with Hart and Wyllie becoming Sir Brian Lochore’s assistants in the inaugural World Cup success. After some tortuous politicking, they would end up as co-coaches of the 1991 campaign where their oil-and-water personalities would ensure it was never a happy, cohesive or successful campaign.

There were flashpoints in the NPC, particularly in 1990 when Canterbury contrived to ensure there were no scrums following the sending off of hooker John Buchan in the fourth minute. His replacement, Phil Cropper, (there’s a name worth googling), informed the ref he was unable to play in the front row and weirdness ensued on the field and friction off it, where Gary Whetton insinuated that Canterbury were not real men.

In 1996, with the birth of professional rugby, the rivalry shifted to the Blues and Crusaders. The essence was still there, but it was never quite as piquant. Professionalism flooded the game with money, so the them-and-us element of playing Auckland was never as strong.

If anything, the Crusaders, not Auckland, have taken on the role of ‘Them’.

- Words by Dylan Cleaver