Listen to The Country online with Jamie Mackay: Goodbye grassroots rugby shows

Jamie Mackay, Ian Kirkpatrick and Jeremy Rookes ponder the future of grassroots rugby on The Country today. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Today on The Country, host Jamie Mackay talks to All Black legend Ian Kirkpatrick and Canterbury lifestyle farmer Jeremy Rookes about the loss of Grassroots Rugby and Mainfreight Rugby; as Sky announces it will drop the two shows.

On with the show:

Ian Kirkpatrick:

We ask the Patron of New Zealand Rugby (and Poverty Bay farmer) what he thinks of Sky’s decision to drop the two shows that cover the club and lower-level provincial scenes. The Grassroots Rugby (club) and Mainfreight Rugby (lower provincial) programmes are amongst the longest-running on New Zealand television, their longevity and emphasis on normal lives seeing them dubbed the “Country Calendar of rugby”.

Doug Avery:

We talk to the Resilient Farmer, a man who reinvented himself and his mental state of mind after the crippling 1997 Marlborough drought, what he makes of the current one?

Nick Hammond:

We ask the chief executive of the Spring Sheep Milk Company, which has multiple farms in the central North Island, about the future of the sheep milking industry in the wake of the shock move from competitor Maui Milk to tell its suppliers to stop milking last week.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth:

One of the country’s leading farming academics looks at “resilience” in the primary sector.

Jeremy Rookes:

What does this outspoken Canterbury hobby farmer have to say about the Big Dry, the demise of “Grassroots Rugby” and the Hurricanes Women’s Super Rugby team being “puppets of this redneck government” (as per their latest haka)?

Listen below: