Creator of 'The Legend of Marty Banks', Alex Malcolm. Photo / Supplied
Creator of 'The Legend of Marty Banks', Alex Malcolm. Photo / Supplied
As Alex Malcolm tours his way through New Zealand, he stops at different towns to check out their rugby clubs venturing between Super Rugby games.
Alex, also known as the creator of 'The Legend of Marty Banks', a renowned Facebook page with 44,000 followers (and counting), has just returned toNew Zealand after 10 years living in Perth, Western Australia.
For eight of those years he has been running the Facebook page in among working.
"New Zealand rugby (and sometimes other sports) news, memes and reasonably good banter," says the page description.
"Curated by some random guy who went to Nelson College."
"It's been very surreal as I've travelled the country with people stopping me on the street for a photo or just to shake my hand."
With the page's followership continuously increasing, Alex now hopes to monetise it now that he's back in New Zealand.
He hopes to get sponsors on-board as well as the possibility of selling 'The Legend of Marty Banks' merchandise.
"Going forward I want to continue to keep promoting club rugby and women's rugby but to be able to do that and not just in Nelson, I need the money coming in so I can be regularly travelling around, getting to different clubs and telling stories."
So far Alex has visited the Hawke's Bay Rugby Union headquarters as well as the Tasman Mako, Crusaders, Highlanders, Bay of Plenty and plenty of clubs.
"My least favourite place on tour so far was Bluff. I had the Bluff oysters and they made me sick," he says with a chuckle.
"The best place so far was the Southland Stags home ground and getting to meet Steve-O the Stag."
"One of their staff said to me, 'it wasn't planned but in the backseat I've got the Steve-O the Stag uniform, do you want me to put it on?'"
He plans to head to the Thames Valley Swampfoxes headquarters among others too.
"It's been cool meeting a lot of different rugby players from the club level up to Super Rugby level and All Blacks."
Marty Banks makes a break during the Super Rugby final between the Hurricanes and Highlanders at Westpac Stadium in Wellington in July 2015. Photo / Photosport
But why Marty Banks?
Marty Banks is a Highlanders rugby fan favourite who kicked the winning points in the 2015 grand final against the Hurricanes.
He also represented the Hurricanes, Buller and the Tasman Mako, holding six point-scoring records for the Mako, including most points for the province, 628.
Currently Marty plays for Red Hurricanes in the Japan Top League alongside TJ Perenara.
"Originally it was as a bit of a joke. I'd seen him play a few games for the Tasman Mako in 2013. I thought he was really talented but had never heard of him before," says Alex.
"I knew somebody that had been doing fan pages for some other players so I thought it would be kind of funny to do one for him and it blew up.
"I can remember thinking that he'd come from Reefton and at the time I was kind of surprised that the Tasman Mako had signed somebody from more of a Heartland club. Since then I've come to learn more about Heartland rugby and really come to appreciate it."
At first he was just trying make people laugh but as time went on, he realised that he could use the page for good.
"I've tried to promote mental health and just positive stories around rugby as well as promoting up and coming players, sharing news and all those kinds of things.
"There was a big gap in the market. Tony Veitch had his page back in the day. That was really popular and then that kind of just disappeared. I've tried my best to fill that gap. People that spend a lot of time on social media need a home for a lot of their news content. I've tried to become that as well as posting other non news stories.
"In some ways it's something that I kind of dreamed of as kid. I read the sports section of the newspaper all the time, watched the sports news every night and it's just cool to keep people interested in rugby news."
Creator of 'The Legend of Marty Banks', Alex Malcolm (left) with Crusaders player Josh McKay. Photo / Supplied
Within the first 24 hours of starting the page, Alex was contacted by the man himself, Marty Banks.
"I think basically what he said was "I don't mind you doing this page but can you please change the profile picture"," says Alex.
Throughout his eight years running the page, he has met Marty and other members of the Banks family.
As the page continues to become a Facebook cult hero, like Marty himself, Alex keeps striving to share and create relevant, intriguing content for the rugby minded.
