“He actually thought I was just going to bring a Rātana team up, but I said ‘no, I want to make this official, to really give more meaning to it’,” said Mason, who arranged for Hunterville and Marton players to join his group.
The inclusion of a couple of Marton players is important after the club had to fold out of WRFU competitions this year due to losing too many players.
“We’ve grabbed a couple of Stingers, mainly in the backs,” said Mason, who has advocated for a long time to reintroduce sub-union games.
“On this [Pownall] cup, there’s Metro’s name on there as well, so obviously this cup’s between the three of us.
“When you look at it, there’s your Whanganui trials.
“There’s a task ahead of us, but like I said to the lads – ‘get out there, have fun, and enjoy representing country rugby’.
“The boys wear their own club shorts, club socks, and we just provide the jersey.”
After two years of mixing the uniform of their three clubs, Northern will now debut a special strip.
“We’ve pretty much got a new uniform this year – the sub-union managed to splash out and finance us into some new kit, the boys will be looking forward to playing in that,” said Transon.
“We’ve got 6-8 players from Ruapehu and Utiku, but the majority will be coming from Taihape rugby club, just having the spread of two teams.”
Transon has been impressed with the efforts of McCarthy’s Transport Ruapehu, unbeaten in Tasman Tanning Senior and having introduced a number of teenagers into their squad this season.
“Clubs like Ruapehu have grown up together and bound together, and I must admit Rangitīkei on their outer reaches with Rātana, they’re the same – they grew up together, as kids together, and binding into that adulthood together.”
Taihape and Utiku also have a number of 16- to 18-year-olds tied to their Senior teams, and Transon said there have been discussions about also holding a CHB Colts v Northern Colts game on July 19.
Kickoff is 1pm at Memorial Park today.
