TWISTS AND TURNS: There can be no mistaking who the current owner of the Wingnut Trophy is when you inspect it. PHOTO/SUPPLIED
HOWEVER they look, which is often a little odd, it is the story behind the prize that inspires the passions.
You may have read in my Whanganui cricket scribblings over the past month a couple of references to the Wingnut Trophy - a unique challenge prize fought over by the United and Marton Saracens cricket clubs, which has a very cool function where you can twist the second tier to display both the current holder and the recently vanquished.
It is a sports reporter's dream for metaphoric headlines - "turned the screws on their opposition". Writes itself, really.
This week, United Premier 2 opener Stu Mosen clued me in on the origins of the Wingnut - which actually has two versions for both Premier 1 and 2 matches.
"John Carroll, aka Wingnut, passed away late last year, and knowing John as well as all Whanganui cricketers did, I thought it only fitting to at least honour the guy for what he did for cricket, team members, rivals and avid drinkers and socialites alike," Mosen wrote.
"The only way for me to do this was to make a challenge cup, with the actual wingnut on top with his initials."
Carroll's on-field career was wrapping up by the time I arrived at the Chronicle in the summer of 2012 - one of my predecessors in Glenn Watson mentioned a 'retirement' in 2010.
However, Wingnut still popped up occasionally to help out Marton in the top grade during the Premier League seasons and showed some of the old bowling tricks - getting five-for against Marist in March 2014 and 4-47 against Tech in October later that year.
Mosen explained his career was spent between the two clubs - as a "youthful, enthusiastic, mad-as-a-snake cricketer" for United and then an "experienced, old hand, old-school veteran" for Marton.
"When I started playing cricket he was with Marton and he was always hard on the field and win at all costs.
"But off the field, socially, he was fun to get to know and, dare I say it, how could you not like the guy for his mischief and stories of years gone by?"
Mosen had only intended to build one trophy for the United vs Marton Premier 2 games, but after mentioning it following the funeral, the Premier 1 squads were also impressed and wanted their own memorial prize to honour the man.
"Dare I say it to you, mate, the Prem 2 Wingnut Cup is the most important in my eyes."
However humble the origins, it is recognising the traditions of the past which can make such a simple item mean so much.
Cricket's greatest trophy is a tiny terracotta urn, only 11cm high, but every generation of fan will swear by The Ashes.
Interestingly, it was a metaphor from the media, a play on words, which led to the Ashes' creation.
In 1882, to the stunned silence of the home fans at the Oval in London, those dashed Australian colonials did the unthinkable and defeated their team by eight runs after England collapsed chasing a mere 85 runs for victory.
The shock defeat prompted journalist Reginald Shirley Brooks to write a spoof obituary in The Sporting Times with noted the 'death' of English cricket, deeply lamented by friends and acquaintances, with the body to be cremated and the "ashes" taken back to Australia.
The public jibes left an impression on England captain and future Earl of Darnley, Ivo Bligh, who vowed on the tour Down Under the following summer that his side would "regain" those ashes - aka the Old Country's sporting reputation.
At this point purely a metaphoric term, it was at the end of the successful tour that Bligh was presented with an actual urn, believed to contain the remains of a burnt ball, from a group of ladies in Melbourne.
The urn remained the proudest sporting memento amongst his private collection until Bligh's death in 1927.
Yet by now the Ashes name for England vs Australian matches had stuck in the public consciousness and so his widow Florence Morphy, an Aussie girl who Bligh met on that famous tour, presented it to the MCC in 1929.
Local customs and historical references can lead to the strangest of symbolic prizes for the modern sportsperson.
Did you know if a golfer wins the Italian Open he can take home his own weight in Grana Padano - one of the country's most popular cheeses?
Victory on the first stage of the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey will make you the toast of the host city Alanya, and with it will come a giant bunch of bananas, which are grown in the region.
The colleges of Illinois and Ohio State fight it out on the gridiron pitch for the Illibuck trophy - a wooden turtle - which symbolises the old living reptile the two schools passed back and forth from 1925 until its death several years later.
Nascar has got some beauties - win in Loudon and you get a lobster, victory in Martinsville earns you a Grandfather clock, while claiming the checkered flag in Kansas means a full replica of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Back in my home patch of Nelson, there was a memorable 1982 senior rugby final between the Stoke and Riwaka clubs.
Due to wet weather, the game was moved from the main Trafalgar Park ground to the less-used No3 pitch, where a player was nearly knocked senseless when he landed on a partially buried boulder in the middle of the field.
Bemused players dug it out and for every season after, the game between the two clubs was for the "Rock Trophy".