Grant McKinnon's final call

Grant McKinnon ended a 42-year broadcasting career with the Meads Cup final at Cooks Gardens on Saturday.

Retiring NZME sports broadcaster Grant McKinnon made one request over the airwaves during Saturday's tight Meads Cup final between Steelform Wanganui and Buller at a crowded Cooks Gardens.

"Get me home, boys," he pleaded as the team came back in the final ten minutes to led the match and then hang on at the death for what was the final broadcast in McKinnon's 42 year career.

Joined by his family in the commentary box, as he had been the previous week for a Meads Cup semifinal which could also have been his last announcing duty, McKinnon signed off after a match he will never rate as a favourite in terms of quality, but certainly a fitting occasion to say goodbye.

"Overwhelmed, to be honest. The whole day was unreal," McKinnon said yesterday, currently in the process of booking a well-earned holiday with his wife.

"I just thought I was lucky I retired and everything ended up the way it did. It was on a high.

"It was a bit of an emotional game, so close and so tense."

Appropriately, McKinnon's final rugby season behind the microphone got to extend out to the full six matches, given Cooks Gardens had not hosted a Mitre 10 Heartland Championship final since 2011, while before this year the last post-season playoff he called was the forgettable Lochore Cup semifinal of 2013, also against Buller.

McKinnon joins Wanganui captain Peter Rowe in retiring from this stage, and although Rowe was already hearing calls for a comeback by that very evening's aftermatch functions, McKinnon is content with his final match being a championship game in front of a big home crowd.

"It doesn't happen like that for everyone.

"I always thought the time was right. But I didn't know, I had to be reinforced that it was the last day.

"I'm lucky, Dave [Campbell]'s been in the wings for the last eight years. It's the right time.

"I started this when I was 28 and now I'm 70. It's been a very good innings."

McKinnon took over from Eugene Crotty for radio 2XA in 1975, not long before the station became 2ZW and then morphed into what it is today.

As well as provincial games involving every New Zealand union, he announced fixtures involving New Zealand A, France vs Tonga, North Island vs South Island and an All Blacks trial.

He also called matches with the British Lions, South Africa, Super 15 and other internationals including World Series Cricket.

In 2014, after 40 years of sports broadcasts, McKinnon was added to the Whanganui Sport Roll of Honour, while also being presented with a mounted microphone from the NZME Media organisation.