Good on the Taranaki Rugby Football Union for diving into the back of the trophy cabinet last weekend and dusting off the Jones Brothers Shield for the game in Hawera.
The TRFU was not obligated to make any silverware created for another purpose available, given the shield was introduced back in 1981 for first class games between Wanganui and the Taranaki NPC side on Queens Birthday weekends.
Such matches are virtually extinct since the 1990's with the advent of professionalism - and even before then as there was the widening gap between affluent NPC teams in the city centres and the smaller provincial sides in the second and third divisions under the old three-tier format.
As a result, there are many challenge cups and shields around the country, contested by town unions and their immediate country neighbours, that are now just gathering dust in the trophy cases of the bigger professional union.
Perhaps deliberately so, as the silverware merely exists to be display pieces in the main foyer of the office - looking impressive to visitors and thereby deflecting questions about the union's success rate when there is no sign of a Mitre 10 Premiership or Championship, or even the Ranfurly Shield.
However, some of the big brothers do recognise that while the competitive nature of such inter-union games is gone, the legacy of the prize can live on.
TRFU letting their Development XV defend the Jones Brothers Shield was a genuine gamble, even without anyone expecting the 43-12 hammering by Wanganui beforehand.
With eight players still involved in Super Rugby across the three Kiwi teams playing the semifinals, there was a flow-on effect where some of the more seasoned Development players were required for the Taranaki A team in their pre-season clash with Counties Manukau that day.
Coach Ngatai Walker therefore chose to promote several youngsters from the Under 19 system to give them a taste of a higher provincial level.
Given Wanganui fielded a starting lineup with a dozen battle-hardened first-class veterans, the Taranaki youngsters got a lesson they won't forget in a hurry, which long term actually makes it extremely valuable.
And so the Jones Brothers Shield - named after the three siblings who played for Wanganui - came back home to Cooks Gardens for the first time since 1985.
Graeme Jones, who is both a former Wanganui and Taranaki representative, presented captain Peter Rowe with the prize and expressed his delight both publicly and privately to the team that the little country cousins had triumphed, making it a very special day.
The shield can now take pride of place in the WRFU cabinet alongside another challenge trophy magnanimously offered up by a professional union - the Bruce Steel Memorial Cup.
In 2012 after Manawatu's iron-clad grip on the cup continued with a 40-7 victory over Wanganui in Palmerston North, the Manawatu union handed over the trophy to the vanquished anyway.
The gesture allowed the three lower North Island neighbours - Wanganui, Horowhenua-Kapiti and Wairarapa-Bush - to continue competing for the Bruce Steel annually, while Manawatu focused on bigger horizons in the ITM Cup.
As a result, the traditional rivalries remain intact as last year's clashes for the cup - Wanganui taking it off Horowhenua-Kapiti in 39-34 in Levin and then defending it 57-35 against Wairarapa Bush in Masterton - were both country rugby classics.
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There's been a bit of debate around this week about how "wrong" we were to have trumpeted Whanganui as New Zealand's most successful Olympic town, per capita of population.
The features were written in conjuncture with the NZ Herald , who in association with ANZ, did a month-long series which aimed to reveal the Top 10 towns and cities that have made the "biggest contributions" to New Zealand's Olympic glory.
An argument was made that under the Herald's selection criteria - first the number of gold medallists and then the total number of overall medallists through birthplace - that Waverley and Opunake should have been No1 and No2 respectively via multiple Simon Dickie (rowing) and Peter Snell (running).
In addition, it was claimed Wanganui's Les Wilson, just like Whangarei's Neil McLeod in their feature, should not be included as they were reserves in the 1976 gold medal hockey victory over Australia and did not stand on the dais that day.
Auckland's NZME planning editor Chris Reed looked into those queries and is comfortable "our methodology is sound".
"As stated in our 'How we did it' blurb, we factored in two sets of information - the number of gold medallists and the total number of medallists.
"While excelling in the former, Waverley and Opunake had single medal winners in the latter and didn't make the cut for that reason."
For the case of Wilson and McLeod, Reed said the Herald "went off a spreadsheet of medallists supplied by the NZ Olympic Committee".
"In both cases we acknowledged that they didn't get a medal at the time but that we were including them.
"If they're good enough for the NZOC to include them - who were we to argue?"
Indeed.