The local body elections analysed

I first stood for the mayoralty back in 1992. There were three of us vying for the title; Bob Francis and myself and a lady whose name I won’t mention because I have not sought her permission to do so. In the event more than 11,000 votes were cast and in round figures Bob got 6000, I got 4000 and the lady, who was a credible candidate, got 1000.

Twenty-one years later, when the town will have grown, though perhaps not as fast as we might have envisaged, there were just over 8000 votes cast in a similar three-way-contest featuring again two males and a female.

Interest in local body elections seems to have waned in the interim and you have to wonder why.

By all measures Lyn Paterson did well. She risked splitting her votes by standing for both the mayoralty and a seat on the council, but still beat the incumbent Mr Daniell, who has run a pretty steady ship over the last six years. Mr Daniel put all his eggs in one basket, standing for the mayoralty alone and will now have spare time to spend.

Gary Caffell polled well and will wonder if it might have been more prudent for him to have also stood for the mayoralty alone. He got 3600 votes for the urban ward; some of these may well have gone to him in a single mayoralty bid.

Surprisingly Mr Daniell also lost his seat on the Trust Lands Trust after a term spanning more than twenty five years. His claim that he was deprived of the mayoralty by the “women’s vote,” was not well received, but could also apply to his departure from the Lands Trust. His place will now be taken up by newcomer Sandy Ryan.

On the District Health Board two-term incumbent Viv Napier lost her seat meaning the South Wairarapa now has no elected representative on a board that is responsible for the health of the whole Wairarapa. Mrs Napier was an exceptionally effective board member and there were other excellent southern candidates. Among these were Greytown resident Paora Ammunson who was the initial chairman of the Wairarapa Primary Health Organisation and would have represented Maori well on a board that has a strong focus on improving Maori health and also new Martinborough resident Michael Lamont. Lamont is a physiotherapist by profession and is currently the CEO of the Mangere Community Health Trust in Auckland.

This lack of South Wairarapa representation doesn’t bode well for the potential combining of the three district councils. Those communities south of Carterton who already run their affairs extremely efficiently may find their influence on a combined Wairarapa Council easily compromised.

The Licensing Trust gained two members of the fairer sex after the last one, Josephine Maxwell, left the stage in 1989. Lucy Cruickshank and Mena Antonio will no doubt add a fresh perspective to the organisation, but in the process the Trust have lost the experienced and very capable Steve Blakemore. Craig Roberts, who took local body advertising to new heights, missed out after being highly critical of the Trust’s financial reporting.

That just leaves the Greater Wellington Regional Council where first termer Gary McPhee was re-elected. Three years ago McPhee stood on the platform that the Rimutaka summit toilets would be reinstated. They weren’t and after his success this time he is reported as saying that he is keen the see the Wairarapa become a unitary authority resulting in the regional council withdrawing its myriad of essential services to our neck of the woods and in the process causing him to lose his handsome stipend.

I think I’m now starting to get a handle on why so few people vote.

                                                          **********************

I’m also starting to get a handle on why many women are reluctant to report a rape. The affair between the mayor of Auckland and his paramour was certainly not rape, but I’m surprised how the left-leaning press have come down so hard on the mistress in this case; though of course Len Brown is their darling.

Writing in the New Zealand Herald Kerre McIvor, in a rather vicious attack on Ms Chuang, said she was “no doe-eyed virgin and that it would probably be a good idea for her to give up blokes for a while and sit at home reading self-improvement books to increase her chances of finding a real boyfriend.”

Although Ms McIvor conceded Ms Chuang is single and can therefore sleep with whoever she chooses she went on to say that “she will be lucky to find a soft toy willing to share her bed with her in the future, far less a real live man.”

No support from the sisterhood then.

Don’t you just love local body politics?

“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” - George Bernard Shaw.

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In faint praise of the salesperson

After we were married and were creating a stable of young children we were accosted one evening by a door-to-door salesman selling encyclopaedias. The brand was Britannica, but it could just as easily have been Collins. Both products were sold by slick marketers who seldom left a household without extracting a sale. If you think accost is too strong a word to describe someone who is merely plying their trade I checked my trusty Chamber’s dictionary and saw that accost means: To approach and speak threateningly; to solicit as a prostitute. Both, in hindsight, applicable in this case.

The encyclopaedia salesmen always used the guilt factor to endeavour to sign you up to buy. Your offspring, they’d reckon, would be hugely disadvantaged if you didn’t expose them to this fountain of knowledge as a reference library to propel them to the top of their class. A purchase would eventually lead to tertiary education and a life of untold wealth from a professional vocational field of their infinite choices.
In the ultimate case they might even end up as encyclopaedia salesmen.

Door-to-door salesmen weren’t confined to selling encyclopaedias. The Rawleigh’s man sold elixirs for all sorts of ailments and essences for the most discerning of cooks. Vacuum cleaner salesmen called regularly too, and with a few sweeps over what you imagined was a spotless carpet they would produce so much dirt from the bag you were often compelled to buy. The most famous brand – and the most expensive – was the American-made Kirby. I know because we bought one.

Now Sir Bob Jones always espoused the theory that if a product was any good, it didn’t need anyone to sell it. The only merchandise worth buying, he would intone, was the one you sought to buy of your own volition - like going into a shop and purchasing the product off the shelf. If someone had to come to you and talk you into buying the product then the product wasn’t worth procuring. He particularly exampled life insurance. If life insurance was any good, he’d say, then it should be called by its more appropriate name death insurance, and there would be shops selling it across the counter.
To rename life insurance death insurance of course would put paid to the industry. I think it’s almost gone anyway.

And yet sales men and women, slick or otherwise, certainly have their place. It’s even been said they are the most important people in the industrialised society. The factory floor comes to a halt if there are not sales people at the consumer end of the chain pushing the product whether the customer needs it or not.

But todays salespeople tend not to go door-to-door. They’re ensconced in the advertising agencies making ordinary products irresistible. Salesmanship now originates in the factory backrooms where for instance they plot to apply superb paintwork and added features on the new car you don’t really need.

Perhaps the best examples of the hidden hawkers are the artists and technicians who come up with enticing brightly lit graphics on addictive gaming machines.
Incidentally, we didn’t buy the encyclopaedia, even though a redwood bookshelf was being thrown in for nothing and creative methods were offered to pay for it over an extended period. We didn’t intentionally set out to disadvantage our children either; we simply couldn’t afford it at the time, despite all of the above.

And anyway we were still paying off the Kirby.

Today, families only need to invest in a computer and go online. Encyclopaedias and all the knowledge of the world can be found in a word - Google. The Google brand is now so entrenched that the noun has become a verb. Google any subject and the popular search engine will likely as not lead you to another important word in the quest for knowledge - Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001. This community-edited  nline encyclopaedia boasts more than four million articles in over 125 languages. You can add your own knowledge on any subject to the text, so the information grows.

Wales is reported as saying: “My passion is captured in the vision statement that guides my work. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge,” and he went on to say, “And by free I just don’t mean ‘free’ as in free beer, but also, free as in free speech. People must be empowered to copy, modify and redistribute - commercially or non-commercially - the knowledge that we have to share.”

This is a remarkable statement from the founder of this incredible tool and provided the knowledge sought is not destructive, it must surely have the potential to change the world for good in a relatively short time-scale.

T. H. Huxley disagreed with Alexander Pope’s claim that a little learning is a dangerous thing. He wrote: “The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is to my mind a very sad adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession however infinitesimal its quality may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?”

I think I just heard a knock at the door. It’s probably a guy selling computers.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring.” - Alexander Pope.

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The good old days not that good

Those standing for office in the upcoming local body elections, having rushed to media outlets to inform the public of their excellent attributes, will have found that it was not only an expensive exercise, but they will also have been given an infinite variety of choices.

There are at least 5 radio stations and three newspapers that will have plausibly endeavoured to convince the incumbents and aspirants to choose their particular vehicle for their message. As each option tends to have its own defined audience, and as you need to reach a wide cross section of potential voters to promote your cause, they may have felt it necessary to spread themselves across the lot.

It wasn’t always like that. When I first stood for public office we only had one newspaper and one radio station and in those days the news was left entirely to newspapers. Radio stations had no news segments on the hour or half hour. They played music, advertisements and mid-morning and in the evening “serials” which in those pre-television times you found yourself fixated with.

Mums, most of whom were at home in the mornings, would tune into ‘Portia Faces Life’ or ‘Doctor Paul’ and in the evening we kids would listen to ‘Life With Dexter’, ‘Hagen’s Circus’ and as the night wore on cops and robbers shows like ‘Night Beat.’

Night Beat starred an unlikely newspaper crime reporter named Randy Stone. “I cover the night beat for the daily” he would intone in his opening stanza. Near the conclusion of the thirty minute drama, after numerous criminals had either been jailed or shot, he would noisily recall the outcome on an outdated typewriter and then yell out: “Copy Boy!” addressing apparently a young lad who would no doubt hasten the story to a grateful editor.

Radio provided great entertainment, but almost everybody got the daily newspaper. I used to do a paper run in Lansdowne and we only needed to know the names of those households who didn’t subscribe.

It was a very short list.

Today, news has become big business and radio and television stations have encroached on this once sacred preserve of the newspapers. Now each media competes for audiences and the news is packaged and presented with more gore than Randy Stone would have dreamed of.

A study conducted by the New York University made a list of ‘Journalisms greatest hits of the twentieth century.’ You might have expected news stories about new vaccines, fantastic inventions, the rise in living standards or the spread of democracy from ten per cent of the countries to sixty per cent over that 100 year period.

Well you would have been disappointed. The greatest hits were all about war, natural disasters, dangerous chemicals and unsafe cars. 

We don’t really want good news at all.

The problem with an interconnected world is there is always a flood, a war, a plane crash, an earthquake, a serial murder or starvation somewhere and with the proliferation of video cameras, now even an integral part of your mobile phone, there is a constant supply of horrific scenes to fill our TV screens and to be fleshed out later in print in our newspapers.

These disasters were always part of the world order, but by bringing them to us daily, particularly with such clarity as allowed on our modern highly pixelated TV screens, we risk imagining our world is getting worse, when in fact it is vastly improving.

In a town that has barely grown, the rise of news media outlets, despite causing unwanted increases in your advertising budget, should be applauded not bemoaned. We tend to look back wistfully as though there were better times, but life improves daily, even if we are loathe to recognise it.

When 19th century liberal historian and politician Lord Macaulay, wrote his History of England he couldn’t understand why the English always talked about ‘the good old days' and he warned later generations - and that’s you and me – not to romanticise the past.

He wrote: ‘In spite of overwhelming evidence that living standards are improving, many will still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we live.

‘It may at first seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward at eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in which we are.

‘That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful for us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving.

‘But in truth there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we would cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future.’

“Copy boy!”

“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire” – Voltaire

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Important questions for our age

From time to time I devote the column inches of my article to searching locally, nationally and internationally for the most important questions that currently need to be contemplated.

Here they are:

1. If Oracle’s catamaran was designed and made almost entirely in N.Z., and if their CEO is Sir Russell Coutts, and if Jimmy Spittle owns a multi-million dollar home in Auckland then how come Peter Montgomery didn’t say as he concluded his commentary of the last race “And the America’s Cup is once again New Zealand’s cup?”

2. What will happen to the All Blacks if Larry Ellison sets his sights on the next Rugby World Cup?

3. If next year’s general election is fought on the notion of a David and Goliath battle between Cunliffe and Key won’t Cunliffe have the advantage given his Christian name?

4. Does anybody find it odd that the people who gave us golf and called it a game are the very same people who gave us bagpipes and called it music?

5. And while we’re on that subject, if there were no golf balls, how would we measure hail?

6. Why do vegetarians never care about the insects killed to produce vegetables?

7. Are people more vigorously opposed to fur than leather because it’s easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs?

8. If Good King Wenceslas ordered a pizza, would it be deep pan, crisp and even?

9. If you mixed vodka and orange juice with milk of magnesia would you get a Phillips screwdriver?

10. Did the ANZ Corporation purchase the National Bank in Lincoln Road so you could buy a pie when you walked out the front door?

11. Why are “Save the Trees” signs made of wood?

12. When will TV One finally abandon Seven Sharp and give us back a decent current affairs programme?

13. There is a lot of comedy on TV. Does that cause comedy to break out on the streets?

14. Why do we call countries that haven’t yet trashed their environment “undeveloped?”

15. Is Sir Russell Coutts another Lord Haw-Haw?

16. Why do women’s libbers have trouble with chairMAN but not feMALE?

17. How come no one said “it’s only a boat race” when Team New Zealand was winning?

18. Why don’t we refer to the Northern Hemisphere as “up over?”

19. Kim Dot Com says he will sponsor Team New Zealand next time. Will that be before or after he pays for the undersea telecommunications cable he promised us?

20. Why is it our children can’t read a Bible in school, but they can in prison?

21. Have you ever heard any one call February, Feb-roo-air-ee?

22. If Fonterra lost millions of customers worldwide after its “Botulism scare” how come they are forecasting a record pay-out for next season?

23. If you left your windscreen wipers going all the time, could you park illegally without getting a ticket?

24. What’s the difference between a pioneer and an illegal immigrant?

25. If the GH in enough is pronounced like an “F” and the O in women like an “I” and the TI in nation like an “SH” how come fish isn’t spelt GHOTI?

26. Why don’t we ever see the headline: “Psychic wins Lotto?”

27. Would you ever buy anything from Briscoe’s that didn’t have 60 per cent off?

28. If the pen is mightier than the sword and a picture is worth a thousand words how dangerous is an email?

29. If every country in the world is in debt, where did all the money go?

30. And finally, a question with an answer. Ever wondered why gorging on delicious puddings makes your kids hyperactive? Try spelling desserts backwards.

The rest of the answers I will give to you in my column of the 29th of Feb-roo-air-ee next year!

“That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realises that in truth his wisdom is worth nothing.” -Plato

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The Balmoral family are hospitable

I had just drifted off to sleep when the phone rang. It was quite late at night. My caller was the secretary/treasurer of the Amateur Newspaper Columnist’s Guild (ANCG). She told me I had been selected, presumably at random, to represent the guild by accompanying John Key and his family on their historic visit to stay with the Queen at Balmoral Castle. I didn’t have an opportunity to even express surprise. It was either yes or no and if it was yes then I was to go and get packed. I barely had time to kiss my wife farewell.

I could have gone with the press contingent in Key’s plane, but I found out it was a DC1 with a dodgy fuel pump. So I decided to fly with the national carrier of the country that breeds the world’s greatest yachtsmen and booked on Qantas It was a wise move. We had a stop-off at Dubai and I noticed Key’s propeller driven aircraft with Air-force One painted over the old TEAL markings sitting on the steaming tarmac with some confused mechanics working on one of the ancient piston engines. I wanted to thumb my nose at his entourage but they were sweating profusely and I didn’t have the heart to tell them what a difference pressurisation can make.

Getting through customs in Britain is not easy these days. They were furious about the butcher’s knives I had in my overnighter. I had brought these to give away as gifts but they were promptly confiscated. Fortunately I had also packed some genuine Taiwanese plastic tikis which proved to be hugely popular.

One official took a keen interest in the size of my nose and wanted to know if I a Jew or an Arab? I told him Rick was short for Ikey and I was congenially waved on through.

Key’s plane was still circling around Heathrow looking for a gap in the fog so I decided to get up to Balmoral under my own steam. The taxi driver, a Pakistani who spoke better English than I do, asked me about New Zealand. He said he had seen the Hobbit and was surprised how tall I was. He told me he and his family were thinking of emigrating to Godzone, but he’d read where some chap named Shearer wasn’t too keen on letting Asians own a house there. I told him Mr Shearer’s view of the world didn’t count any more and his successor, a man with the unlikely name of Cunliffe, was yet to announce his housing policy so he ought to make the move promptly before the new man lowered the boom.

I also told him about a man named Mallard who owned a house in Lower Hutt who might be keen to sell at a bargain price.

Getting into Balmoral was a breeze. I bumped into Prince Charles talking to a bed of camellias in the garden and in no time we were joined by Prince Phillip. They were both welcoming and Prince Phillip wanted to know how I’d got past the Beefeater at the gate. I told him how we’d had a friendly chat about eating beef as opposed to cutting it up for sale and he let me slip by.

Charles and Philip allowed that they were both looking forward to meeting Stephanie Key as they’d seen the racy photos of her in the Daily Mirror and they thought she’d make a great page three girl.

Philip, who insisted I call him Phil, invited me to come inside and “meet the wife.”

The Queen was most gracious.

I told her how I’d enjoyed her performance with Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English Reborn, but she told me that both her character and the Chinese look-alike were, well, look-alikes. I did my best to hide my disappointment at this shattering disclosure.

I asked did she enjoy being called a great-granny and she told me she was getting used to it. Small talk was not easy, but the two corgis, Holly and Willow, were making nuisances of themselves so I turned the conversation around to dogs. I said we owned a couple of canines and she wanted to know their names. I told her one of them thinks his name is “Down Boy” and I said the other one’s got such a pedigree that if she could talk she wouldn’t speak to either of us.

I was relieved when John and Bronagh turned up with Stephanie and Max and I was able to leave them to make conversation with the old lady.

I spent the next few days playing polo and shooting grouse.

Soon I was winging my way home and I found myself sitting next to a flaming redhead who I’ll swear was Stephanie Key. She had a packet of McDonald's fries nestled on her lap.

It’s experiences like this you normally only dream about.

“Those who dream by day are cognisant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.” - Edgar Allan Poe

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The tortured road to Damascus

During that period around BC and AD there was a young man named Saul, born in the Middle Eastern city of Tarsus whose great intellect was recognised at an early age. His father, a wealthy merchant, saw that his son was well educated, getting the most noted teacher the Jews had ever possessed, Gamaliel, to privately tutor him. Saul became steeped in Judaism, the religion of the Jews. About that time an outspoken thirty-three-year-old had been crucified for daring to proclaim that he was the Messiah and Saul was incensed that despite his death he seemed to be gathering followers at an alarming rate who were joining a faction called “The Way.”

Saul sought high priest judiciary powers to pursue this “blasphemous” sect and often stood by while followers were stoned to death for what he perceived to be misplaced faith.

On the road to Damascus to seek out disciples of The Way who were growing exponentially in that city he was struck down by an intense white light and a voice came from the presence of the light saying “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” As Saul looked upon the radiant figure he asked, “Who art thou, Lord? And the answer came, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecuteth.” Saul was blinded by the light, but three days later in a house in Damascus he was “illuminated from within” and his sight was restored.

Saul changed his name to the Roman rendering of it, Paul, at about the same time “The Way” became known as “Christianity” and Paul the apostle or Saint Paul became its greatest advocate. He wrote most of the books of the New Testament and his words of wisdom are still heard to this day and are constantly espoused at church services and funerals.

His enchanting treatise on love is regularly read at weddings.

People who have a dramatic conversion to Christianity are often said to have had a “Road to Damascus” experience.

The road to Damascus, once paved with good intentions, would be a somewhat different experience in the 21st century. Journey down that road today and you might find yourself dodging bullets or inhaling deadly sarin gas.

The Middle East is a powder keg and the civil war in Syria is its likely fuse.

Bashar al Assad is a complex character. Even if he did assault his people with chemical weapons, which is possible, but not certain, his troops have still managed to kill 100,000 of them conventionally anyway.

The rebels are malcontents and overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. The Assad family is of the Alawite persuasion that follows the Shi’ite interpretation of the Muslim faith and are aligned to the Ba’ath party. Syria is 70 per cent Sunni.

This is a sectarian war and has been brewing in Syria for decades.

Tensions started back in 1980 when the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to kill Bashar’s father Hafez, then the country’s president. Two years later Hafez struck back and the entire Brotherhood leadership was liquidated and so too were their families. It is believed up to 30,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in the rout.

Bashar was just 15 at the time and was never intended that he would lead his people after his father’s death. His older brother Bassel was the chosen one and Bashar, who was recognised as the weakest link in the family and had a chin to emphasise this, went to university in Damascus and was then sent to England by his father to study medicine.

According to those who knew him at university, Assad was a middling student, introverted, stubborn and moody. Ironically, it is said he can’t stand the sight of blood and so instead of studying general medicine he opted to become an ophthalmologist, enrolling at London’s Western Eye Hospital.

Meanwhile Bassel was killed in a high speed car crash while driving to Damascus airport in 1999.

British author Patrick Seale, an old Assad family friend, said after Bassel’s death Hafez attempted to instil in his second son, then only 28, the leadership qualities he felt Syria would need. “Bashar proved largely inept. Hafez was desperate to influence and train Bashar as a leader, but he was never the right type,” says Seale. The young doctor was awkward and lacked the common touch to win the loyalty of the population. “He was and still is a terrible public speaker. He blathers on in an uncontrolled way and loses his audience quickly,” says Seale.

And so this moody, introverted, stubborn, blathering individual potentially holds the fate of the world in his soiled hands.

In Armageddon-like circumstances the two sides are neatly lined up. Iran, Russia and China on one side, with North Korea probably itching to join the fray, and the Western Alliance on the other.

Not unlike the situation that triggered the “war to end all wars” nearly 100 years ago.

What we need is a modern-day Saul of Tarsus.

“War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.” - H. L. Mencken

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Glory Days - before Springsteen

The euphoria in Otago when they lifted the Ranfurly shield from Waikato was short-lived. They say a week is a long time in politics, but it is agonizingly short when you parade your heroes down Dunedin’s main street on Monday only to watch them lose the “Log’o’Wood” the next Sunday. Pity too because the Forsyth Barr Stadium is a great venue to defend the shield in any weather.

Hawkes Bay waited 44 years to have the shield back in their trophy cabinet thanks to their narrow win against Otago, but kept it for just six days when Counties Manakau lifted it in a spirited contest at Napier’s picturesque McLean Park last Saturday. Hawkes Bay Rugby Union’s CEO said the shield had the potential to boost their coffers by more than a million dollars if only they could have retained ownership.

Wairarapa had the shield for twice as long as Otago and Hawkes Bay when they won a famous victory over Canterbury in 1950.

As a ten-year-old rugby-mad kid I can clearly recall the occasion. Wairarapa were more than odds-on favourites to lose the game. I had watched them play at Queen Elizabeth Park a few weeks previous when Poverty Bay beat them convincingly.  Man of the match for me was that day “Tiny” White; the huge lock forward and legendary All Black. Unfortunately he played for Poverty Bay. So too did Brian Fitzpatrick, another All Black and later to father Sean.

The Wairarapa team left that evening for their South Island tour which was to culminate in a challenge for the coveted Ranfurly Shield against mighty Canterbury at Lancaster Park. Their record in their tour lead-up games was not too impressive either. Otago beat them 16 nil. At Invercargill Southland won 17 to 6.  South Canterbury drew with them 3 all.

Despite not being given much chance against Canterbury, the side did have some wonderful players. They were captained by the superb Maori All Black, and member of the legendary Kiwi team Alan “Kiwi” Blake, although he was concussed midway through the game and had to be replaced on the side of the scrum by Noel Desmond. Hooking was another great Maori All Black, Kingi Matthews and propping him were Neville Humphries and Les Sciascia. Hugh Mathieson and Bruce McPhee locked the scrum and Jack Ryan was the other flanker; though we called them “breakaways” back then. Wattie Waaka was at number eight.

Garth Parker was second-five-eighth outside the great Ben Couch at first-five. Couch was an All Black and a Maori All Black. He had a nifty swerve which was to later serve him well in politics. He took over the captaincy when Blake left the field.

Half back was Steve Walsh; Brian Desmond was at centre, with Bernie Patrick and John Geary on the wings. On the bench were Alan “Blue” Corlett, Keith Parker, - brother of Garth - Horrie Thompson, Martin Garrity, Bobbie Lister and Ivan Dale.

Second-five-eighth for Canterbury was Jules Houghton, later to settle here as the much respected manager of Wright Stephenson’s Stock and Station Agency.

Undoubtedly star of the day though was Wairarapa fullback Alf Mahupuka, whose dropped goal, urged on by Ben Couch when passing seemed the sensible option, slotted through the goalpost’s from halfway, just before half-time.

The second half was a torrid affair with Wairarapa desperately hanging on to their slender lead with a sterling performance from the forwards. I had my ear glued to the crackly radio at home and I vividly recall my hero for the day, my cousin John Geary, who had been a record breaking sprinter at Wairarapa College, chasing and catching Canterbury front rower Alan Couling just inches short of the try line in the last minutes of the game. This was Canterbury’s final opportunity to save the day and the underdogs came out the winners by three points to nil.

The Christchurch Press said the Wairarapa forwards won the game and “especially outstanding were J. Ryan, L. Sciascia and K. Matthew’s who frequently broke though the Canterbury forwards, hunting relentlessly with ball at toe.” The Press voted Couch, Walsh and Geary as the stand-out backs.

The citizens of Wairarapa were over the moon with the win. So too were the team They poured themselves on to the Lyttleton ferry that night and set sail for Wellington and then home to glory and a civic welcome at the Masterton Post Office.  I and hundreds of others waited for some time for our first glimpse of the shield.  The team knew how to party. Legend has it that on the bus trip home from the ferry terminal they got the publican of the Central Hotel in Petone, Ian Harvey, out of bed at about 8 o’clock on Sunday morning, demanding that he “shout.”

Harvey, an ex All-Black who had played for Wairarapa was, I gather, more than happy to oblige.

The victors arrived quite late for the reception because they were stopped by coteries of delighted supporters all the way up the valley. Fair enough; a great many of the players were from the highly rated Carterton and Greytown sides. The rugby team that finally held up the shield for the expectant Post Office crowd didn’t look as though they could win a good feed, but we understood their celebrations and excused their resultant demeanor.

Norm Faulkner, who with his brother Bob owned a sports shop directly opposite the Post Office was the team manager and the shield was proudly displayed in their window for the delighted populous to view. I’m sure the whole Wairarapa took the opportunity to glimpse the trophy. I recall going and staring at it most days.

But the display was short-lived.

Although the Wairarapa season was officially over, through some legal loophole and sleight of hand, still unexplained to the rank and file to this day, they were obliged to face a challenge from South Canterbury which they had to accept. The game was scheduled just two weeks after the shield had been won.

The South Canterbury challenge was held at the Solway Showground’s. I’ll never forget the trauma we all felt when we lost the contest in the dying minutes, 17 - 14. Man of the match on that day was the visitor’s captain and 1949 All Black, L. A. Grant. He kicked a penalty goal from halfway and scored two tries, one right on full time to give his side the victory. I despised him with all the hate a ten-year-old could muster.

Small rugby provinces have few chances to bask in glory and we were shortchanged on this occasion, but it was a fabulous fortnight. It is not generally remembered, but Canterbury also only had the shield for a two week stint, having won it off Otago on August the 16th 1950 and then lost it to Wairarapa on the 2nd of September.

Crikey, it’s just occurred to me, if Gary Caffell wins the mayoralty perhaps I can replace him as a 
sportswriter!

“Nobody ever beats Wales at rugby; they just score more points” - Graham Mourie

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