Ponsonby Rugby Club

Gathering our History

I’m Paul Neazor, the Ponsonby Rugby Club historian. I’ve written about scores of club members and their contributions but this is only being written at Peter Thorp’s insistence – and his threat to write it himself - so I’ve given in and will do as he asked.

I’m originally from Wellington, moving to Auckland when I was 23. When I shifted there was only the one club I wanted to play for, despite the fact Ponsonby as a suburb was, at the time, about as far removed from middle-class white suburban Wellington as it was possible to be. My home club, Onslow, had not long been lost in an amalgamation that produced Western Suburbs, an outfit I felt no ties to, and Ponsonby was everything I felt a local footy club should be.

I got the gig as club historian basically because, in the mid-1990s, I asked to do it. It’s like so many things at sports clubs – if someone is willing to take it on and makes a reasonable fist of it, they keep the job as long as they want. My first task was to compile the book launched to coincide with the 125th Jubilee, Passion and Pride. At the time I only had a small reputation in the sports writing world, so the club took a punt. I hope the investment has been repaid, at least in part.

Research was different in the mid-1990s. There was no internet. If you wanted a look into old papers, a trip to Auckland Central Library was necessary. There I sat down with rolls of microfilm, putting each one through the scanner and finding the relevant passages. It was a long, slow process, but over a couple of years I found most of the key bits.

What I already knew, but soon became more aware of, was that the club had a special history, both in terms of its record and also of its people. Aside from the well-known names, there were others that kept cropping up over prolonged periods, and I wanted to know more about them. I didn’t have the time while doing the book, but filed it under ‘Things to do at some stage in the future’.

Something else I noticed, though, was that the Honours Board had errors on it. Given how it was put together, in the mid-1960s so it would be ready for the Centenary, that wasn’t surprising. There was little in the way of reliable information at the time; Men in Black wouldn’t be published for more than a decade, and Arthur Swan, while a diligent historian, was fairly dry. In addition the club lost almost all its records in the hall fires of the 1920s; the oldest surviving minute books start with the rebuilding after the second fire. So those players of 90 and 80 and 70 years ago were near-forgotten men from another world. George Nicholson, whose memory was tapped into on many occasions, was by then very old and that memory sometimes failed him.

Thirty years on, and with a lot of work having been done in the interim by some notable historians, I had a great deal of more reliable material to hand than Jack Bourke and Co did. The errors concerning All Blacks were put right immediately because at the time there was a debate raging over which club had the most and various methods of counting were applied by a variety of people, generally giving highly inflated totals. We got there in the end, coming to an agreement with Otago University – for a long time the record-holder – that both clubs were counting in the same way, and that we agreed with their count and they agreed with ours.

About the time of that 125th Jubilee I really got involved with TV sports, working with Sky on rugby and cricket coverage among other things. I also got more involved in research and writing, particularly on rugby, and penned a few books as well as many articles. One thing that did happen, though, was that I was almost always out of Auckland on weekends (and a lot of weekdays) and my association with the club became limited by necessity. If I was lucky I got to see Ponies play once or twice a season. Time was something I didn’t really have when I was doing long weeks in winter or spending (on several occasions) months at a time on the road, so my list of things to do in future regarding the club remained as long as it ever was.

I left the TV world in mid-2016. It allowed me to get back to club sport, and renew acquaintance with the people at Ponies. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it all until I came back. Time to attack that list – after doing the updated Passion and Pride Continues, which covers 1999 to 2017 and includes that scarcely credible run of 10 Gallaher Shield wins in 11 years.

About the same time Bryan Williams (still not yet Sir Bryan) was making a concerted effort to detail, catalogue and make a digital record of all the club’s memorabilia, and he asked me to get involved. I was more than happy to do so, and this really kindled the desire to make the club website not just the best in Auckland, but better than anything available in New Zealand – or outside, for that matter. We had the history, but needed to gather it all in one place.

Things had changed in the 20 years since I did my original research. As electronic media advanced the website Papers Past developed, which has as its records of dozens of newspapers from throughout New Zealand scans of each page of each edition, dating back to the first and at present ending between 1945 and 1950. It is an invaluable tool, one I use often.

A search engine makes life simple, too. Type in ‘Ponsonby football’ or, later, ‘Ponsonby rugby’, hit ‘Find’ and a few hundred results appear for each year. I read every one that came up, discarded those that didn’t apply to us and kept those that did. If something was missing, like a match report (normally because one of the key words in the search wasn’t found), I could now see that and I had a guide to go to a paper, search the date and locate the piece I wanted. In this way I built a collection of some 8000 links which is now available here. They may mention the club in passing – if it was team lists we’re talking about, possibly not at all since Ponsonby was notorious for not filing on time – but all were part of the fabric of early Auckland rugby, and Ponsonby was at the heart of so much of it that I’ve kept all these items, for continuity and for interest. I doubt there’s a fuller record of early Auckland rugby available anywhere these days.

As a result of all this new technology I’ve been able to dig into the past from the comfort of my own office, and I began building this record. All sorts of things fell out of this with the biggest being that half a dozen old Life Members were missing from the Honours Board. How it happened was understandable but it needed putting right and, once raised at the AGM, the records were changed and those old stalwarts given their due acknowledgement.

I was able to construct a fairly full record of games, results, scorers and appearances. A roll of Senior players, now well into the thousands, has been identified and a surprisingly large number, about two-thirds, have first names or, failing that, initials known. I know there are more but running them to earth is increasingly difficult; the World War I and World War II years are particularly hard. Apart from a few wartime matches, results and scores are known for every Senior match the club has played, and in almost all cases scorers are known as well. The appearance record has a few more holes in it, but one advantage of researching Ponsonby is that the club was talked about more than most, and players got more press mentions. It was an invaluable help.

As well as that, the earliest club officials are now known – the Honours Board records start at 1887 instead of 1874 – and I was able, over time, to build a complete list of the club’s first-class players. Here I have to pay tribute to Clive Akers’ remarkable New Zealand Rugby Register, an extraordinary work that lists every first-class player to appear in New Zealand since 1875 and the matches they played. If there was any doubt about Ponsonby players, a quick check in there sorted it out.

Thus our Honours section is, I think, at least as good as any other sporting website in New Zealand. There are 20 sub-headings, ranging from All Blacks and Black Ferns to Auckland B reps in first-class matches and loan players for both men and women, to short pieces on all the Senior championships Ponsonby has won and profiles of all our Life Members. There are links to other sites and profiles of all our internationals, whether New Zealand or Pasifika, available. A couple of former All Blacks who had played a handful of matches for the club, previously unrecorded, came to light, and a small number of first-class players who had been missed off the lists were picked up.

Half a dozen pre-WWII match centurions whose game totals were not known can now be put on the board; more will follow from 1946-99. If leading players don’t have a profile anywhere else on the website, I’ve done an interest piece in the decade they were most involved. I’ve profiled significant figures in club history whose deeds don’t fit into any particular place, but whose contribution was too great to ignore. Stories developed over time, and I’ve been able to pick up a few threads and add a little more to the fabric of our history.

It was a good way to spend my April-May 2020 lockdown, as putting something like this together requires uninterrupted time. Since I’ve exhausted Papers Past for now, the hard work really begins. It means digging in the library, finding whatever treasures might be hidden away at the Auckland Union, keeping eyes and ears open for any little snippets and recording it all. Then there are the photos … thousands and thousands of them. And the digital record of the memorabilia. And scans of Annual Reports and other documents. The list goes on and on and on. By the time we’ve finished, the Ponsonby Rugby Club e-museum will be able to stand with any sporting counterpart in the world. It is a huge job, but immensely satisfying, and once completed the record will be available for ever.

Ponsonby District Rugby Club deserves no less.

The Ponsonby Football Club 1874-9

The Ponsonby Football Club, as it originally was, began in 1874 with little fanfare and no press notices of meetings to form it. Therefore we have no foundation date, only the year. However it is known Grafton played its first match a couple of weeks before Ponsonby, while North Shore played a year earlier.

Like the other new clubs in 1874 (Grafton, Mt Hobson and Parnell), Ponsonby suddenly appeared in the news as an already formed entity which was match-ready. Actually Ponsonby was one of the quickest to get up to speed, having a reasonable understanding of the rules from early on and some handy players. Soon it was the strongest club in town, and more than a match for any but the best.

The aim of this section is to collate all the references to Ponsonby's activities, and note the results, scorers and appearances for each match. Team lists have sometimes been difficult to obtain but a reference in the match reports obviously means a man played, and therefore can be credited with an appearance. Any anomalies are noted in the stats section. Some items of a general nature relating to Auckland football find their way into the list, but these contain material that affected what happened with Ponsonby. It can be truly said that the story of the early days of Auckland rugby and the Ponsonby club are so intertwined that, to a degree, they are inseparable.

Especially in the early days, football items tended to be tucked into columns containing all kinds of material. They're in there, but you might have to scroll down to find them. In the interim, all kinds of weird and wonderful news items will come up. Enjoy.

One of the good things about dealing with such a successful club is that, for much of its lifetime, it has played one of the main matches each week, and therefore got more extensive coverage and more players got mentioned. Ponsonby had, for years, reluctant secretaries who never posted team lists in the papers and in one case that may have prevented the man himself from being credited with all the appearances he made and thus becoming one of the club's recognised match centurions (I'm talking about Len Righton; eventually I found enough references to be sure he was our second centurion).

For each year, the Items are news stories with dates and modern commentary on them; the Stats are self explanatory; and where some player or event deserves extended notice that doesn't come under any other category you'll find on this site, a short feature article will be linked.

1891 to 1909, the District Scheme

The District Scheme came about because the club system failed the rapidly growing game in Auckland - and that mainly happened because Ponsonby had grown so strong the other clubs no longer felt it was worthwhile playing against them. Since the formation of the Auckland Union in 1883 little stability had been achieved, with clubs appearing and folding on an annual basis. While it was a problem at Senior level it was a curse among the Juniors since these clubs were small enterprises, normally with about 20 members, and not aligned to any of the bigger clubs.

Matters came to a head in 1891, when Auckland, the original club, announced it could no longer carry on, leaving only three Senior teams. Such a situation was clearly unacceptable although it had been foreseen for at least a year, and a plan for a District Scheme was hastily put in place. This limited players to the club in whose area they lived, and those areas were clearly and strictly defined. New clubs had to be created to make it work, and four came into being - City, Parnell, Newton and Suburbs (not the present club, but one that covered a huge area from Helensville to Papakura).

Ponsonby only had three of its 1891 club team left when the new competition kicked off, but fielded teams in all three grades. This three-tier competition was the first indication of how well the scheme could work, and that depth built over time to make Auckland rugby exceptionally strong. Ponsonby, on the other hand, had to rebuild almost from scratch and it took some time.

That, incidentally, is where the word 'District' in our name came from.The old Ponsonby Football Club felt little association with the new one, and passions were inflamed for a time. Eventually the committee, which included several notables from the club days, got the community on-side again but in the interim the club had been forced to make a name change, and it proved more durable than the competition which gave rise to it.

The District days were, for the most part, forgettable ones in Ponsonby. A surprise title in 1897 remained just that but poor performance, low table placings and the odd default were more usual. It wasn't until 1901 when the new shed was built, and when the players' responsibilities were forcibly pointed out by the President at the 1903 AGM, that things began to change. Dave Gallaher built a superb team which eventually challenged, and then dethroned, City as the competition powerhouse. The 1909 side was so good it would still rank in any discussion of New Zealand's greatest club teams, containing as it did eight All Blacks, six who would become rugby league internationals, four New Zealand Maori reps and a clutch of 'ordinary' Auckland reps.

City and Ponsonby had exposed the inherent flaw in the District Scheme, which was there was no natural way of balancing an unbalanced competition. So, shortly before the 1910 season began, the programme was abandoned since nobody could see any way to loosen Ponsonby's grip. If they had waited a few months, they would have seen the ravages rugby league raiding and the march of the calendar were to cause, but those couldn't be relied upon. In reality the District Scheme had served its purpose, but its time was done.

1910 to 1919

If the first decade of the 20th Century saw the British Empire at the peak of its powers, the second saw so much that was taken for granted taken away. And, in the second half of the decade, there was a war which eventually touched every country on Earth. If the War didn't touch them, the flu epidemic that followed certainly did, and that combination meant there was never any going back to how things had been.

It was much the same at Ponsonby, although hardly as dramatic. The decade opened with the abandonment of the District Scheme, as Ponsonby had become too powerful from top to bottom and, under the rules which governed the scheme, there was no logical counter to this domination.So it transpired that Ponsonby's overwhelming strength, the reason the scheme was enacted in the first place, also became the reason it was abandoned.

The club had an aging Senior team, but more threatening was the new code, rugby league. For a couple of years Ponsonby was relatively immune to the advances of scouts but, in 1910, the trickle of players leaving became a flood. Before the dust settled half a dozen of that great 1909 team had switched codes and represented New Zealand, while lower grade players were leaving in droves. The exodus gutted the club, and did a lot of harm to rugby in Auckland which, it should be noted, was slow to react.

Hot on the heels of that threat came war, declared in August 1914. By the time the 1915 season rolled around many men had already joined up and many more were just about to do so. Then, a year later, the NZRFU in a fit of misplaced patriotic fervour, declared rugby was only to be played by boys under 20, which was the call-up age. It was a shortsighted policy that served no purpose and, while it wasn't a huge problem in a lot of New Zealand, in Auckland it could have finished the game as city's leading football code for good.

The Auckland Union, fortunately, reacted quickly this time. It appointed a committee of five leading coaches and referees to draw up the 'Auckland Rules', which would make the game faster, more open and more appealing, and therefore countering all the attractions rugby league held for the man in the street. The five, who included Ponsonby stalwart George Nicholson, came up with a playing code that was 50 years ahead of its time - that was how long it took for their four amendments to be written into the Laws of the Game.

Nicholson also knew what the modifications allowed players, and during the War began teaching his Ponsonby charges, from top to bottom, how to make fullest use of that scope. His work led to the greatest era of any club in Auckland history, as one team after another ran off long championship sequences, but that story is for the 1920s. Suffice to say that between 1916 and 1919 Ponsonby won the Silver Football for the first four of what eventually proved to be 15 consecutive seasons.

The War may have changed everything in society as it was known. As far as the club was concerned, those changes proved to be immensely profitable.

The 1920s - A Golden Decade

The 1920s opened with a number of clubs trying to establish a dominant position. In Senior play, that remained open for a few years yet but it was the clubs with a school tie that did best straight after the War, not those that drew on a district. During the War, when the game was limited to players under 20, a school association was quite likely to be at least as strong a bond as neighbourhood. That was even more likely in those neighbourhoods where the young men possibly viewed the army as a chance to get better paid, better fed, the chance to see the world and grab a bit of adventure while they were at it. It took a while before the realities of war sank in, and then the soldiers were there to do a job none of them particularly liked, even if they did it well. Working class lads were still in high demand, and still went in their hundreds. They learned a lot while they were away, and much of it had to do with operating in a disciplined environment.

When the Ponsonby rugby players got home, they found another sort of disciplined set-up waiting for them. George Nicholson's Finishing School for Footballers was in full swing, and it touched a chord with the players. Nicholson proved himself to be a sensational rugby coach and he was at the absolute peak of his powers around this time. He'd been part of the committee of five that drew up the Auckland Rules, but of the five he understood what was on offer better than any other. Perhaps that was because he'd played in some of New Zealand's best teams to that time - at club level with City and Ponsonby, in the Auckland team that went six years unbeaten, and in the 1903 and 1905-06 All Blacks.

Whatever the reason was, he knew how the game worked and, better than that, could teach it.He set Ponsonby up as the first club which had an organised training method - we can call it 'The Ponsonby Way' for want of anything better. He taught every team in the club the basics of the system. Each one could have a few coded moves of its own, but the core drills were common from the Seniors to the lowest Junior team, and players could move up and down without having to change anything except the speed they operated. It worked. Soon his teams were winning, and then they were winning it all.

Each Ponsonby team had its run of successes. First Junior won the title six years in a row, 1916-21. Third Grade won in 1916 and 1920, then 1925-26-28-29. Third Intermediate won the grade in its first year, 1924, and again in 1925-27-28-29. Fourth Grade won from 1922 through to 1926, and then again in 1928. Fifth Grade won six in a row, from 1919 to 1924. You know where this has to end up - with a dominant Senior team. And it did; Ponsonby won the new Gallaher Shield, named for the club's most famous player, in six years out of seven beetween 1924 and 1930, only losing in 1928 to University in a playoff. Just for good measure, the Silver Football was returned after its annual trip to the engravers every year, extending the unfinished sequence to 14 straight by 1929.

No club had ever got within a bull's roar of that sort of success. In the Auckland Union Jubilee book (1933), it listed all the grade championships won by the various clubs in the Union's first 50 years. Ponsonby won 36 titles between 1916 to 1929 (the odd one was Sixth Grade in 1928); the next best by any club over the full 50-year period was 20, by Grafton.

Even more importantly, the players Nicholson taught were adept students. Many became coaches after their playing days were done, most notably Rube McWilliams and Charlie Cammick, but the influence reached right down the club. The torch was passed from generation to generation and to the day he died in 1968 'Long Nick' would have seen the coaching methods he put in place still being taught at the club. A lot of that philosophy holds good today.

What sort of a legacy was that for one man to provide?

The 1930s - Overlooked and Under-rated.

When we read our rugby history, the 1930s often appear to be a decade when nothing much happened, except the Springboks came here in 1937 and gave the All Blacks a pasting. Well, that happened, but those Boks were one of the all-time great teams. It's not as if everyone in New Zealand suddenly forgot how to play the game but, given how readily the 30s are glossed over, you might be forgiven for thinking so. If the first two All Black teams to Britain had not been so overwhelmingly successful, the 1935-36 record of 24 wins, a draw and three losses in 28 matches might have been regarded as pretty good, although two of the four tests were lost. It was still far from poor, but the previous tours had distorted perspective a bit, and British rugby had improved a lot.

Then there was another global war, even bigger than the last. That's almost all anyone remembers about the 1940s these days; the number of people whose memories actually extend back that far is steadily decreasing. It was a difficult time for everyone, and almost everything material was in short supply. That was on the back of the Depression, which hurt in an area like Ponsonby. Rather like the first half of the 1910s, it happened but nobody really remembers it.

It was a similar story at the rugby club; the 1930s followed hard on the heels of the greatest period any club in Auckland had ever known, or would know for at least another 60 years. With at least two championships being the norm every year in the 1920s, Ponsonby got used to reaping rewards as a matter of course that were actually quite extraordinary. There was no way that sort of performance could be sustained indefinitely, especially with some suburban clubs growing quickly and fielding plenty of teams - many more than Ponsonby managed in some cases.

In the middle of all this, Ponsonby ran off a Gallaher Shield hat-trick in 1936-38. There weren't the large number of All Blacks the 1920s teams boasted, but there were a lot of Auckland representatives. You don't seem to hear as much about what they did, yet those teams were as entertaining and as high-scoring as their more famous counterparts of a decade earlier.The competition was little short of a shambles, with seasons still running until October and some teams not playing for a month or more at a time, but the crowds still turned up. People still enjoyed the game.

When all was said and done, Ponsonby still played it better than most.

The 1940s - From Global War to Hope, Stopping All Stations In Between

Unless you've never opened a book, you will understand the first half of the 1940s was an extremely difficult time for everyone. The Second World War began in late 1939 and by 1940 it was clearly not going to be something that was over any time soon. Everything that might have been regarded as normal was going to change, and nobody could really guess at where and when those changes would stop.

The most important change at the rugby club, as at every club everywhere, was that uncertainty was the only given. Would a player be available for the whole season? A month? Next week? Once he went into the services, when, or perhaps would, the club ever see him again?

Nobody knew, and nobody really wanted to guess.

Service teams dominated the Gallaher Shield for the next six years, as one would probably expect. Ponsonby, rapidly shorn of almost all its players, had to amalgamate with ancient rival Grafton to field a Senior team. Neither club was particularly happy about this - they had, after all, already squared off more than 100 times in their respective histories - and as soon as it was possible to reassert individual identities, it was done.

Information about rugby was necessarily limited by paper restrictions, manpower and, occasionally, censorship. As you'll see in the newspaper links, match coverage was often limited to score and scorers. A lot of players will have gone through the club and not been recorded; to them, we can only say we would have if we could have.

The big success story at Ponsonby came off the field, with the formation and business of what became known as The Ladies' Committee. It wasn't unisex, and a lot of couples were staunch members, but most importantly it achieved things on the club's behalf that were next best to impossible - they ended the War with a significant surplus in the bank, and put a lot of money into club projects and player welfare. They were a remarkable group of people, many of whom were later first-choices for the 1950s Building Committees, and their efforts went a long way to ensuring Ponsonby was ready to face the new world order in 1946 in better shape than many of their rivals.

Only one leading player remained with the club throughout the War - Percy Tetzlaff, whose occupation as an engineer servicing refrigeration on shipping that was bringing foodstuffs into New Zealand meant he was classified as being employed in essential industry. His contribution to the club, which began almost as soon as War broke out, would last for 60 years.

Too many club members never had the chance of prolonged service; the list of Ponsonby members killed in action or as a result of wounds was a long one. It included three of the 1936-38 Gallaher Shield champions, and a fourth member of that side also died just before he was due to head overseas. As in the first War, it included one of the club's All Blacks. It started early in the War, and finished late. The AGMs would include a tribute to fallen clubmen every year.

Ponsonby, the district, having weathered the Depression, could handle anything the world chose to throw at it. Regardless of the innate toughness of the local people, however, the early 1940s were not a time anyone enjoyed.

The second half of the decade also brought its challenges, but most of those were about adjusting to the brave new world that stretched out before those who survived the war. For the men who had fought, it was a world they were totally unfamiliar with. It involved a 'regular' job, when up until now their regular job had been soldiering, and in many cases a new wife, a new mortgage, wage packets that struggled to keep up with rising prices, normally a brood of kids not too far down the track, and a period of considerable adjustment. A lot found it very difficult to cope, with various disturbing consequences.

In other ways, however, New Zealand returned to its old, comfortable, conservative self. If things had changed a bit from the 1930s, attitudes remained basically similar. And among those familiar things were rugby, racing and beer. Every suburb, including the new ones, had a footy club handy. The racing news was on page three of Monday's Herald, followed by the sports, and then after that came the leader. World news was tucked away down the back. And most had the secret knock for at least one pub to combat six o'clock closing.

Ponsonby attracted half a dozen of the brilliant Kiwi army team, but ideas of instantly overwhelming the field had to be put on hold as those stars managed only a handful of games in the first two post-war seasons. When they finally had one with no interruptions, Ponies had one of their finest teams and finest years. That, however, was a one-off, and it wasn't long before the blue-and-blacks were in the pack slugging it out behind Varsity and school Old Boys clubs, who were entering the period of their greatest success. For the district clubs, Ponsonby among them, it was a time of consolidation and seeking to attract new members as the population spread outwards. It was neither the best nor the worst of times, but a period which was fraught with uncertainty.

1950 to 1959 - The Fall Before the Rise

As everyone tried to get back to 'normal' after World War II, the realisation dawned that ‘normal’ no longer existed. It was time to start a fresh page, in almost every walk of life. Perhaps the one area where normal could have, with some benefit, been changed, was 6 o’clock closing and the licensing laws in general, but that took another decade and a half before common sense finally took over there.

Ponsonby Rugby Club, like almost all sporting bodies, found themselves in a period of unprecedented growth. Old clubs boomed, new ones sprung up everywhere as cities expanded to allow the young married couples to establish themselves in suburbia, and with little else to do the clubs became social hubs. In New Zealand that growth period lasted longer than it did in many parts of the world; it took years before we ever felt there was too much rugby – even the awful-to-watch stuff served up by so many teams under the prohibitive playing conditions of the time.

Almost every club, new or old, felt the need to house its ever-growing membership in up-to-date facilities, and around this time a large percentage of rugby clubs began admitting lady members. Ponsonby had been at the forefront of storming that particular bastion in the 1940s, and those stalwarts of the Ladies’ Committee from wartime became drivers on the Building Committee of the 1950s.

Not surprisingly, because it was a go-ahead place, Ponsonby DRFC had big plans for its new facility. It wasn’t until the 60s that the money and land to complete that vision were in place, although an upstairs social hall had been added during the early 1950s. However it was a vision that never wavered even if, at times as the decade drew to a close, it looked as if it may never get off the drawing board. If a few Band-Aids had been stuck on the old shed until such time as the rebuild was possible … well, club members put up with that as a trade-off for the brave new world that they hoped awaited.

On the field Ponsonby experienced one of its leaner decades. Talent was widespread throughout Auckland and, in boom suburbs of which Otahuhu was the best example, the local rugby club flourished. University, school Old Boys and Marist clubs were also strong across the country; it was probably the collective heyday of these organisations. Ponsonby was in the mix every year for the first half of the decade, winning a Gallaher Shield in 1954 after a few near misses, but then inner city decay – a normal urban cycle – began to affect an area that was already 100 years old.

The club battled on in the face of heavy odds for a while, but it was clear something needed to be done, and done urgently. The suburb was aging, the membership likewise and there wasn’t a lot to attract youngsters into what was now a tired area of Auckland. By the end of the decade Ponsonby was teetering on the brink, as it could only field the bare minimum three teams in senior grades, and the elderly men who had been running the club for years were now getting tired. It was almost time for revolution, and younger members heard the call. Without it, the big dreams of the decade's middle years might become the unfulfilled ones of a club that was consigned to memory.

1960 to 1969 - The Rise After the Fall

The times they were a-changing throughout the 1960s almost everywhere, and Ponsonby Rugby Club was no exception. If anyone who was a regular there in 1960 had been time-warped to the end of 1969, they would hardly have recognised the place. Almost everything was different.

There was a new building, a state-of-the-art job. The old shed, which was still doing duty, had an extension added in 1962 at the cost of £2625 but that was far as things could go to that point. It was, however, a modern property and served its purpose admirably. The major refurb could finally begin in the middle of the decade when two parcels of neighbouring land were purchased. The first, which had a neighbour as a rival bidder, was expensive but allowed the first two squash courts to be built. The second one, whose owner - the rival in the last price war - knew Ponsonby simply had to have it, was pricier. The seller had never been a friend of the rugby club and milked the situation for all he could, but the club was also familiar with that tactic and was prepared to pay what they felt was still a bargain price. With that, full development could begin and the finished article was as good a rugby clubroom as existed in the country.

Money was different. The prices for building improvements to the club would not be in use again after 10 July 1967, when the old faithful pounds, shillings and pence made way for the new (and much simpler) decimal currency with its divisions of ten rather than those of 12 and 20. While most Ponies players were more familiar with instalments of three and five, they soon got the hang of it and subs tended to be paid on time.

The club membership was different. In 1960 it typified the area, mainly white working class and including many families that had been in the district for years. Within ten years it was more diverse, with a rapidly growing Pasifika membership and an increasing Polynesian flavour. There were many more women, and not all were wives of long-standing members who had become involved along with their husbands. And, importantly, a swelling number of members came from a little further out of Ponsonby's old catchment than one may have expected, but this was an area the club cultivated with considerable benefit.

Attitudes over what the club stood for had changed. The social side was still important, but the on-field performance was more so. The Seniors put their flat years of the late 1950s behind them and were now, once again, a force to be reckoned with. They hadn't won the Gallaher Shield for a while but, like the Dodgers fans of the Brooklyn days, felt that next year would always be their year.

The player dynamic was different. It seems extraordinary now, but the men who turned out most often for the club were either All Blacks or leading Auckland players. Apart from the transitory Keith Murdoch, who played one season in Auckland, all five of the men who appeared in Ponsonby colours in the 1960s and the All Blacks at some stage - Malcolm Dick, Ron Rangi, Keith Nelson, Peter Whiting and Bryan Williams - made well over 100 appearances for the club. Four others - Alec Munro and Hugh Stevens in the first half of the decade, and Robin Currie and Ken Williams in the second half - also reached the milestone but without obtaining a high rep profile, and there was one extraordinary club man in Trevor Paterson. But after them you don't find all that many five- or six- year players who topped out at club level. A large number played for a couple of years and moved on.

Hair was longer, fashions were louder and the club was run by an increasingly young group, who were in tune with the world of the Swinging Sixties as well as its new-style music. The tone was more conciliatory than it had been when rows over The Corner nearly split the club in two, but that's not to say the Committee had gone soft.

The game was more open than previously; the 1964 alteration to the offside laws made it easier to attack and put a premium on try-scoring. Yet, despite Ponsonby commanding three All Black three-quarters in the last part of the decade, it wasn't as adventurous as some. Or so the reports said, yet that seemed to miss the fact Ponsonby regularly scored more points than anyone else - like the weekend of 4 May 1968 when, in atrocious conditions, Ponsonby scored five tries in beating perennial contenders Otahuhu. The other six games of the round produced the princely total of three tries. That was the sort of thing Ponsonby could do.

Ponsonby became renowned as a team that was extremely hard to beat - but which some match reports implied didn't use the torrent of ball as well as it may have, bearing in mind the forwards were always likely to get it back quickly if possession was somehow lost. That, however, was rugby in the mid-1960s. It was certainly rugby in 1966. But not 1967, 1968 or 1969. Then, Ponsonby really opened it up (sometimes) and nobody was safe. Perhaps haunted by the increasing gap back to the last time the Gallaher Shield had hung on the wall and the painful number of narrow misses, Ponsonby did sometimes tighten up. The sixties are the only decade since the club's formation that has not seen an Auckland championship secured; there were, however, some very good teams in those years.

Clubs toured the world now, meaning this memorable experience was not just the province of the elite. Ponsonby was one of the first to take the plunge, and the 1968 venture to Japan was taken, by New Zealand clubs at least, as the blueprint for how these things should be done, both in preparation and then on and off the field.

Junior rugby was bigger than ever, opportunites were greater and everyone was prepared to knuckle down to join the party. The game was still, by far, the country's national sport and showed no sign of losing that position any time soon.

By 1969 everyone felt the club was ready to once again become the flagship of Auckland rugby. It was, but the others weren't ready to yield the crown just yet and getting back on top was a longer process than expected. The road to success in the 1960s ran through Otahuhu, and that club's Senior team was proving more successful over a prolonged period than any club whose name wasn't Ponsonby had ever fielded. In the 60s, the red-and-blacks had a decided won-lost advantage over Ponies; it was the first time any club had put the sign on Ponsonby with such success for more than 60 years, when the great City teams of District days managed it. There were some sterling matches, but more often than not the celebrations were in south rather than central Auckland.

Ponsonby had some visionary men at the helm - one thing that hadn't changed was the gender of the club's drivers even if the first two lady Life Members had been elected in 1964 - and they put a huge amount into restoring Ponsonby's place at the top of the heap. Without much of the behind-the-scenes work of the 1960s, it would have taken longer still. Tangible success was slow in coming, but a lot of spade work was done at a time when there were many hands willing to wield those shovels.

The 1970s - Back on Track Again

The 1970s were the decade that did as much towards shaping the Ponsonby Rugby Club we know today as any other. Changes that were happening towards the end of the 1960s gathered pace; others kicked in and the club remained in tune with its fan base and the suburb at a time when it would have been easy to lose touch.

On the field, happiness was winning the Gallaher Shield after a 22-year gap, by far the longest in club history. There had been many near misses and just as many fine players whose career had not included that pinnacle moment, but when the dam finally broke success was, once again, expected. Until Ponsonby made it commonplace in the 1970s and beyond, winning both the Alan McEvoy Trophy and Gallaher Shield outright in the same season was rare, having only been accomplished by University in 1957, Waitemata in 1962 and College Rifles in 1964. Ponsonby was to do the double in 1976, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1986 and 1990, as well as winning the Alan McEvoy Trophy in 1977, 1982 and 1989, and the Gallaher Shield in 1978, 1985 and 1988. To save anyone the trouble of working it out, it meant Ponsonby didn't win at least one of the big trophies only three times in the next 15 years (1980, 1984 and 1987). If that was payback for 22 barren years, it was charged with a compound interest.

The 1970s were the great years of the tours, with the Seniors travelling to Canada and the USA in 1970, South Africa in 1975, the UK in 1974 and 1978 and Japan again in 1981. There were also many other significant fixtures: Champion of Champions tournaments, a number of matches against Petone, and the star-studded Centenary match were the most prominent among them.

Sponsorship came to the club, with several big names wanting to become involved. Track suit and jeans manufacturers were prominent, and on-field success meant both parties felt they were getting value for money, and the players had a bit of fun being movie stars for a day.

After the booming success of the Pasifika arrival in the late 1960s, the 70s were a time of consolidation within the setup for hundreds of new fans and players. Polynesian player names became ever more common in team sheets, and Ponsonby became home to ever more members who had relocated south in the last decade or so. There were times when the relationship may have been a bit stretched by circumstances beyone the control of either party - many of the infamous Dawn Raids took place in the neighbourhood - but generally the bond between club and member remained tight.

In the 1970s the club programme expanded from 18 matches to 20 in the middle of the decade before being wound back, but top players were being asked to do more each year as money became a driving force in staging matches. Players with rep commitments found their loyalties being tugged in two directions; while they wanted to give their all to the club, it was simply not possible at times. Eventually the inevitable happened: the Auckland rep team simply found their calendars overloaded and voted as a team to sit out a round of club matches, which provoked fury among fans who didn't really understand the sort of demands that were being placed on the game's most important people. Even for amateurs, rugby was dangerously close to becoming a job - albeit one without any financial rewards.

A quick cast through the list of centurions reveals Ponsonby had many of its greatest stalwarts on hand for much of the decade; with increased opportunities came increased match totals, but the number of players who played a decade or more - often quite a lot more - was impressive. Just as importantly, many continued to give the club great service after their own playing days ended, whether coaching, working on the committee or simply being an integral part of the scene.

Kelston, an area much nearer to Suburbs than Ponsonby, fell into the club's lap when the local club was simply overwhelmed with junior teams in the ealry 1970s. Unable to be accommodated at Avondale, the Kelston schoolboys were quickly taken under the blue-and-black wing, and there they have remained ever since. The number of great club stalwarts who have come down Great North Road is impressive, their work has been extraordinary and the playing strength invaluable. Not for the first time, Ponsonby proved an adept snapper-up of otherwise unconsidered trifles.

As ever, it was the people who shaped the club and the people of the 1970s were a rare lot. You can tell that from the success then, and its ongoing nature.

The 1980s - One Big Fish in a Big Pon

Any province will have enjoyed its golden eras, and some may have had two or three. Auckland has had a few, normally coinciding with the Ranfurly Shield being in town for a protracted period, but there has never been a time like the 1980s. Not in Auckland, and not anywhere else in New Zealand either. Rugby in Auckland in the 1980s was on another level.

It began quietly, with a number of clubs all becoming strong early in the decade. It is unlikely there have ever been so many strong club sides in the union at any one time - and remember, North Harbour didn't exist then so three or four of them were based north of the bridge - so the standard forced the players to dig deeper. The 1980 Auckland Ranfurly Shield teams featured players from 13 different clubs, something never repeated since.

Ponsonby was somewhere near the front of the field. They had, after all, won the Gallaher Shield in 1976, 1978 and 1979, and still possessed three of the elite group of players who would top 200 Senior appearances for the club. Bryan Williams may have been winding down but both Andy Haden and Guy Smith were coming into their most dominant years, and each year the playing stocks were turned over, with one or two older players making way for a couple of likely lads. Peter Fatialofa and Grant McCurrach arrived from elsewhere early in the decade and each were to be massive contributors, but the vast majority worked their way up through the ranks.

So, when the club standard started to spike in 1983, Ponsonby was leading the charge with a 20-from-20, win-the-lot season. A number of players who would top a century of appearances were in place by the middle of the decade, as well as some outstanding three-quarters and the usual assortment of quality locks and loose forwards. While the backs tended to be the headliners, none of it would have been possible without a rep-standard forward pack, and this the club had.

When the bloke who would rewrite the record book in four short seasons, Brett Craies, arrived in 1985, Ponsonby took off. A second undefeated season, an Auckland record 41-match winning streak, three more Gallaher Shields and a host of fine performances later, the 1980s closed with Ponies still at the top. Craies set an Auckland record with a 305-point season (and two others over 270), Va'aiga Tuigamala and Ross Thompson staged their own battle in 1989 to see who would end with the Auckland season try-scoring record (Tuigamala, by 25 to 24), and rafts of Ponies appeared in the hugely formidable Auckland side.

Below Senior, things were just as strong. The Trevor Paterson-coached Third Grade teams won over and over again, claiming seven titles in eight years; in 1986 virtually every team topped its grade and the Under-20s were more than a little miffed when their efforts in finishing fourth in one of Auckland's tougher grades were derided in some quarters as not being up to scratch. They felt, justifiably, that perspectives had been a little skewed in recent seasons.

A new addition to the club, but one which quickly got onto the winning path, was a women's team, soon dubbed the Fillies. When an organised competition was arranged for 1986, Ponsonby won it (well, they would have in that season, naturally). Then they won again in 1987. And 1988. And every year up to 1993. It wasn't until 1993, incidentally, that they even suffered a loss - and that was a 0-3 squeaker to the rapidly-improving Marist side. Nobody knew, then, that it would be 27 years before the title would be won again, but the Fillies have been part of the club since that debut year, and have never missed a season. Originally watched by 'boyfriends, kids, a couple of dogs and some seagulls on a Sunday', as the Originals recall, the team has grown apace and is now one of the club's burgeoning areas, claiming along the way numerous Black Ferns and many more provincial players.

Auckland rugby was hugely formidable in the 1980s. Club rugby has never had such a depth of talent and, unless there are dramatic changes some time in the future, never will again. A collection of 'once-in-a-lifetime' players, covering almost every position, were backed up by four or five times as many whould normally have been quality provincial stalwarts, but who struggled to make the Bs. If you weren't there, it is hard to convey just how good it all was. Maybe the crowds at Eden Park for club play every week, and they were normally in the 10,000-range, tell the story best.

At the forefront of it all was Ponsonby. Dominating the lower grades, the team to beat in Senior, packed with All Blacks and 'ordinary' rep players, with the best women's team in town as well - Blake Street was a good place to be as a player.

Just a shame the Age of Greed caught up with the club in the mid-80s and just about killed it dead, when massive losses at the bank were on the same scale as those massive wins on the field. It took a huge effort from a small group, spearheaded by ten or so real troopers, to keep the club alive. They did it, just. At times it was touch and go, and times it was almost impossible. Many of the ten are among the club's Life Members, all deserve recognition and acknowledgement. The story will be told in this section, because it is part of who we are and how we got where we are now. But it was ugly, and there would be many who are not aware of the life and death struggles of the 1980s and 1990s.

Maybe those parts, rather than the almost unbroken on-field successes, are the real story of Ponsonby Passion and Pride, as it was in the 1980s.

1980 Items

1980 Stats

1981 Items

1981 Stats

1982 Items

1982 Stats

1983 Items