Ponsonby Rugby Club

If you took a snapshot in time on 1 January 1960 and compared it to a similar photo taken on 31 December 1969, you would hardly recognise anything in the picture. If you were familiar with the old, everything had changed. If you were familiar with the new, you couldn't imagine how anyone had put up with the old.

Things were like that at Ponsonby too.

At the start of the 1960s Ponsonby was a club dying on its feet. That season only three Senior teams could be fielded, the bare minimum if a club wanted to be part of the regular Auckland programme. People didn't know where new players might come from. And when the Seniors had to face the promotion/relegation round everyone knew that failure to hold their place could be the end, because there was absolutely nothing to draw new people to a second division club in the shabbiest part of town.

The Seniors survived, winning five games and drawing the other - but the biggest margin was only six points. Not good for the ulcers, not at all. And some of the young guys had seen enough. They organised themselves into a group that could take control of the committee, move the club away from being more concerned about socialising than playing, put some oomph into the place again and kick clear of the trough they had become stuck in. Known as 'The Third Grade Takeover', it was exactly what Ponsonby needed. There were some horrendous arguments at the time and in some cases rifts healed at glacial pace, but the club was turned around.

Soon enough plans were laid to attract new members. Circulars in local mailboxes, offering hard-to-match attractions including the first tours, quality coaching ... all of it was done. Some real money was generated too, first through the Picks and then the Car Raffle that was held each year. Soon the club had enough cash to buy one of the next door properties when it came available; it cost above market rate (the underbidder was the other neighbour, who was no friend of the club) but Ponsonby won through. Then, just to show there were no hard feelings, the same neighbour offered his place to the club - at a greatly inflated price - knowing Ponies couldn't turn him down. They didn't, and in 1964 the great rebuild was on.

Ponsonby soon had one of the best club facilities anywhere in the country. The squash club made a pile of money - it was more expensive than golf at the time - and with improving on-field results the club really got going. The first tour was made in 1968, to Japan, and Ponsonby set a very high benchmark for all other New Zealand clubs to try and match. But just before then, the thing that guaranteed Ponsonby's revival wasn't the last hurrah happened.

Out of nowhere, three men arrived on the club's doorstep in the summer of 1967-68, looking for a playing home. They were Dale Moyer, Alfred Tupu and Bob Tuivaiti-Va'ai, and they had an all-Samoan team they wanted to keep together. They'd got the thumbs down from five other clubs before trying Ponsonby, but Owen Donaldson accepted them on the club's behalf. Just like that, Ponsonby became the club of choice for the large and growing Pasifika diaspora in Auckland, and gaining a special place in many recent Polynesian arrivals' hearts. It accelerated a wider acceptance into the rugby world that was always going to happen, and Ponsonby gained a staunch playing and support base that has only grown in the more than 50 years since.

By the end of the decade our old-timer from 1960 wouldn't have recognised the money (decimal currency was introduced on 10 July 1967), the clothing styles, the music, the haircuts or any one of a hundred other things. But he might have recognised that his club had got things right, and was heading back to the top of Auckland rugby.

The Third Grade Takeover