If any club in New Zealand has ever been more dominant in its championship over a decade and more than Ponsonby was in the early years of the 21st Century, I think we'd all like to know about it. It wasn't as if it was a small championship of half a dozen teams or so; it was at the time the biggest in New Zealand and, given the quality of players available for most of it, probably the hardest. A few club sides down the years in various unions have run off long winning streaks, but they were almost invariably in one of the smaller unions or, in several cases, a sub-union. Because in those cases teams don't tend to change that much from year to year, such streaks, if not common, are not unheard of. In the Metros, what Ponsonby did was unheard of.
In the ten years covered here, Ponsonby won the Gallaher Shield eight times, losing the 2000 final (something that didn't happen again for nearly quarter of a century), losing in a 2003 semi-final which still gets a few of the older members stirred up in the tenth year. Ponsonby took the Alan McEvoy Trophy six times in succession from 2004, another venture into uncharted territory. In fact Ponsonby took every available trophy during that six year spell and, once captured, the Sir Fred Allen Challenge Cup was a permanent guest in the Western Springs clubrooms. Doubles, once so rare in Auckland rugby, became expected because over a 15-match McEvoy Trophy programme nobody could live with Ponsonby and everyone else knew it. If they were going to lose one, it would be in the knockout Gallaher Shield rounds.
Ponsonby didn't so much beat the field as terrorise them. Over a ten-year period 41 half-century scores were posted against 16 different opponents. East Tamaki may have been the most frequent victim, but they also gave us some of our hardest games. Among the others you will find long-time respected opponents in Grammar Carlton (twice), Manukau (four times), Marist (four times in the space of three years), Otahuhu (four times), Pakuranga, who got progressively stronger as the decade wore on (four times), Suburbs (three times), University (twice), Waitakere, who were tough at the time and who came closer than anyone to beating Ponsonby in a final (three times) and Waitemata once.
But a lot of those scores weren't just 50s. There were some monsters among them, starting with Ponsonby's first 100-plus score, 109 against Teachers Eastern in 2004 - five years after they had completed a Gallaher Shield double. An extraordinary 99 was put on Waitemata 18 months after they swept all available trophies in 2003 (but then perhaps crowed a little too loudly and a few Ponsonby jaws set when they felt it was time to extract payback). Other scores in the 90s came against College Rifles in 2002 and East Tamaki in 2006, who confounded everyone by beating Ponies nine weeks later. That one was remembered too.
There were a couple of 83s, against Manukau and Papatoetoe, and a notable trio - Marist (2002), Suburbs (2004) and University (2007) - all conceded 77 in a match, which was likely the highest score any of those fine old clubs had ever conceded to anyone at that stage. Otahuhu went for 72, Grammar Carlton was taken for 59 and so on; nobody knew when Ponsonby was going to burn blue again but everyone hoped it would be one week after their game.
There was a long list of centurions, which went against the grain for many clubs, but Ponsonby also had a long list of players lost to other unions or, increasingly, to offshore contracts. In the latter half of the decade, rebuilding after yet another exodus was an annual project, a bit like preparing the Tan had been back at Blake Street. Those who had lengthy careers were notable contributors on many fronts, even if few had any sort of a rep career when they deserved more selectorial attention.
Brett Williams was one of those players. Never picked for Auckland, he had, by decade's end, taken over from Brett Craies at the head of a number of scoring lists - despite letting others do the kicking in several different years - and was entering rarefied air among the high peaks of appearance lists; eventually he was the first player known to make 200 appearances for the club. But cast your eye down the others who are profiled here; only Jason Chandler and Gavin Williams had big first-class careers. The rest were club men. Bloody good ones, but club men.
Lower grades normally saluted their share of champions and the Junior section continued to grow apace. In one 2009 photo you can see Rieko Ioane and Theresa Fitzpatrick standing next to each other in the back row and looking proud of their championship medals. The rugby world would hear more of those two. The Fillies struggled at a level below the big two, for these were the years when Marist and College Rifles contested the final almost by right. Occasionally Ponsonby tipped one of them over, but those were red-letter days.
Off the field things were going nicely until a global credit crunch, and some financial management that didn't sit well with the Trustees, left Ponsonby staring at a decent sized hole in the investment portfolio. A change of fund management was deemed in order, and soon things were back on a more even keel. There may also have been the occasional odd noise from Council about the future of Western Springs striking jarring notes on Ponsonby ears, but for the most part that was under control too.
Management was in the capable hands of some of the best administrators we've ever had; this was Peter Thorp's time in the Chair and he ran a first-class ship. Peter Harwood served a popular term as President after stepping aside from the regular committee, and a lot of Life Members were at their very best around this time. Bryan Williams was the Director of Rugby whose hardest task involved finding new words to use in his annual report as he tended to be saying the same things year on year. Everyone knew a lot of hard work was going on behind the scenes, and it delivered the most amazing results Auckland rugby has ever seen below the 1980s rep team.
The first decade of the 21st Century was a good one if you followed Ponsonby, and one with a huge dark cloud that never seemed to go away if you followed anyone else.
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