“30 years ago that was the only place I could get a jaffa soda in a glass bottle. I would love to come help restore that park to its former glory. PM me if needed.” – A Hamilton City Tigers fan on Facebook
The childhood memory of a jaffa soda is a powerful thing. It would have to be to get me out of bed on a weekend to pull weeds and swing a paintbrush over a tired old grandstand in the provinces instead of relaxing over scrambled eggs on toast and a latte.
In just about every corner of New Zealand that’s not Huntly, Huntly is the town everyone loves to use as their [insert bleakest place you can think of] trope when they are trying to be ever so clever-edgy-funny by putting people down.
To me, Huntly isn’t a shabby old place with a giant power station next to a murky river you drive through on your way to somewhere nice. It’s my childhood home. That doesn’t mean I view it with rose tinted glasses – I had more than my share of hard times there. But mostly I view it as a place where a makeshift bow and arrow was only a couple of paddocks away, and lots and lots of good people still call it home to this day.
For others, it’s a place where you could always rely on a jaffa soda in a glass bottle. And I can relate.
Derelict for the past few years, Davies Park used to be the throbbing heart of Huntly as three senior rugby league clubs – Huntly United, Huntly South and Taniwharau – ran out every Saturday. The roar of the crowd would echo across the whole town.
It’s one of the few facilities left in New Zealand that’s owned by the people of the game. But with mines closing, the power station winding down and State Highway One diverted, so much employment has disappeared and there simply haven’t been the people or the funds to keep the place going. There’s been talk of a sale and tragically, over the past couple of years, the town’s one surviving senior club, Taniwahrau, has been forced to play its home games at the local rugby union ground – there’s an actual description of this in the dictionary under ‘sacrilege’.
But a renaissance is underway. Local stalwart Rex Hohaia is paying to mow the main field out of his pension. Kiwis legend Tawera Nikau is chipping in to take care of the outer fields. Local businesses have stepped in to supply paint and other materials and dozens of volunteers have given up their Saturday morning pleasures to lend their elbow grease to the cause so, at worst, we can have a temporary reprieve. I felt incredibly privileged to be there for the grand reopening.
“Nau mai haere mai…” the lady on the gate called to me, almost like a karanga welcoming me home as I strode towards the beautiful big red grandstand. “$5 Mr Photographer!” A bargain at quadruple the price.
After finding my spot on the sideline, a random toddler came waddling up to me, arms outstretched, and gave me a massive hug for no apparent reason other than it was that sort of occasion.
In the reserve game, Hamilton City Tigers had a 50 year old stepping in because they were short of numbers, tackling his guts out for 80 minutes. Five years his junior, I would have required defibrillation before the first set of six was completed.
The Taniwharau goalkicker was a machine. He slotted eleven goals from eleven attempts across the spectrum from in front of the sticks to right out on the sideline. Then when he missed the twelfth they probably heard his expletive in Taupiri. And again on the thirteenth. Standards were high. And this was still the reserves game.
And for the first team, Wairangi Koopu, formerly of the Warriors, Kiwis, Melbourne Storm and my virtual NRL team several years in a row, trotted out for his home town club for the first time since retiring from the professional game and ran amok – helping Taniwharau to a huge win over a famous old foe.
The mere fact that Davies park is teetering on the brink of extinction is a sad indictment on humanity. We are far too quick to throw sentimental things away. How many people would give anything to go back to Carlaw Park and watch a muddy old test match or ARL grand final there one last time? If the world was as it should be, and markets really did magically find the true value of everything, that ability would be worth billions of dollars more than the God awful Italian restaurant and cheap hotel that stands on that hallowed ground today.
How could we dream of letting that happen to the home of Waikato rugby league? You can’t get a jaffa soda in a glass bottle at Davies Park anymore. Or anywhere else for that matter. But thanks to some generous, big hearted and dedicated people, you can still go to Davies Park and taste that flavour. What could possibly replace it that’s worth more?
Taniwharau 80, Hamilton City Tigers 0
The Fox and the Crow 