Rugby's heart still beating in Tokanui
Thursday, 6 April 2023
A small rugby club showing the national sport’s heart is still beating in rural New Zealand celebrates 100 years this weekend.
Former players from around the country, as well as some from Australia and elsewhere will return to the small hamlet of Tokanui, population 150, located 55km east of Invercargill to enjoy the Tokanui Rugby Club celebrations and take a trip down memory lane.
“We’re the southernmost club in the country,” organiser of the club centennial committee Phillip Golden says. ”We have an argument with Bluff about that, but we’re the southernmost.”
The club fields two teams, a senior and senior C in the Eastern sub-union competition, but it has not been easy.
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“We have struggled to get a senior team at times and on three occasions we looked at amalgamating, but we stuck with it,” says Golden.
“It comes and goes, three or four years ago we were really struggling; it only takes one guy to come back from Lincoln (University) and things pick up again.”
The club draws its players from the surrounding farm area, although Golden says there have been times when players came from Invercargill to play for them.
‘”When I was president eight or nine years ago we brought a car from town and thought of imports; we didn't follow that up.”
Apart from the rugby club and school, there is not a lot else to show Tokanui exists and this year Golden says numbers at Tokanui School fell.
“We've lost 30 in the past year when we once had 100. Farmers are buying new farms; families are not coming in and as farmers buy land they tend to use contractors.”
In spite of challenges, this year the club is at full strength which Golden thinks could be partly due to the “hype” over the centennial.
“We’ve had 30 to 35 training for the seniors, and we get huge crowds on Saturdays. Players who come from Invercargill can’t believe it. We have 200 to 300 people at a senior game on a good afternoon, and the clubrooms are just packed. Last year we went to Te Anau and took two buses of spectators.
“We just hope it carries on.”
Formed in 1923 when the Southern Star and Waikawa clubs folded, Tokanui played first in the Western sub-union and since the 1990s, the eastern sub-union.
Over the years many club players made sub-union representative teams, others turned out for Southland but as far as Golden is aware, there has been only one All Black, Carol Hayes who made the national Black Ferns women’s side in the early 1990s.
“There have also been Dermodys and Buckinghams right through the years.”
He says the late Gerald Dermody, a Junior All Black in 1968 and senior player for Tokanui throughout his career, made a record 120 appearances for Southland in the 1960s and 1970s, a mark only beaten in 2012 by Justin Rutledge.
Bruce Lamb was an All Black trialist in 1975 and All Black and Southland Ranfurly Shield winning captain Jamie McIntosh played in junior sides for the club.
The centennial celebrations begin at the Ascot Park Hotel on Friday evening with guest speakers Matt Chisholm and Black Fern Amy Du Plessis. On Saturday, the Tokanui senior and senior C teams take on Wyndham at the club grounds, with school teams playing from 10.30am.
Golden says memorabilia will be displayed in the clubrooms and a marquee erected for a Saturday night social. On Sunday, photos will be taken and women’s matches played. A centennial book is also being written.
“The players we’ve got are a great bunch,” Golden says. “They get on well; everything gets done; we’ve got good management, and financially we’re secure.”