Maoris make another pass by B.C.
New Zealand’s famous love for rugby is deep enough to span the Pacific Ocean
Rugby has brought Ambrose Curtis to Vancouver twice in a year now. First he was here with the New Zealand team for the Canada Sevens last March. Now, there’s Friday’s match at B.C. Place Stadium between hosts Canada and Curtis’s New Zealand Maori All Blacks.
“When I was last here, there was a bit of snow. Can’t say I missed that,” Curtis said Wednesday while bathed in the sunshine after his team’s practice at St. George’s School in Vancouver.
While Canadian rugby may not be a globally known brand, he said he was immediately impressed by the passion he found here.
“I noted the fans — they’re unreal, they really get behind it,” he said.
For the uninitiated, the Maori All Blacks are New Zealand’s other national men’s rugby team. Many of these players will end up on the rolls of the more famous All Blacks.
While Canada may not be a rugby country, there’s a long history of connections between New Zealand, where rugby is in the blood, and B.C., where rugby is just another game for most.
This isn’t the first time the Maoris have visited B.C., though you have to go way back in the records. In 1927, the MABs played four matches in Vancouver and Victoria: they faced a Vancouver team, a Victoria team, a team from the University of B.C. and what was dubbed the Mainland team.
A UBC yearbook from 1927 said the Maoris were “the finest band of sportsmen who ever visited this city.” The tourists won 12-3.
Such praise will come as no surprise to Maori coach Clayton McMillan, given his team has the added dimension of being cultural representatives on top of being a sporting operation. Both coaches and players are well aware of that, he said.
“We recognized the great deeds from our forebears,” he said. “The Maori team is one with significant history and legacy of well over 100 years.
“Some of New Zealand’s greatest players have represented New Zealand Maori.”
Beginning in the era of steamship travel and even into the early days of plane travel, the All Blacks visited B.C. on many occasions, stopping over as they toured their way over to Europe, or on the return, in 1913, 1925, 1936, 1954, 1964, 1967, 1972, 1980 and 1989.
The 1925 All Blacks, still known as the Invincibles — they played and won all 32 games on their tour of Britain, Ireland, France and Canada — left behind a trophy now known as the New Zealand Shield and awarded to the Lower Mainland’s high school rugby champion every year. (The 1906 squad, known as the Originals, played a B.C. squad twice, but in California.)
Longtime rugby administrator and player Gary Fumano played against the All Blacks for the B.C. provincial team in 1967.
“We’ve always given them a good game. The Canadians are known as hard hitters,” he said. “They weren’t condescending. They worked their butts off. At the end of the game, they were gracious as hell. They were so sincere. That’s Kiwis.”
There’s a familiarity to Vancouver that’s noted by Kiwis — McMillan noted it himself — and Fumano also compared their position with Australia to Canada’s with the U.S.
“We have a lot in common with the New Zealanders,” he said. “We’re the underdogs.”
Plenty of other New Zealand teams have visited over the years, from national representative youth teams to provincial teams to high school and club teams. And there’s a seemingly unstoppable pipeline of players coming to play in B.C., even today.
Pat O’Gorman, who played three seasons for Canterbury — one the best provincial teams in New Zealand — in the 1980s before settling in Vancouver, said B.C. has always held an appeal for rugby-playing Kiwis.
“There was definitely a lifestyle choice,” he said.
He arrived in Vancouver in 1988 after playing a few seasons in France. He was headed back home to New Zealand, but having heard from friends that Vancouver was a place to check out, made a stopover. He never made it home.
“You could still play rugby at a reasonable level, but you had the Vancouver lifestyle,” he said of the city’s appeal to young New Zealanders like him. “I was looking for more in life than rugby.”
He found it here. He kept playing rugby in the local club leagues and raised a family in Vancouver. His son Reegan was capped four times earlier this year.