Palmerston North’s sporting legacy needs recognition

Manawatu¯ ...has a lot going for it including its sporting and cultural endeavours.

Even when abroad and in holiday mode, it seems it’s necessary to defend thine provincial integrity.

A woman in the tourism industry in Queensland last week asked me the obligatory question, ‘‘where are you from?’’

Now Manawatu¯ , unknown to infidels outside our (usually) greenest pastures, has a lot going for it including its sporting and cultural endeavours.

So when I replied, ‘‘from New Zealand, Palmerston North,’’ out shot the inevitable riposte.

‘‘Is that a bit of a dead hole?’’ which was not only offensively ignorant but coming from an escapee from Hastings, was more than a bit rich.

It is typical of the bad raps inland cities such as Palmerston North and Hamilton cop, as does Whanganui, another excellent community where hours of your

life are not drained away in the rigor mortis of stunted traffic.

Feeling clever after the fact, I wished I had thought to tell the tourism woman that Hastings was the place we bypass on the way to Mclean Park or en route to sample the waters of Havelock North.

And that Manawatu¯ , for all that it is branded a desert, produces more All Blacks, international cricketers (George Worker the latest), cyclists, USPGA Tour golfers, hockey internationals and even a Formula 1 driver, than any other province outside of the main centres.

A few years back the faulty Fawlty John Cleese besmirched Palmerston North’s reputation even though he had barely seen the place in daylight. Once His Ignorance departed, the city named part of its refuse transfer station after him.

Another few years back, a Radio Sport host put Palmy on his rap sheet, which so raised my hackles I was prompted to columnise about how such radio was produced to entertain Aucklanders incarcerated on their motorways. A fifth columnist in Palmerston North sent my words north and apparently I was branded a country hack. High praise indeed.

It also had the added benefit of not having my work day as a Manawatu¯ Standard sports editor interrupted by a radio producer asking if I would be so privileged to go on the show, at no cost to the bludging network of course.

Never again was I bothered. Radio still invites print journalists to come on the airwaves to flesh out their sporting programming. Sound economics if nothing else when someone else is paying the piper.

Now it seems Newstalk ZB is retrenching with the departure of their star, Tony Veitch. That in itself looks as if it will leave a sporting void on the weekend airwaves as gardening and cooking intrude. But what was unusual was a host of Veitch’s former colleagues took the chance on Facebook and Twitter to say au revoir to the ‘‘I’’ man, in less than gracious fashion.

Radio Sport’s midweek screamer Martin Devlin derided them for their parting gestures but he was the only one to publicly stick with Veitch. We can only assume all had not been well on the studio floor. Veitch must have had the shell of a Galapagos turtle to survive the revelations of 2008 when Dominion Post thenassistant editor Bernadette Courtney explosively exposed his assault on his former partner, gravely injuring her.

And yet he eventually reemerged on the radio waves, sporting notables agreed to be his guests.

Veitch once came to Palmerston North and I was invited to interview him. ‘‘Why?’’ I asked. ‘‘What about his poor victim? No thanks.’’

Lest anyone forgets. Sky TV obviously did in November when it announced Veitch would host a TV show, only for social media to ignite and a day later the idea was canned.

It probably did Veitch a disservice because it reopened the old wounds, not least with his victim. Now, a few weeks later, he is departing radio to go it alone. As far as I know, he did not belittle Manawatu¯ .

But as for that former Hastings woman, she works out of the information shack at Mooloolaba in the car park a block back from the beach. Tell her you’re proud to be from Palmy and ask her why she left Hastings.

Arena upgrade permanent

Our unseasonal drought has prompted many citizens to criticise the $25 million to be spent on upgrading the CET Arena sports complex. Given that will be spent over many years, it will also be permanent and well overdue to replace the obsolete complex we now have.

But take the upcoming Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, which is spending about $20m to host beach volleyball. And now with the beach sand at Coolongatta too fine to play on, coarse sand from Brisbane at $35 a tonne will have to be brought in.

While about $12m will be recouped from ticket sales, the venue won’t be permanent. The beach volleyball has been sold out. No wonder the Honey Badger and his Tradie undergarments are so popular.