140 years: Feilding rugby club celebrates milestone
Brad Carr and David Fredericks epitomise Feilding rugby, where loyalty is important and everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in.
Both men have served the club in a variety of ways, as have so many others since 1878.
The Feilding Rugby Club celebrates its 140-year milestone on Friday when the senior A team takes on defending champions Old Boys Marist in front of what is expected to be an army of home support in the Manawatu¯ town.
Celebrations begin Thursday night when old-timers gather for an informal get-together. Before the club game on Friday, Mark Stafford from the TAB will speak at a formal lunch.
Replica 1878 jerseys will be auctioned off that night.
An invitation game on Saturday has the Denis Clare XV up against the Terry Clarke XV and a formal dinner will be held at the Feilding Civic Centre that night, with representatives from the New Zealand Rugby Union.
It’s the oldest rugby club in Manawatu¯ , with a history to be proud of, said Fredericks, a Yellows lifer who played during the 1980s and was once the longest-serving senior team manager in Manawatu¯ .
Carr, a 36-year-old sport academy coach, came to the club in 1998 and proudly holds the record for the most premier games by a Feilding player, having donned the yellow and black jersey on 308 occasions.
To say that the town’s rugby club and wider community has been a huge part of their lives would be an understatement. Along with their personal involvement, their families have been very much part of the deal.
Carr’s wife, Wendy, knew nothing about rugby before they met 22 years ago. Now she is seen weekly lining the fence at Johnston Park, with son Hunter and daughter Lily, cheering Carr around the paddock.
The club bred three All Blacks in Aaron Smith, Stuart Freebairn and Kevin Eveleigh.
Freebairn became the club’s first All Black in 1953 and will attend the Easter celebrations.
Eveleigh was known for his ferocious tackling, making him a marked man and he was frequently punched or kicked in retaliation.
During one game in South Africa he lost a pint of blood after refusing to get his head wound attended to until later in the game, according to rugby historian Clive Akers.
But the club’s history hadn’t been all rainbows and waterfalls, Fredericks said.
Eleven players in the 1914 team fought in World War I. Three were killed at Gallipoli, three killed at other battlefields and two others injured.
Among them was Jack Tantrum, the great uncle of current coach Kelvin Tantrum, who died at Passchendaele.
Fredericks said there was once a time when they would hold elections for committee members. Now they struggled to fill a committee.
He said patron Frank Randolph described it well at the centenary celebrations, when he wrote the club’s longevity was due to the work in the early years.