The secret correspondent
Heather Alley covered rugby for the Waikato Times in the 1950s, but you won’t find her byline anywhere. Dana Johannsen reports.
Lurking on the sidelines of the number two field of Hamilton’s Rugby Park, Heather Alley tried her best to blend in with the crowd of men decked out in hats and overcoats.
Alley hoped she’d pass for an earnest follower of the Waikato club rugby scene. No one could know the real reason she was there.
In her 19 years she’d never encountered such high stakes. And she’d never felt so free.
Alley, nee Paterson, was there to report on the game for the Waikato Times. It was 1956. Women didn’t write about rugby. They weren’t even supposed to have an opinion about the game, beyond what should be served at the post-match function.
‘‘I wasn’t allowed to be seen to be writing, and I couldn’t tell anyone why I was there,’’ says Alley, now 84.
‘‘I remember being very worried about getting caught.’’
The following Monday, Alley’s report on the game appeared in the Waikato Times under the byline of the then sports editor, Andy Quick.
It marked the beginning of a rugby writing career conducted entirely in the shadows.
For three seasons from 1956-58 Alley covered club rugby and the odd provincial game for the Waikato Times, making her what is believed to be New Zealand’s first woman rugby writer – although her work never appeared under her byline. There was a sprinkling of other female writers active at that time, including pioneering sports journalist Dorothy Simons, who wrote for the Auckland Star from 1940-85, but none were dedicated rugby correspondents.
Writing under an anonymous byline never bothered Alley.
‘‘I was happy to do it because I loved it,’’ she says.
‘‘It would be nice now to be able to have those stories with my name on, if only to be able to look back on.’’
Rugby has been a part of Alley’s life for as long as she can remember. Her earliest memory is being rugged up on the sidelines watching her father, Charlie Paterson, playing for Taranaki.
Later, when her brothers took up the sport, Alley became the official team mascot for the Leamington club in Cambridge. Her brother Ian Paterson went on to represent Waikato, and coached the provincial side in the 1970s, while son, Geoff Alley, played sevens for New Zealand in the 1990s.
Now, the next generation of the Paterson-Alley clan is stamping its mark, with granddaughter Chelsea Alley a
24-test Black Fern. ‘‘Our lives just revolve around it really,’’ says Alley.
It was Alley’s near-obsessive level of interest in rugby that led to her being assigned the club rugby beat. After getting a job as a proofreader at the Waikato Times, Alley’s passion for the game soon became apparent to the sports editor. It was
1956 – the year of the Springboks tour – and New Zealand was in the grips of rugby fever-pitch. With South Africa considered the All Blacks’ greatest foes, the series was dubbed the ‘‘championship of the world’’.
Alley compiled scrapbook after scrapbook of the tour, taking clippings from the Times’ collection of various newspapers around the country. In her regular visits to the sports department Alley would chat about the games with Quick.
‘‘We got quite friendly, and we talked about rugby a lot, and he said to me ‘gosh, I think you know more about rugby than the men around here do’,’’ says Alley.
‘‘I never thought much more about it and then one day [Quick] rang me up and said ‘hey, I only do the main game at Rugby Park, how about you have a go at covering the game on the number two field?’
‘‘He said have a go, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it. Because women aren’t supposed to know anything about rugby.’’
After finishing up her proofreading shift at 1pm, Alley hightailed it to Rugby Park.
‘‘I practically had to run up there to make it for the 2pm kick-off. I even had to pay my way to get through the gate and buy a programme. I couldn’t tell them on the gate what I was doing there,’’ Alley recalls.
‘‘I just had a pencil and a programme and when somebody scored, I would underline their name and make a little note where I could, and then I had to just try and remember everything else about the game.’’
Alley’s report got the stamp of approval from Quick.
The following week, she was assigned to cover the games on the number two field – an arrangement that remained in place for the rest of the season.
After a short-lived stint in Wellington in 1957, Alley returned to Hamilton in time for the rugby season and Quick immediately put her to work again. She continued to cover the games on the number two field, up until getting pregnant with oldest daughter Delwyn in 1958.
There was always one fixture Alley found difficult to cover: the Eastern Suburbs v Marist matchups, which were always fiercely contested. Alley’s husband Colin was fullback for Suburbs, while her brother Doug was also on the team.
‘‘They were all mates together, and they had a real camaraderie off the field, but when the games were on, they were enemies,’’ says Alley.
‘‘I remember one game my brother got hurt. It was quite a blatant late charge from one of the Marist guys. That upset me of course, so I found it really difficult to write about because the Marist guys were all such great friends of ours, but one of them had done the dirty on Doug.’’
Throughout her time as a scribe, it remained a tightly held secret.
‘‘I don’t think anyone knew,’’ says Alley. ‘‘Colin did, but nobody else knew. He used to growl at me because I wouldn’t give him a writeup. It would just say he kicked the goals and that was it.’’
Progress hasn’t been swift, but Alley often marvels at how opportunities for women in rugby have shifted since the days when she wasn’t even able to put her name to a match report.
Granddaughter Chelsea is a reminder of how far things have come. A fulltime contracted player for the Black Ferns, Chelsea is one of the team’s most recognisable faces thanks to her starring role in an ad for Molenberg bread.
Next year, she hopes to help the Black Ferns defend the Rugby World Cup at home.
‘‘I would have loved to have been able to do what Chelsea has done,’’ says Alley.
‘‘But it is nice to have been involved in some small way.’’
‘‘He used to growl at me because I wouldn’t give him a write-up.’’ Heather Alley on her husband Colin