THE BATTLE FOR SMALLTOWN RUGBY
Here is what I know to be true: Strathmore beat Toko 53-3 to retain the Dean Cup. It is also true they did so courtesy of defeating, a fortnight earlier, Whangamomona at the same ground, the Toko Domain, 35-12.
The trophy, the oldest challenge cup in New Zealand, has made the short journey back from the domain to the Toko Junction Tavern. There it will sit proudly on the top shelf of a corner dedicated to local sport, guarded by the boars’ heads that stare glassy-eyed from the walls.
The rugby men of Strathmore do not take the Dean Cup home with them because, well, there’s nowhere to take it. Most of the players no longer live in the valley, there is no rugby field, no clubrooms.
The district hall is long gone and Strathmore is nothing more than a T-junction alongside the Coulton farm house and cowshed.
This is true. I have been there and seen it.
Despite these demographic hurdles, Strathmore, who looked sharp in Persil-white and green hoops and matching shorts and socks, were vastly superior to the rugby men of Toko, hamstrung by late, unsatisfactory withdrawals. Toko, in yellow and black hoops, were an eclectic bunch from the waist down, with shorts and socks representing a wide range of the colour spectrum.
Strathmore scored nine tries to Toko’s single penalty and dominated from tighthead to fullback.
This I also know to be correct. And this is what I can’t be sure about, but nevertheless hold to be true: the Dean Cup used to be about rugby and for 80 minutes still retains that veneer, but scratch the surface and it represents something far more fundamental — a way of life that is disappearing.
three isolated valleys in the backblocks of Taranaki’s eastern hill country, the cup remains a tenuous touchstone for the families who carve out a mostly drystock living here.
“It’s gully against gully. It’s the people of the district getting together for a game of rugby,” says 64-year-old Tutatawa farmer, Strathmore chairman and former Toko player-coach John McBride. “It’s highly passionate. There’s blood lost,” he pauses, “but nothing too serious of course.”
This isn’t the most polished rugby, but it’s willing. Selfpolicing is acknowledged as an important factor in the Dean Cup’s ecosystem and there is a tacit understanding that rucking is tolerated. A drink will be shared with the man who inflicted the damage. Their wives will laugh about it out the back where the mutton is being carved up, where buttered bread and spuds are king and salads are garnish.
This is country rugby, yes, but it’s a social network built on actual human interaction. That connection is vital in maintaining relationships between families that have had little choice but to leave their farms and leave the district. It lubricates the relationships of those few who have stayed. It’s their way, too, of recognising the efforts of their ancestors who created these homesteads and family trees in such inhospitable terrain.
If those sound like old-world concepts, then rest assured this is an old-world kind of place and the Dean Cup is an old-world kind of happening and, if you really want to get to the crux, the old world faces an uncertain future. The truth is that this, not the rugby, is the real story of the Dean Cup.
map of the North Island, find Stratford just to the east of Mt Taranaki and travel about 10km on State Highway 43 to Toko, where the fertile volcanic ringplain that fuels the dairy industry ends. It’s been an easy journey so far, but to get to the genesis of this story you have to have your wits about you as the road pinches in from the sides as you climb up and over the Strathmore, Pohokura and Whangamomona saddles.
The Whangamomona Hotel is marketed as the most isolated pub in the country and it feels that way. It was here in 1907 that publican Athalinda Dean — a formidable woman of extravagant tastes — donated a cup to be played for by the cricketers of Whangamomona village and those who farmed farther down the valley.
The enterprise was an abject failure. Carving a playable cricket field from the rugged, sodden country was a task too far. The magnificent trophy, thought to have cost Dean upwards of £20, was instead donated to the local rugby club, who opened it up to challenges from Strathmore, Toko and Ohura (who dropped out after a few successful years).
The trophy became a source of pride. In the early days, when roads resembled a ribbon of mud, challenges could be three-day affairs: one day to get there; one to play and drink; one long, long day to return. The host team would open up their village hall for the festivities. A band would play, sawdust would be spread on the floor to soak up the alcohol and everybody within driving distance would join the party. “My earliest memories are of being dragged around the hall on sacks the next morning. It was how we cleaned up,” says Carrol Coulton, whose family has farmed the Strathmore Valley for generations. Coulton played his first Dean Cup match for Strathmore while still at high school. “Oh hell yes. “Beat Whanga at Whanga. I learned to drink beer that day. It wasn’t pretty,” he says. Coulton takes his name from his grandfather, Private Carrol Coulton, whose name is inscribed on the lonely Strathmore and Te Wera Makahu Districts cenotaph, one of 25 men from the district to perish in World War I. Another 25 would die in World War II. It’s a high body count, but in the post-war era a different sort of attrition took hold. “There’d be no more than 50 people living here now,” says Coulton. “The local school, Huiakama, used to have about 50 kids, it might have 15 now. Other schools in the area have closed. “It’s all the farm amalgamations,” Coulton says. “The area is totally depopulated.” Back in the day every farm would have about six people working it. Those little farms are now big farms.
“I’m guilty of it. I bought out one neighbour, bought half of another one. It’s the economics of scale.”
The Coulton name will live on in the valley. Son Michael will inherit the land when Carrol shuffles off. He’ll be the fifth generation of Coultons on the land. Michael’s son, the family anticipates, will be the sixth.
THE STRATHMORE hall is gone, though. It might not have been a picture to look at, and stood unused for most of the year, but take away an area’s hall and you’re taking away its heart. Inside it had matai floors, rimu studs. Someone paid $5000 to come and take the hall so they could strip out the timber.
The hall was the meeting place for the Strathmore Women’s Division, but that had folded, as had the bowls club and euchre evenings. Even the Bachelors Ball, once the social highlight of the season — “men had to pay, women were free” — had ceased to exist. The Dean Cup festivities had long moved down the road to Toko.
The hall fell into disrepair. Nobody wanted to fund an unused space, no matter how pretty the floor was.
The hall in Whangamomona has survived, just, as have a few historic buildings, which were once destined to decay. All have plaques and tell the same lament: of the hall, general store, post office, butcher and bakery that were part of a thriving settlement until farming and forestry technology changed. The post office stopped being viable and the trains that served the Stratford to Ohurakura line stopped coming as well.
“We once had three schools in the area serving 120 kids,” says Richard Pratt, the publican following in the footsteps of Mrs Dean. “Now we have one school [Marco] with about 15 kids.”
There are, he reckons, about 120 people left in the Whangamomona Valley. Curious tourists who trickle down the Forgotten World Highway, or on the converted golf carts that are the only vehicles left on the rail line, keep the pub alive but outside beer and a bed, any other form of retail has long been an exercise in futility.
These are the least populated districts in Taranaki, by extrapolation some of the least populated areas of the country. Yet when the weather rolls in and settles, as it so often does, it can feel claustrophobic, like you’re on the set of a Vincent Ward film.
Winters start early and finish late. They are invariably wet. The pay-off for all that water is grass.
good. Grass feeds the sheep and the cows. In the old days there weren’t many cows. Of the many