Combined club celebrates 25 years
CHB Rugby & Sports Club is celebrating its 25th anniversary over Queen’s Birthday weekend.
Twenty-five years ago, a group of likeminded club rugby administrators from Waipawa United and Waipukurau High School Old Boys’ Rugby clubs had the vision and the courage to address the future of club rugby in Central Hawke’s Bay. The amalgamation committee was chaired by John Berry with Waipawa United represented by Ross Angus, Bernie Story and George Konia and Waipukurau HSOB by Robbie Stuart, David “Snow” Pedersen and Trevor White (deceased). The result was the amalgamation of the two clubs to form CHB Rugby & Sports Club.
These men realised that if a CHB team was to continue to be competitive at premier level in Hawke’s Bay, then a strong amalgamated club was the best way forward. Their desire was for the amalgamated club to continue to provide a pathway for players to representative level rather than losing local talent to the bigger Napier and Hastings clubs.
To embrace this vision, the design of the original club playing strip featured a harlequin style jersey with black, yellow, green and red quarters and a white collar and blue shorts representing the colours of HSOB (black and white), Waipawa United (yellow and black, Takapau (red and black), Porangahau (green and black), Otane (green and black) and Waipukurau (now in recess, blue and white). After the harlequin style jersey came several variations using the same colours before in the mid-2000s, the colours were simplified to the current royal blue and red, which represent the CHB sub-union red and the blue of its feeder secondary school, CHB College.
With six teams, two age group, three senior men’s and a women’s team the new club utilised two home venues at Coronation Park and Central Park for the first 10 years but with falling player numbers it became unviable for the club to afford and maintain two grounds, so the decision was made to base the club at Central Park, Waipukurau.
Central has achieved the goal of retaining a Premier and Premier Reserve team in the Hawke’s Bay-wide competition but with the general decline in rugby player numbers, the club has struggled to regularly field a colts grade men’s team or women’s team over the past 10 seasons.
The concept of involving all the clubs of CHB has certainly been achieved through the club’s premier team coaches, who make up a who’s who of rugby talent from throughout the region.
Central has certainly achieved the original aim of providing a pathway to representative honours with many players achieving HB Magpie, HB ‘B’/Development, HB/20 or U/19 HB Tui status. Standouts amongst these achievers are Emma Jensen who played for Central before moving to Auckland where she went on to be a NZ Black Fern, playing in four Rugby World Cups winning three titles. John van der Giesen who, after a season of club rugby for Central and HB ‘B’ went on to play for the USA Eagles in the 2011 Rugby World Cup in NZ. Rhys Marshall and Brodie Retallick both made the Chiefs from Central Hawke’s Bay, with Brodie going on to the All Blacks. Brodie’s citation for the IRB International Player of the Year in 2014 acknowledges Central as the club he played for when becoming an All Black.
A weekend of celebration is planned for Queen’s Birthday weekend and all explayers, coaches and administrators are welcome. Unfortunately the club has lost contact with many past members so if you haven’t been personally invited don’t be offended and contact Katherine at chbrugbyandsportsclub@gmail.com and come along and join the celebrations.