Ross Shield tournament in full swing
Dannevirke playing host to the 120th milestone occasion
The 120th anniversary Ross Shield Hawke’s Bay primary schools rugby tournament is being held in Dannevirke this week with a parade and the home side playing defending champions Hastings East in the first of the tournament’s matches.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better [opening] day,” said tournament committee chairman Bevan Ellison.
Wednesday was trophy day for all the competing teams, with Wairoa and CHB playing for a shield in memory of Tino Amato, who died from a Premier grade match injury in 2002 and who had links to both areas, Dannevirke playing Napier for a cup in memory of Napier Ross Shield stalwart Steve Cottrell, and the two Hastings sides playing for a trophy in memory of Bill Mathewson, another Ross Shield stalwart.
There are five successive days of rugby, with the last on Saturday, but the tournament is played roundrobin with no playoffs.
Prior to last year’s triumph by Hastings East, the tournament had been won three times in a row by Hastings West from 2017 to 2019, with the 2020 event cancelled because of the Covid outbreak.
Napier last won in 2016, as defending champions the last time the tournament was played in Dannevirke.
A Life Member’s Salver for the country teams was introduced in 2012 and won by Dannevirke, with
Central Hawke’s Bay now the current holders. The tournament was traditionally played among boys selected
from schools in each of the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union’s six sub-unions, until 1988, after the Taupo sub-union
had become part of the King Country union.
Numerous players from the tournament have graduated from the tournament to become well known professional players, notably from the 2001 tournament in Dannevirke where players included eventual All Blacks Israel Dagg and Zac Guildford and Super Rugby players Richard Buckman and Daniel Kirkpatrick (also a New Zealand Under 20 World champion).
Among others was Gemma Woods, one of the trailblazing first girls in the tournament and now a Hawke’s Bay Tui women’s representative since 2009.