Editor stepping down from New Zealand Rugby Almanack role

After 30 years working on New Zealand’s Rugby Almanack, the recently published 2024 edition will be the last as a fulltime editor for Clive Akers.

Akers, one of New Zealand’s foremost rugby historians and statisticians, is stepping back and will instead become a contributor to future editions.

The O¯ piki farmer, local historian, author and long-time supporter of rugby is also the chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Museum (since 1994) and has been involved with the Palmerston North-based entity since 1975.

He became an editor of the Rugby Almanack in 1994 after producing several centennial books for provincial rugby unions.

In the 2024 Rugby Almanack, highly respected sports journalist and author Lindsay Knight pays tribute to Akers’ outstanding contribution to not only the Almanack but to the game of rugby itself.

“When he joined the Rugby Almanack in 1994, Clive Akers followed in a long line of admirable servants in chronicling New Zealand rugby. But Clive didn’t just maintain the standards set since the Almanack’s inception in 1935 by Arthur Swan, Arthur Carman, Read Masters, Neville McMillan and Rod Chester. He enhanced them.

“Not only was he as meticulous a statistician as his predecessors but he brought a more literary touch to some of the prose than what had been the case previously, especially in the Almanack’s earlier years.

“Though not a professional journalist Clive was a competent writer, as was shown in his many other publications as well as his various Almanack pieces.

“There is a certain irony to the years in which Clive has been so closely involved with producing the Almanack. For they have coincided, almost within a year, of rugby’s lurch towards undiluted professionalism, which has been traumatic for so many because it has caused a diminution of many of the structures which once underpinned the game.

“Adapting to the challenges posed by professionalism would have been particularly daunting for Clive as he exemplified many of those values which have come under such threat.

“By his own description he was a player without distinction, but he developed a deep love for the game through his involvement in the first XVs of his Masterton boarding schools and his membership of clubs in Manawatu¯ , Hawke’s Bay and King Country.

“His affinity for the game at its various levels, particularly in its rural environment, have been reflected in his editorship of the Almanack.

“Clive has always ensured that provincial and Heartland rugby, club, age-groups and, more recently, women’s rugby have enjoyed almost as equal focus as the All Blacks and the Super competitions. This writer for one will always appreciate Clive’s respect for the giants of the past and under his direction the Almanack’s obituaries have been expanded to do them justice.

“Before joining the Almanack, Clive was a stalwart of that other great institution which has also done much to preserve New Zealand rugby’s history and heritage, Palmerston North’s New Zealand Rugby Museum, of which he has been curator, chairman and life member.

“Clive himself has been a prolific author, with histories on Manawatu¯ , Horowhenua, a biography on New Zealand rugby’s founder CJ Monro, another on rugby-playing war-time heroes and his extraordinary Rugby Register, which records every single player who has appeared in New Zealand first-class rugby.”

Clive was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2018 Honours for services to rugby and historical research.