Panguru positive as new season looms
Panguru played Kaikohe in a preseason friendly at Panguru on Saturday as both sides continued to prepare for the North Zone championship to kick off on March 2.
Despite it being a ‘friendly’, Panguru manager Mike Te Wake was more than happy for the record to show the home team won by a convincing 57-6 margin.
“I want to celebrate that, it was the biggest score we have had in four years,” he grinned, albeit conceding the Joe Pomarecoached Panguru had a stack of players on the bench while Kaikohe arrived with not much more than the bare minimum.
He also reminded there really was no such thing as a friendly, a situation made more intense by the cement-like pitch conditions.
Notable was the smaller-thanexpected sized crowd in attendance; usually the entire community seems to turn out for Panguru’s home games. Te Wake reminded there was a lot on on Saturday with the North Hokianga A&P Show just up the road, the inaugural Best of the West big game fishing competition in Ahipara, another pre-season friendly in Ahipara, Northland basketball trials in Kaitaia, as well as a sequence of tangi combined with a “lot of people [keen on] staying out of the sun”.
For anyone who felt it was unnaturally early for local club rugby to be kicking off in March when the season traditionally used to start after Easter, Te Wake said there was little choice but to get going as the domestic season has to be wrapped up before the build-up to this year’s World Cup begins.
Looking at the bigger picture, and even more uplifting than the final score on Saturday, was the manner in which Panguru had turned itself around this year. Te Wake was pleasantly surprised at the players’ reaction towards the looming campaign.
“I thought the wheels were going to come off last year. It’s good! Last few years have been quite daunting, morally, physically and spiritually . . .” he said, half in jest.
“We have been bottom of the competition for last three years. Now we have put together a team that can have a good crack at it. We’ve put the work in this campaign, started early in January. Got in a good bunch of boys who are just keen to get out there on the field. We’ve done a lot of fitness, had a marae stay, train how we want to, just been building from there.”
He also noted the side had been mixing it up by holding trainings every second week in Kaitaia to relieve pressure for those ‘ex-pats’ living and working outside the area, i.e. those who want to remain loyal to their home club but struggle to commute to the remote settlement for training week in week out.
“The culture is booming in our boys, in our club, and our
community. Things are falling into place for us.”
The only other pre-season North Zone game known about on Saturday took place between Te Rarawa and Awanui at Ahipara. The visitors — last year’s finalists — eventually proved too strong, running out to a big lead then holding on in the face of a late onslaught from the home side to post an unconfirmed 27-19 win.
Off to a good start
Panguru aren’t the only team enjoying a positive build-up.
According to the grapevine, the other Mangonui teams — Te Rarawa, Eastern, Kaitaia and Awanui — have all reported strong interest over the off-season and, more importantly, solid turnouts for pre-season trainings.
Although there has been no word on the state of the union from their Bay of Islands counterparts, all the signs bode well heading into a revamped North Zone competition.
They are also somewhat contrary to predictions that the demise of grassroots rugby is at hand. Take, for
example, the recent highprofile article in the Weekend Herald in which reporter Gregor Paul reflected on the malaise affecting the national game: (Rugby crisis: Iceberg dead ahead for game in NZ, Saturday February 2).
In the feature, Paul claimed the national game had continued its transition from a mass participation sport to a mass spectator sport since the advent of the professionalism, to a point where grassroots rugby was at immediate and irreversible risk of becoming extinct.
“New Zealand rugby is bobbing along above the water but there is a massive hole in the hull and just like the Titanic, the game is in danger of sinking . . . [It] feels like the beginning of the end . . .” Paul wrote, citing the declining number of players at secondary school level to support his theory.
Panguru manager Mike Te Wake said he could identify with the warning flags being raised by Paul. He, too, noted the “real gauge” of where the game was at from a local perspective could be found by looking at playing numbers in junior grades.