Wrights Bush has won the battle of survival
SOUTHLAND RUGBY SCENE
This could well be the rugby season Wrights Bush players, supporters, life members and sponsors have been waiting for since returning to the competitive fray in 2010.
With six wins, a draw and two losses over the nine rounds of the third division Southland-wide round robin, Wrights Bush was positioned comfortably in third slot with 30 points at the end of the championship contested by 10 teams.
Riverton has created a bye situation in the championship’s topsix tier now, joining unbeaten Waiau Star (41), runner-up Central Pirates (34), Wrights Bush , Balfour Lumsden (25) and Star (24) in a whole new competition, which starts afresh on Saturday.
The bottom five, which will contest the plate division are: Albion Excelsior and Otautau (both on 19), Pirates Old Boys (17), Woodlands (10) and Bluff (1).
Wrights Bush’s fate seemed sealed and destined for the history books when it went into recess in 1996 because of insufficient playing numbers.
However, when young men returned to the district from agri- cultural colleges, and other learning and employment centres, they gradually expressed an interest in rebuilding a team after a meeting with the old hands in 2009, 13 years after going into recess.
Stalwart Paul Nicholson took over as senior manager in 2010. David Hall, who was later to achieve Southland century status, and whose father, John, farmed at Waimatuku in earlier years, coached the club to make its revival complete.
Brendan Hamilton, Wallacetown, has coached team since.
Hamilton’s capable fullback and midfield son, Dion, and Nicholson’s winger sons, Hayden and Logan, have been playing standouts this season. Logan occupied the left wing berth for Southland Country in its 25-12 defeat of the city slickers Town at Rugby Park in Invercargill last Saturday night.
Hamilton has been incon-
of the venienced by a hamstring injury suffered in early representative rural rugby fixture.
It will sideline him for three more weeks before it is assessed.
Now it is safe and secure with almost 30 players, Wrights Bush is intent on making the playoffs this year and aiming at celebrations in 2019.
The club’s hard-working 10-strong committee has been putting money aside for the celebrations and has the backing of various representative players of yesteryear, including its distinguished All Black flanker Leicester Rutledge, one of its favourite sons.
Wrights Bush, in a rugby sense, is a focal centre of the national game in rural Southland, also embracing the small farming settlements of Taramoa, Waimatuku, Waianiwa, Thornbury, Wallacetown, Spar Bush and Otahuti. Some of the prominent players have attracted contemporaries from Invercargill to bolster the outstanding support of community followers and sponsors.
Each sponsor who paid $300 for two years had their names included on the backs of playing jerseys.
Another club group operated as a contracted lamb tailing crew for fundraising purposes, and balage was taken off the club’s 6ha block of land with three playing fields in heartland dairying country.
Manager Paul Nicholson, who has involved himself passionately as a schoolboy convenor, vicepresident, president, bar manager and team manager, and his fellow committeemen refer to the institution they love as more than a rugby-playing centre. The club has fostered strong and close-knit family affiliations, with children often mixing with grandparents.
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