When Grant Turner played alongside Bernie Fraser
Footballer Grant Turner and All Blacks wing Bernie Fraser were 1980s Hutt Valley sporting legends – and briefly team-mates in the same club rugby backline.
It’s not often an All White can say he took an All Black’s position in a senior club rugby team. But back in 1987, Grant Turner – a hero of the 1982 All Whites World Cup qualifying campaign – achieved that feat during a remarkable code switch.
Turner – who has terminal cancer – has been reflecting on a sporting career that included 19 goals in 71 appearances for the All Whites, including 15 strikes in full internationals – in the 1980s.
But, for a time, in 1987, the proud Hutt Valley man found himself playing rugby alongside the great Bernie Fraser.
The flying Fraser played 23 tests from 1979 to 1984, often in tandem with his great mate Stu Wilson on the opposite wing.
Fraser was such a prolific tryscorer for Wellington that a portion of Athletic Park was dubbed ‘‘Bernie’s corner’’.
The All Blacks ace played club rugby for Hutt Valley Marist where Turner was quietly playing in the lower grades on an enforced break from football.
‘‘I remember getting suspended because I smacked some bloke in a game so I went and played rugby,’’ Turner recalls. ‘‘I enjoyed myself doing that, not caring about what I had to do in football.’’
Turner ‘‘played first-five in pressies [president’s grade] for six, seven months’’, until Marist’s senior coach came to him and said: ‘‘Do you want a game in the top team’’?
‘‘I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m good enough’, but he said, ‘We want you for your kicking’. I would kick with my right or left foot, it didn’t matter.
‘‘I gave it a go and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t good enough, I only lasted five or six games. But my claim to fame was I got to play with Bernie Fraser.
‘‘Bernie had to move to the centres to let me play on the wing!’’
Turner scored a crucial try in a 10-3 win over Western Suburbs to book Marist a place in the Jubilee Cup playoffs.
With Tim Perez pulling the strings from first five-eighth, Marist were noted as an attacking team and Turner ‘‘scored quite a few tries’’.
Turner was modest about his rugby ability, but Fraser told Stuff in 2010 that the All White ‘‘did very well for us, he was very combative’’.
The Turner trend was followed by two other All Whites, Ben Sigmund and Glen Collins, who played senior rugby for Christchurch club Sumner in the 2000s.
At the time of his rugby stint, Turner was contracted to national league football club Miramar Rangers, who were oblivious to his oval ball activities.
‘‘I’d go and play pressies on a Saturday afternoon, and loved it, and next day I’d go and play national league football.
‘‘I did that for just under a year and then they found out. I said: ‘There’s no contract to say I can’t play rugby’.’’
While he remains proud of his football achievements, Turner loved the camaraderie of rugby and the conviviality after games. ‘‘I made friends out of rugby that I would never make out of football, and they’re still friends. They still care, they still text and email and see how I’m going. Just fantastic guys.’’
Turner was also a handy premier club softballer for Hutt Valley side Railways, but claims he ‘‘wasn’t very good at it. I could do the fielding, but I couldn’t hit. When I was younger all I’d do was bunt and run like hell because I was in the No 2 spot. As I got older, I got better’’. (Good enough to play alongside New Zealand greats Terry Nunns and John Dawson).
A softball accident led to one of Turner’s many operations. ‘‘I was diving back into first base and I hit the solid base and my shoulder popped out.’’ He later had to have the shoulder replaced – and his other shoulder, too. Twice.
‘‘And I’ve had two knee replacements,’’ he says. At one point in his career, Turner had chalked up 10 knee surgeries.
He remembers the date of his last All Whites injury – March 9, 1988. ‘‘We were playing Israel, and I got knocked out’’. He played a few more times in that Olympic Games qualifying campaign, but ‘‘that was the end of my career’’.
It was the latest in a long line of head knocks for Turner, who says surgeons have suggested there could be links between the ‘‘TBIs [traumatic brain injuries] I’ve had’’ and his current cancerous tumours.
He remembered getting knocked out in a game in Dunedin and his club coach ‘‘taking me out of hospital’’ for the flight home.
Turner left the plane at the airport, ‘‘in a wheelchair, not knowing where I was. I should never have been taken from the hospital. That’s why I retired, because of the amount of knockouts that I had.
‘‘People call me the hard man . . . but I don’t think there’s too many people who’ve had the injuries I’ve had.’’
But Turner admits he wouldn’t have changed anything.
‘‘If you’re prepared to play at a serious level then you’re going to get injuries. It’s part and parcel of the game.’’
‘‘I made friends out of rugby that I would never make out of football, and they’re still friends.’’ Grant Turner