It is exactly 50 years since the greatest day in the history of North Otago rugby. Grass-roots heroes were made when the tiny province beat the touring Wallabies in Oamaru. Hayden Meikle gathers some stories from the famous day.
Otago Daily Times (September 4, 1962): "A solid training run was held yesterday by the touring Australian rugby fifteen in preparation for its eighth match of the tour - against North Otago at Oamaru today."
Match programme: "1962 - Historic year for Oamaru.
Why?
The North Otago Rugby Union for only the second time in its history today plays an Australian touring team.
The first occasion was in 1936, when the Australian side of that year won 16-13.
The year 1962 also marks another important event in the town's history - the opening of Oamaru's wholesale mutton market, which is saving housewives hundreds of pounds in their purchase of meat."
Max Eckhold (centre): "We actually didn't start that season off too well. We got hammered by South Canterbury."
Terry O'Neill (injured five-eighth): "I was on the reserves bench for that South Canterbury game. I remember our coach, Kenny McLeod, on the bus, saying: 'Heads will roll, boys, heads will roll'. It was a good game to watch from the bench.
Ian Edmondston (flanker): "We'd played a lot of rugby together. An interesting point is there was no ACC in those days. So if someone got injured, we'd often play a charity game. You'd sit down on a Saturday night and find 30 guys to play this game on a Sunday. We had benefit games at Otematata, and for St John. And over a period of a few years, we beat Southland and Otago. We beat a lot of good sides."
Tom Conlan (first five-eighth): "We were all fairly competent players. We'd hold our own against Otago and Southland. Everyone, really.
Otago Sub-Unions used to be the hardest because of their forwards."
Jim Darling (fullback): "We were a pretty close bunch of guys. I was a bit of an outsider. I'd created a bit of a rift, actually. I was in Roxburgh but I was shifting to Otematata with the electricity department.
Kenny McLeod phoned me a couple of months before I shifted. How the hell he found out, I don't know. He asked me if I'd be available for North Otago. I said, 'Hang on, I'm not even there yet'.
When I arrived, I had to play a game to qualify. I'd joined Kurow, but Kurow had the bye. So they jacked up a game, against Enfield or someone. It was a bit of a farce. People were writing letters. Danny Mansfield had been the golden boy and people were wondering why they needed me. At our very first training run with North Otago, Kenny asked me to take the backs for a run. I was a bit worried. Kenny McGregor was a bit dour. We tried a few moves. I came into the backline outside Billy Pile and had trouble because he passed off the wrong foot. I mentioned that to him and he wasn't particularly happy."
ODT: "Unfortunately, impressive winger B. Rooney and second five-eighth T.
O'Neill will not be available.
Their places will be taken by N. Gard and W. Pile.
Barry Rooney (injured winger): "I'd hurt my shoulder about a month before the game. It came right, and I played South Canterbury on the Saturday before the Australian game, which was a Tuesday. I got through that as good as gold. But on the Sunday, the phone goes, and it's Kenny McLeod. He says I need to pass a medical and I need to be at the squash club that night. I didn't pass, and that was that. The funny thing is, the bloke who took my place was Neville Gard. In that game against Australia, he hurt the same shoulder I had hurt. And that was his one and only game for North Otago. It's funny how fate works sometimes."
Doug Grant (flanker): "I think Terry was dropped. Kenny wanted to bring in the Killer.
Pile. He'd tackle anything.
Him and Max Eckhold were both outstanding on defence."
Eckhold: "Terry had run into a bank in his car out by Enfield.
I think he'd been away courting."
O'Neill: "I did have a car accident on the Saturday night. Ran into a pole. I just dozed off. I cut my hand and had a few cuts on my face. I grabbed my gear and was walking back towards Weston. Roy Farmer was heading home and he picked me up. I went to practice in the morning but Ken McLeod said I wasn't playing. It would have been nice. I was a bit disappointed. But when it came to the day of the game, I knew I couldn't have played."
Edmondston: "I remember going down to the old Queen's Hotel and watching the Australians get off the bus.
They didn't look that big, but come the Tuesday they sure looked pretty big on the field."
O'Neill: "We didn't know anything about them."
Match programme: "You may have seen them on Thames St or met some of them round the town. They are a band of sportsmen and a good cross-section of Australia. Among them are students, a doctor, engineers, graziers, sales representatives, an industrial chemist, a department store buyer, an optician, a radiologist, bank officers, a policeman and a newsagent."
Conlan: "There was a curtain-raiser. I think it was North Otago Colts v East Otago or something like that. I ran into a couple of fellows a few years ago who said they played in the curtain-raiser."
O'Neill: "There were no broadcasting facilities as such. But they'd set up a truck. Cyril Britten, who was the Radio New Zealand broadcaster in Timaru, came down for the game. I sat beside him on the back of the truck. I've got the master recording of the game. A few of the other guys have got copies."
Edmondston: "We actually played in Kurow jerseys.
Straight red. Because the Australians had their gold, of course. I had no idea until we got to the ground."
O'Neill: "If you look at the size of us back then, we wouldn't be playing today. We were 11 stone 5, and 11 stone 3."
ODT (September 5, 1962): "The sky was overcast and the ground in perfect order when play began."
O'Neill: "The Showgrounds had a great surface, probably one of the best in New Zealand. It never got muddy."
Edmondston: "The game was a lot faster than anything we'd been used to. The old oval was as hard as rock, as usual.
We struggled to get much good ball in the lineout.
Their scrum was a bit bigger than ours. But then they lost that player with an injury."
ODT: "Australia had the misfortune to lose the services of flank forward E.
Heinrich 15 minutes after play started."
Conlan: "They were international rules, of course. So if you got hurt, there was no replacement."
Darling: "That was a bit of luck."
Eckhold: "It didn't take long before we started to get confident. I remember Neville McNee coming up and getting us in a huddle.
'You know, we can beat these jokers', he says."
Conlan: "We did a lot of tackling. You just had to knock everything over that came near you. Our forwards were brilliant, really. They'd win the ball in the lineout and I'd just kick it out."
Eckhold: "Tackling won us the game, no doubt about it. But we tried to throw the ball around when we had it."
Darling: "Billy Pile just murdered their second five.
The more the Australian joker got hit, the more Billy wanted to have another crack. The Australians had a pretty good side. They had the Thornett brothers and some other very good footballers. They were big men, too. But we had a tidy front row. Barber was a good lock. McGregor and Ghosty Coe were classy backs. We weren't that big but we worked hard, and we didn't like losing."
Grant: "Our objective was to keep moving the ball. They had a big forward pack. It was like a minor union playing a major union. Like North Otago playing Otago.
We could niggle them a bit.
And if things weren't going their way, we could twist things to our advantage."
Edmonston: "Ken McLeod was a very good forward coach.
He was a great motivator. He was probably one of the first coaches who realised the big key was to get flankers to the breakdown first."
Conlan: "He was very loyal.
They used to say it was harder to get out of the team than it was to get in it."
O'Neill: "He was a fairly basic man. He was a market gardener who had come from the Taieri. He was a very good forwards coach.
Under the old rules, if someone made a tackle you could not pick the ball up directly. You had to play it with your foot first. And on defence you were taught how to stop the dribbling rush. Then the rule changed.
Kenny was one of the first to ram home the importance of picking the ball up as quickly as possible."
Darling: "Kenny had a great way with people. He had the ability to pull you together."
ODT: "North Otago led 6-5 at halftime by virtue of a couple of goals from penalties. Like the visitors, it scored two tries and a conversion in the second 40 minutes of play."
O'Neill: "It was much more even than I thought it would be. After a little bit it sort of grabbed you that this was a pretty good opportunity for North Otago."
Darling: "They lined up for a drop at goal. I think it was Doug Grant or Neville McNee who charged the ball down, and we ended up at the other end of the paddock."
Conlan: "I think the Australian bloke only got one clean shot. We all charged at him.
It sort of hit me in the hip. It was hell of a sore that night."
ODT: "A splendid break by a couple of North Otago forwards from a lineout put the side five yards from the goal-line, and there the home forwards won the ball.
McGregor sent his backs away smartly, and Gard came in from the blind-side wing to create a gap. He sent the ball on to Pile, who side-stepped inside the defence to hurl himself over the line while being tackled by two Australians."
Eckhold: "Neville Gard came in from the right wing. That gave us an overlap. Bill went through the gap and scored.
It was pretty simple. Then we just had to hang on for 15-20 minutes."
Edmondston: "With about 20 minutes to go, Neville Gard got injured. So I went and took his place on the wing.
I'd played in the backs for a few years at senior level before I went back into the forwards. Their fullback had a penalty at one stage. He moved back, then he moved back in to re-align the ball. I thought, if you take a conversion like that, you're in trouble, pal. We'll charge it. And it happened. He lined up a conversion, and I charged. That may well have saved us a couple of points."
ODT: "All in all, it was an interesting match all through and, if the Australians disappointed, the home team gave a large crowd good value for its money."
Edmondston: "I remember the sound of the kids yelling and cheering."
Conlan: "The crowd seemed to be four-deep all the way around."
Darling: "They were a pretty unsociable pack of buggers, the Australians. After the game, the only people that came near us were the Thornetts. They were nice guys. You've got to remember they were playing a test in Dunedin the next Saturday. So the game against us was crucial for one or two of the players' chances of getting in the test side. I think they might have blown their chance. We were a bit dumbstruck that we'd actually won."
O'Neill: "The Australians were great. I remember going with John Thornett to the squash club for a drink or two after the game."
Edmondston: "I remember three of us going to the pie cart for a feed. We were talking to the bloke. He told us North Otago had beaten Australia, and asked if we had gone to the game. We told him we had a bird's eye view."
Grant: "I think we had a party for a week. We were kings of the town. The pie cart shouted us a feed."
Conlan: "We had a dance in St Pat's Hall, I think."
Eckhold: "We celebrated, all right. I didn't get home till all hours of the morning. Not sure if I made it to work the next day or not."
O'Neill: "Looking back now, it was a turning point in North Otago rugby. And we've stayed great mates. Fifty years on, we still ring each other up for a yarn."
Post script: Eight of the Australian team beaten by North Otago - including six forwards - were in the Wallabies side beaten just 3-0 by the All Blacks at Carisbrook four days later. It would be 50 years before the All Blacks held the Wallabies scoreless again, in the 22-0 win at Eden Park 10 days ago.
The 1962 North Otago team is having a reunion on September 21-22.
