King’s High School old boy Don Kilgour, at 93, is the only surviving Otago player from that day. Otago Rugby League historian Carey Clements tracks him down.
You will not find much evidence of his sporting career on the walls of Don Kilgour’s home in Upper Hutt.
However, if pressed hard, the Dunedin born-and-bred nonagenarian will go to a drawer and pull out a team photo of one of the Otago sides that he represented between 1954 and 1957.
“Here is one", he says with pride, “an Otago side that tried their hardest, but were always up against it whenever we played Canterbury or the West Coast, who were full of Kiwis back then.”
Kilgour had played various other sports before being introduced to league in 1954.
He joined the Athletic club, based in northern Dunedin.
“Don’t ask me why, as I was not that big, but I was chosen to play in the position of hooker when I went to league.
"It may have been because of Athletic was the champion club at the time, but it was kind of a fluke that I made the Otago side in my first year.”
Although officially a "professional" game league, in Dunedin, was amateur.
The biggest payoff was made when Otago president Ray Cody lured former All Black-turned-Kiwi Jimmy Haig back from Christchurch to Dunedin with the promise that the provincial body would buy him a milk round as a profession.
Kilgour had been with the New Zealand Railways since 1948, and was to work for the company for nearly 41 years.
“Whatever Jimmy Haig said, went. His intense competitiveness was just something that lifted the whole team to believe in themselves.
“As a result of injury, we soon lost Jimmy after a year, but he then contributed by being a selector and coach of Otago for a while."
Kilgour said it was "an experience" playing Auckland at Tahuna Park.
They had five Kiwis in their team and it was no surprise they gave Otago a lesson, winning 51-11.
During his four years in league, Kilgour also coached some Otago schoolboy sides.
He had one player, the late Sam Williamson, selected as the first Otago Schoolboy Kiwi, as well as future Otago senior representatives Murray Clydesdale and the late John McGregor.
“I was raw as a coach, so I just had to swot up and work out a few moves. There were no coaching levels back then and all I knew was the fundamentals to league.
“We were lucky that at the time Ray Cody was the president of the Otago Rugby League and through his job as a radio announcer at 4XD (now Radio Dunedin), we got plenty of publicity plugs about the game.
“Although they were not huge in numbers, we always used to get spectators along to games, which was further helped by articles in both the ODT and the Evening Star Sports paper, which used to come out on the Saturday night.”
After 1957, Kilgour was talked into playing mercantile basketball by a railway work colleague. He then gained his referee’s certificate and did a total of 21 years officiating the game.
Today, at 93, Kilgour is still driven by sport, but after two knee replacements he swapped codes more than 30 years ago to the gentler sport of lawn bowls, which still has him getting out and playing once a week.
“Whatever sport you take on, you make lifelong friends.
"Although I have not been back to Dunedin since the Otago league reunion in 2003, my fond memories of the game and the people still hold to this day."
