A feast of rugby is on the menu at the Roxburgh Sports Ground on Saturday. The Roxburgh under-7, under-8 and under-10 teams compete in the morning and the under-13 side plays Clyde in the curtain-raiser to the feature match, between Roxburgh Premiers and Cromwell B in the afternoon.
''We'll be forming a guard of honour for our premier side to run through and there should be about 180 people to stand on the field, all of whom played rugby for our club, along with all the kids in the junior grades,'' jubilee committee chairman John McKinnel said.
''There's several generations of players, quite a few fathers and sons in particular, so they'll be standing together and it'll be a momentous occasion, representing the past, present and future as one.''
More than 350 have registered for the event, which begins with a get-together tonight and concludes with a golf tournament and barbecue lunch on Sunday.
Several Australian-based former players have registered and Shane (''Wog'') Keenan, who propped for Roxburgh in the 1980s, is travelling from Scotland to attend.
With so many people keen to be part of the jubilee celebrations, there was no venue in town big enough to host the event, so a marquee will be put up in the show grounds.
''We weren't planning on the snow this week and the grounds being so soft, so that delayed our plans for getting the marquee up, but it'll all work out fine,'' McKinnel said.
Medallions marking the occasion have been made for all junior players and old-style collared lace-up rugby jerseys will be auctioned as part of the Saturday night function.
The club is enjoying something of a renaissance. After about a decade of being unable to field a senior team, the club staged a comeback four years ago, combining with Alexandra and entering an Alexandra-Roxburgh side in the senior B competition.
By last season, all 28 players were from the Teviot Valley and the side ended the 2012 season on a high, winning the Central Otago senior competition.
The young team was ''learning fast'' in its first season in the premier grade, McKinnel said.
The club was in good heart with all grades of junior rugby strong and it was fortunate to have three or four key people taking the roles of coaches, president and manager ''to keep things ticking along well''.
The Teviot Valley was once home to five different rugby clubs - Roxburgh East, Coal Creek, Ettrick and Millers Flat as well as Roxburgh, but the last is the only one remaining. Its catchment area is the whole of the valley.
Representative rugby players with links to the club include former All Black Wayne Graham, who was a player and coach for the club in the 1980s, Rob Richan, who was a junior All Black, and All Black Murray Pierce, who was in the victorious 1987 World Cup team.
Pierce played rugby for Roxburgh in his younger days.
Coal Creek orchardist and Roxburgh rugby player Gary Bennetts spent three years as centre for the Otago team, from 1976 to 1979.
He played against the British and Irish Lions in 1977 and had teeth knocked out by an accidental kick from one of his own team members.
