Otago has its 23rd straight challenge since 1959 for the Ranfurly Shield on Friday night, against Waikato in Hamilton.
Probably the cruellest unsuccessful challenge of the lot was against Canterbury in 1994. Rugby writer Steve Hepburn relives that fateful day with help from three players who were there, centre Marc Ellis, lock Andy Rich and prop Nick Moore.
Otago had beaten Canterbury by 50 points in pre-season and was sitting in the top three of the NPC while Canterbury was a mixed bag. It seemed Otago's game to lose.
Rich: The biggest issue of that day for me was the expectation. We were going to bring it home after all those years. Some of the public thought it was just going to happen. We never thought like that. It was going to be tough.
Moore: I remember there was some drama about Diadora having too much space on the jersey. There was a lot of expectation on us but we were pretty confident.
Ellis: We'd had it over Canterbury in the years beforehand and in pre-season so we were expecting ourselves to win.
In front of a crowd of 40,000 at the then Lancaster Park, Otago made a good start, although it was all tied up at 10-10 at the break.
Rich: That first half we played well and had it over them. The guys were playing well, and Canterbury was hanging in there.
Moore: We made a fantastic start and guys like Stu Forster and Stephen Bachop were directing play all around the ground.
Early in the second half, Otago scored a great try with Forster skirting down the sideline to score after a move had been set up by John Timu, who was playing his 100th game for Otago.
Ellis: We got up by, it must have been 10 points, and we should have put them away really. But then we started conceding a few points.
Rich: I say to this day the difference in that match was Mike Brewer. Just his experience in the second half, the way he pulled the Canterbury team together.
Canterbury came back into the match and, with two minutes to go and Otago ahead by 20-19, referee Colin Hawke ruled Otago skipper David Latta offside at a ruck.
Ellis: I never thought it was a penalty. I was at the bottom of the ruck and I thought Hawke [referee Colin Hawke] was penalising me. But there was no way he was offside.
Rich: It didn't come down to one penalty. The winning of the game did not come down to that. You don't lose a game in the last minute can you? There was an earlier penalty in the lineout.
Andrew Mehrtens kicked the penalty and Canterbury hung on the shield, with a 22-20 win. Otago was left to rue a missed opportunity. Nearly 20 years later, it has still not won the shield.
Moore: It was quite a hollow feeling afterwards. We had come within a cat's whisker of winning it. Some people blamed Crazy [Latta] but there was no way they could do that. We were all in it together. Everyone would have loved the glory if we had won.
Rich: It was like someone had died, [in the dressing room] straight afterwards. So many supporters had come up to watch and a lot of them just went home, or went back to their hotel. A lot of guys had their families round them watching, so that helped on the night.
Ellis: It was heinous. But I think a few of the boys had their revenge, putting things in his [Hawke's] letterbox in South Canterbury in the varsity holidays. That night we went out and had a few. Got up to a few hi-jinks in Christchurch which you had to do.
