Club’s proud past

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 45

Club’s proud past

Linwood has a proud record in Canterbury rugby league. It has one of the original clubs, constituted just after Addington, Sydenham and St Albans, which competed in the first senior competition in 1913. In spite of many obstacles, Addington, Sydenham and Linwood have flourished and next year will celebrate, along with the Canterbury Rugby League, their seventy-fifth anniversaries.

Only between 1927 and 1929 has Linwood not held first grade status. It has won the Canterbury club

championship outright seven times and shared the title with Papanui in 1960. Linwood’s most successful season was 1963, when it relieved the West Coast champion, Brunner, of the Thacker Shield and was the runner-up to Southern Districts, of Auckland, in the national Rothmans tournament. That same winter Jim Fisher toured Australia with the Kiwis. Fisher is one of nine internationals from Linwood. Alister Atkinson and Lory Blanchard were the first to be recognised when they toured Britain

and France in 1951-52. Atkinson went on to make more appearances (71) and score more tries (28) for New Zealand than any other Canterbury player; Blanchard is second in number of games (63) and coached the outstandingly successful 1971 Kiwis.

The club’s other Kiwis were Bill Noonan, who later played for 11 seasons in the highly-com-petitve Sydney premiership, John Greengrass, Lewis Hudson, Tony Smith, Wally Wilson and Brent Todd, who distinguished himself after joining the 1985 Kiwis in Britain and France as a replacement. Rugby league in Canterbury, and New Zealand, has also been the better for the number of exceedingly capable administrators from Linwood — a lineage which began with Mr W.S.E. Moyle, whose founding of the code in Canterbury included the formation of a club in Linwood. Linwood led the way for other clubs to establish headquarters, and it is nearly 30 years since its present rooms were opened in Olliviers Road.