Voices From The Past

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 1, 30 June 1939, Page 53

Voices From The Past

Rugby's Greatest Figures Come to the Microphone For five glorious seasons, Hawke's Bay made Rugby Football history in New Zealand. From 1922 to 1926 their story was the story of football when it was played $ through the land of the All Blacks as it has never been played before or since. In "The Great Hawke’s Bay Magpies," to be broadcast from 2YD on Sunday, July 2, at 8 p.m., personalities and events in a score of the team’s outstanding matches have been brought back to lite to make a tadio programme item which will probably attract half a million listeners. This feature has not been easy to arrange: most of the more famous players and referees had to be found and their comments arranged in continuity with the story, and, most difficult task of all, Maurice Brownlie himself was persuaded to break a ten-year silence. But it has finally been done, and no one who was present at the studio preview could doubt that the pains taken by the staff of 2YD would be well rewarded. It is not a chronicle of dates and names, but an intensely lively and interesting reconstruction of actual events, with the personalities concerned, real and vivid, behind the microphone. THE GOLDEN YEARS Until 1921, Wellington and Auckland had shared the Ranfurly Shield between them. Then Hawke's y won it, and held off challenge after challenge uring five consecutive seasons until in 1926 the } rose to a peak which may never again be approached. They had won decisive victories before. In 1926 their points margins went almost to the limits of possibility. They fielded team after team of players of international status, selected, trained, and managed by Norman McKenzie, and led by Maurice Brownlie. Tt was not as if all the talent in New Zealand had migrated to Hawke’s Bay. Auckland had Cooke, Batty, Lucas; Wellington was rearing Mark Nicholls, and Cliff Porter was making the New Zealand wing forward’s a name to be feared everywhere. Canter-

bury had Dalley, Oliver, Lilburne. In one match Hawke’s Bay fielded 12 All Blacks, and was opposed by a team containing 10. But the team was not the product of outstanding individual talent. You will learn from the broadcast how Norman McKenzie brought up his men to play with a dash, determination, and combination which swept all opposition away, Hawke’s Bay made players, was not made by players. At one stage no fewer than three All Blacks were emergencies so plentiful was the talent developed by McKenzie’s tactics. Ten years is a long time in Rugby history in New Zealand. Some say that changes made in the period have been good, some that they have been for the worse; but everyone who has taken even a passing interest in the game (and who in New Zealand has not?) remembers the great names of these "good old days" with not a little regret that their like may not come again. THE NEXT BEST THING The broadcast on Sunday night will be the next best thing. What have been names stored in memory become still living personalities; what were lasting reputations become voices over the air. Some of the great games have been brought back to life. Auckland defeated the seemingly invincible team at Eden Park in a non-Shield challenge game, and held the still famous team to a draw later. Canterbury twice frightened them badly, and there were a dozen other matches still talked about where followers meet and argue.

Most of the leading players, and some of the referees have been brought out of hiding by 2YD., Broadcast descriptions of the games are supplemented by comments by these men upon the teams, the play, and other players. If "featured" is the

word to use for anything in this collection of features, then Norman McKenzie and Maurice Brownlie are featured. Characteristically, Brownlie, who broke a resolution made 10 years ago in order to take part in this broadcast, says little that is not a personal tribute to McKenzie.

Both are remembered among the giants of Hawke’s Bay’s great days, and they led a cast of giants, Nothing quite as good as this has been offered sports’ listeners before. It is improbable that anything even approaching it will be produced again in the next 10 years,