Suburbs Old Boys

2024 Premiers

(Notes from OBs President Robert Chisholm in Informer #36)
Regarding the Rugby Season, a few of you have noticed that it ended, not with a bang, but a whimper. It was certainly not the greatest season, and made worse by the big fail on the Number 1 field, with the newly sown grass being easily torn up in the rucks. So the home games for most of the season were transferred to Number 2, an excellent field which was renovated about 5 years ago. We are hoping that the Turf Engineers employed by the council can fix up number 1 field over the summer, perhaps they could simply copy what they did on Number 2. As far a Premiers Rugby went, while the season was somewhat disappointing results wise, there were enough highlights to keep up the Suburbs spirit. An early season match against Pakuranga showed the potential of the Prems, losing in a close game to the team which became the Gallaher Shield Finalist. The end of season game against Papatoetoe was probably the best game of the season, and one where the coaches could finally assemble a squad which was not overly depleted by injury and absences. For the highlight of the year, who could go past the Battle of the West. In this game our neighbours hammered us for the first 60 minutes, putting on 27 points. But for the last 20 minutes, back came Suburbs with 21 points, and with time up on the clock we were 6 points down, but the whistle had not blown, and we had possession. And so it was a fairy tale all team effort to get the skipper, Josh McKenzie, over the line, under the sticks, leaving it to our magical mystery man at first five to slot over the conversion and take the win.

Suburbs finished the season in 10th position which should have been enough to secure a place in the newly formatted 2025 competition, where the 10 clubs will compete for the Gallaher Shield. However after other factors were inputted, Suburbs came up with a ranking of 8th. It remains to be seen how the newly formatted competition will go, but whatever the Union has done to try and address the problems with grassroots rugby, nothing has been done to address the most glaringly obvious problem, which is the horrific mismatch between the numbers of players leaving their clubs to enter secondary school rugby competition, and the number of players re-joining their clubs once they leave their secondary school.

2024 Senior Prizegiving

The senior prizegiving took place on Saturday 3 August. The two coveted Old Boys awards were presented to:

Ideal Premier Player (The John Carter Memorial Trophy) – Carlos Donnell-Brown

Ideal Club Member (The Mick Gibson Cup) – Edmond Fuiava

(See pictures below)

2024 Annual Pre-Test Luncheon

The 29th Annual Pre-Test Luncheon was held on Friday 27 September, with guest speakers Wallaby Ben Darwin and All-Black Manager Darren Shand – with new  MC Geoff Dolan keeping the day running smoothly. Darren Shand has been the All-Black team manager for coaches Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, and Ian Foster, in a career spanning 20 years.

All-in-all, a highly successful day, with plenty of positive feedback from the guests. Thanks to the event sponsors for their support – Mainfreight, Asahi, 5 Digital Printing and Captains Craft Beer (Hancocks).

2024 Annual Suburbs Old Boys Golf Day 

The Suburbs Old Boys Golf Day was played on Sunday 24th November at Redwood Park. Congratulations to the Suburbs Old Boys Golf Day winner – Phil Webb.

A good day was had by all !!! Thanks to Organiser: Lloyd Dowd. 

2024 Premiers Match Results