Bay of Plenty

One evening in the summer of 2003, Joe Schmidt, deputy principal of Tauranga Boys College, gets a knock on the door. The visitor was to the point: ‘Vern Cotter wants you to be the backs coach of the Bay of Plenty. Are you in?’ Joe was in and, one year later, he’d help the unlikely contenders to one of the most cherished prizes in New Zealand rugby.

When the Bay of Plenty finally won the Ranfurly Shield for the first time on the 15th of August 2004, it brought grown men to tears. The fact that the unfancied Steamers had taken the famous Log o’ Wood out of Auckland’s hands made it even sweeter as the pain of a cruel 1996 loss to Auckland after being 29-11 ahead loomed large over the Bay’s collective rugby conscience.

A shield that had been handed to the New Zealand Rugby Union back in 1902 by the Earl of Ranfurly (then Governor of New Zealand) – mistakenly engraved with footballers not rugby players – and had gone on to become the most prized piece of silverware in domestic rugby, was finally theirs.

Those longer in the tooth were crying further tears of joy as they remembered the failed challenge against Canterbury in 1984 when the Bay were 10-0 up but ended up losing 18-13, having had a try disallowed.

Those were far from the only Ranfurly Shield losses the Bay had to bear, just the most gut-wrenching. The unique ‘challenge’ format of the shield where the side holding it can be challenged by visiting teams meant they’d had plenty of opportunities before and recent losses in  ’91, ’89, ’87, and ’81 had resigned Bay fans to – only half-jokingly – assuming that black magic was at work. In total, eighteen times they had challenged for the Ranfurly Shield, and eighteen times they had lost – many of them against Auckland.

Which is why the emotions were so free-flowing when the final whistle went at Eden Park to seal a 33-28 victory on the first day of the 2004 National Provincial Championship season. It sent the 2,000-odd travelling Bay fans [organised by a fan group known as the BOP Mafia and inspired by an enormous super fan known as Hori Bop and his sidekick Mini Bop] into delirium. As the Auckland fans slipped away, those clad in gold and blue were free to start a party that had been 93 years in the making. 

And it was future Leinster and Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt – at that time the Bay’s assistant/backs coach under head coach Vern Cotter – that kicked things off. “There was a couple of minutes to play and we were eight points ahead,” Joe tells the Rugby Journal, “and although they had a penalty I knew they didn’t really have enough time to get the ball back in play even if they got three, five or seven points so that’s when I stood up, shook VC’s [Vern Cotter] hand and said, ‘well done mate, you’ve just coached the first Bay of Plenty team to win the shield’.” 

For Joe and Vern the shield was their first piece of silverware as a coaching duo, and signalled the start of a rapid acceleration in both their lives. Within the next decade, they would become international head coaches, Vern with Scotland in 2014 and Joe with Ireland in 2013. In between, they would both coach Super Rugby sides, and would join forces again in France to win the Top 14 with Clermont Auvergne in 2010, whilst Joe would squeeze in two Heineken Cup wins and a Pro 12 title with Leinster.

Vern had first spotted Joe’s potential the season before, after inviting him to take a few one-off skills sessions with the team. He was impressed and offered Joe his first full-time coaching role as the Bay of Plenty’s backs coach. 

Until that point Joe had combined coaching rugby with teaching English, first at Palmerston North Boys’ High School, who he coached to two national schools finals, then at Napier Boys’ High School, who he coached to the prestigious Super 8 title, and latterly at Tauranga Boys’ College, where he was also the deputy principal.  Although his teaching career was flourishing, rugby was also calling, and Joe decided to roll the dice. 

“One day the CEO of the Bay of Plenty, Jon Brady, came in to talk to me,” recalls Joe. “My job at the time was to run the school day-to-day. So, with 1,600-testosterone-charged boys, it was nothing short of manic. 

“I thought he was initially coming in to talk to me about Tanerau Latimer who was a very good young player [Latimer won five caps for New Zealand in 2009], to get approval for him to be released to play for New Zealand Sevens, but instead he asked me if I would be prepared to be the backs coach for the Steamers. It just so happened that I had leave the following year, after my masters, so I had the time flexibility.

“I was absolutely apprehensive though,” admits Joe. “At the first team meeting I met Toops [Paul Tupai] who shook my hand and introduced himself – he looked like this pretty gnarly old bugger. He was anything but that off the field, but he was pretty gnarly on it, I’ve got to say. Guys like Wayne Ormond too, who was a bit of a legend in the Bay of Plenty. He had worked in forestry and, honestly, he was as hard as timber, and just as difficult to knock down.”

In Joe and Vern’s first season, the Bay finished fifth in the NPC – a welcome break for Bay fans after two seasons of relegation battles. Joe brought the finesse to a side that was moulded in Vern’s image.

Without subtracting any of the gnarl up front from the likes of Ormond, Tupai and future Tongan captain Nili Latu, Joe sharpened the Bay’s attacking instincts, turning them from a team that was hard to beat at home into one that could confidently take their game on the road, even to places like Eden Park. 

Going into the game, the Bay knew they had a chance to take the shield for the first time. Not only had the Bay beaten Auckland the season before at their home game in Mount Manganui, but Auckland’s All Blacks were still away on Tri Nations duty, meaning the likes of Joe Rokocoko, Doug Howlett, Xavier Rush and Keven Mealamu were all missing. 

But rugby stocks in Auckland never run low and they could still count on fully-fledged New Zealand internationals Daniel Braid and Sione Lauaki, as well as New Zealand Sevens star Orene Ai’i, Fijian international Isa Nacewa, New Zealand rugby league convert Tasesa Lavea, and All Blacks prop in-waiting John Afoa.

The Steamers by comparison had full-back Adrian Cashmore, with two New Zealand caps from the 90s, and scrum-half Kevin Senio, who would go on to win a solitary All Black cap in 2005. Hooker Aleki Lutui brought thirteen Tongan caps to the table and compatriot Taufa’ao Filise brought twelve. Latu was still uncapped. 

Auckland may have edged it on paper but only just, and in fly-half Glen Jackson, outside centre Rua Tipoki and wing Anthony Tahana, the Bay had a smart and effective backline, honed by Joe.

Tipoki was the star turn:  a combative wildcard who had bounced around the provinces before finding stability at the Bay of Plenty that season, and excelling. Light on his feet, he was impossible to pin down and had a hand in all three Steamers tries, with his 40m run up field in the 73rd minute to set up the decisive try for Tahana becoming the stuff of Bay of Plenty folklore. 

But if Tipoki generated the excitement, it was the 28-year-old Glen Jackson that brought an all-important calm to proceedings, and points, 23 of them in all, with a try, a drop goal, three penalties and three conversions. 

Jackson was already an established provincial player with sixty appearances for the Chiefs in the Super 12 and was the ideal on-field general for Joe and Vern.

It was a highly charged and physical beginning to the match, with the Bay’s performance fortified by the occasion being number eight Tupai’s 100th appearance for the province. Auckland however scored first. The Bay then hit back after Tipoki stole possession and ran up the right touchline. Lutui drove hard into Auckland’s defence allowing Jackson to make a half-break and set up inside centre Grant McQuoid to dive over. Auckland scored a second try and were threatening a third when Jackson read the play and intercepted to relieve the pressure. When he was hauled down, Samoan wing Apoua Stewart carried on the attack and Tipoki put Latu away with a well-timed pass. With Auckland in disarray, Jackson finished what he started by running in the try.

The Bay went into half-time with a 20-15 lead and Vern implored his team to keep on attacking.

 “VC was just trying to give them confidence because the thing you can’t do to win a game like that is lose your confidence,” recalls Joe. “If you try to protect a lead against a team with the firepower that Auckland have, they are going to run over you. You know they are going to score so you’ve got to go out and score some yourself. I think we both sensed that they [the players] were feeling the pinch, because historically, in 1996, the Bay of Plenty lost a Ranfurly Shield challenge match against Auckland when they were leading 29-11.”

That match again.

With Vern’s words resonating, the Bay were able to keep their nerve after Auckland scored the first try of the second half with Jackson’s boot keeping them in it. Then with eight minutes to play, Jackson saw a chance to hit a drop goal. From 30m out and to the left of the posts, he hit it sweetly and the Bay went 26-25 ahead. The nerves jangled but Tipoki had other ideas and surged forward, making his way to 10m from the Auckland line. Jackson looped it out to Tahana and one of the Bay’s most prolific wingers of all-time rounded the Auckland captain Braid and touched down. Jackson slotted the conversion from the touchline to round off an incredible individual performance, and the Bay were eight points ahead with four minutes to go.  

Given what happened in 1996, no one was celebrating just yet. But when Auckland won a penalty two minutes from time and opted for the posts and a losing bonus point, Joe stood up to shake Vern’s hand on a piece of history stamped 33-28.

The celebrations went up another gear when captain Ormond got his hands on the shield, lifting it above his head before handing it on to a teary Paul Tupai. Not only was it his 100th appearance for the province but he had played in the heartbreaking 1996 loss.

After the laps of honour, the players headed to the side of the Eden Park pitch to join the fans, with hugs and handshakes, and haka after haka. 

Up in the stands, the Bay of Plenty Times’ rugby writer Jamie Troughton was hammering away at his match copy when he noticed the mood of the Auckland players starting to change. “Auckland were gutted,” remembers Jamie. “For probably ten minutes they were quiet and gutted and then they just got swept up in this incredible emotion. And they were really good about it. They quickly recognised the significance and historical importance, and what it meant. They looked around and saw all these former players in tears and they saw the crowd and this big pocket of Bay supporters led by Hori Bop and Mini Bop, who was a vertically challenged guy who used to make his name being tossed in pubs in dwarf tossing competitions so … there was Hori Bop and Mini Bop and they were leading the charge. There was so much jubilation around them. I’ve seen nothing like it before or since.”

For Paul Tupai, the memories that come to mind most readily were from the homecoming a few hours later, when the successful Steamers stepped off the team bus in the car park of the World’s End pub in Tauranga – the largest city in the Bay and the training base for the Steamers. “It must have been around nine or ten o’clock,” recalls Paul. “And you pull in to this pub car park, and it is packed with people, on a Sunday night, and you get off the bus and there’s old people there who don’t even want to touch [the Ranfurly Shield], they just want to see it, and they say to you ‘we’ve been waiting all our lives for this trophy to come to the Bay of Plenty’ and I thought that’s what it meant to the province. You don’t realise how special it is until you see grown men cry because we had won it.”

The celebrations shifted to the pub and continued with vigour. “I drove back from Auckland and wrote until 3am as we were doing eight pages in that Monday paper,” says Jamie. “Then I was like ‘oh, I wonder if they are still partying.’ I got down to the pub and it had just shut and the players had moved on to someone else’s house and I was just devastated, I really wanted to party with them.” 

By that stage Paul was in bed, with the Ranfurly Shield. “Because it was my 100th game I got to take it home, so I had it for 24 hours,” he says. “I slept with it at the end of the bed. 

“I woke up, took my eldest fella Conor [who now plays for Northampton Saints] to day care and all the parents from the kindergarten were there in the hope that Conor would bring the trophy in for show-and-tell. Conor gets the shield out and tries to drag it across the road and I’m there helping him and sure enough all the parents are waiting around the corner! I was a bit hungover as well and I’ll never forget pulling up at the big McDonald’s drive thru with the trophy balanced in the front seat. And the guy in McDonald’s goes, ‘that’s not the Ranfurly Shield is it? And I go ‘yea, yea it is, I won it yesterday’. And he says, ‘McDonald’s is on me, help yourself!’ So I got a free McDonald’s out of that morning as well!”

Paul had started something, as Joe has a similar story to tell. “To finally get your hands on the shield, it was really special,” he says, “and I’ve got photos with it with my kids and my young fellow Tim, he’s now 25, but he was going off to St Mary’s Primary School with the Ranfurly Shield under his arm for show-and-tell. I think things are always more special when you share them with your family and close friends and because we had lived in the Bay for a while before even getting involved with rugby, we had some really good friends to share it with.

“I grew up as a kid going to Ranfurly Shield games, going to watch Manawatu when they had the shield [for 14 matches from 1976-78], and I tried to win the shield as a player too, so I knew what it meant.”

As the celebrations became a province-wide affair, the shield was in high demand. As were Jamie and his colleagues at the Bay of Plenty Times. “That shield touched every second person in the Bay I think,” he says. “It ended up in farmers’ paddocks, bars, hairdressers’ salons … I worked so many hours that week, but it didn’t feel like work at all. We were going out and every reporter in the building was right into it. Half of them didn’t know what rugby was but they knew the significance and they could feel the excitement.”

Joe adds: “I don’t think VC and I were any better behaved than the players really. I was trying to get work done but the concentration wasn’t great. By the time we got back late Sunday night, we’d given them [the players] the Monday off anyway, but then they were all out celebrating on Monday night! So we gave them Tuesday off as well because we thought in the end, this is going to be a total waste of time if we try to train.”

Ranfurly Shield fever had hit the Bay of Plenty, and hit it hard. In speaking to Joe, Jamie and Paul, it’s clear that the circumstances around the 1996 loss to Auckland played a major part in the 2004 excess. 

In 1996, the Bay were a second division side yet were leading Auckland into the final stages. An unprecedented piece of history beckoned if they could hold on to their 29-23 lead [having been 29-11 up at one stage] as no side had won the Ranfurly Shield as a second tier team before. 

In the last play of the game, the Bay had the put-in to their own scrum. Get the ball off the park and the most famous Ranfurly Shield victory of all time would be theirs.

Paul – who played in the match – takes up the story: “I will always remember it. He’s passed away now but Joe Tauiwi, who played New Zealand Sevens and was from Rotorua like me, bent down to feed the ball into the scrum but was looking at our fly-half to see what the call was and the Auckland tighthead prop hooked it out of his hand and no one saw it. Auckland won the ball, they passed it out, ran 60 metres and Matt Carrington scored the try and kicked the winning conversion. We had the shield for the last play of the game – and they robbed us, and that day I saw grown men cry as well.”

Jamie adds: “It was another epic tale of heartbreak and woe for the Bay which seemed to stretch back into the dark ages with all the near misses. And it was like ‘ahh, we’re buggered, the jinx is for real, there’s no way we can win it now.’ I had never cried after a rugby game, that was the first and last time.”

The story gets more macabre for the Bay as Jamie shares a tale that may yet be apocryphal – it having been passed on to him at a later date – that the then-Bay of Plenty CEO was planning the Ranfurly Shield parade at the time that Auckland scored the try to deny them their history-making moment. 

However, it wasn’t just avenging 1996 that fuelled the euphoria of 2004. It was also the nature of the Ranfurly Shield itself, surely the most torturous and elusive accolade in rugby.

“The Bay’s first challenge for the Ranfurly Shield was in 1920 and they had all those challenges over all those years and had never won it,” Jamie explains. “There are still teams today that have never won the Ranfurly Shield. Otago won it in 2013 and that was their first time since the late 1950s. So it’s a real quirk and sides can go for decades without even having a challenge, that’s the elusive nature of it. And it happened to the Bay, it kept on swapping before they’d get a challenge or they’d have a really strong team one year but only get to play the holders at our place. It was just part of its charm and part of the frustration of it, I guess. But when it all came together it was this glorious moment in the universe! It just meant so much.”

As the celebrations eventually started to slow down, the Bay had to prepare for their first shield defence that weekend, against their closest rivals Waikato. 

After writing off Monday and Tuesday, Joe and Vern trained the team on Wednesday and Friday with the match on Saturday and 17,600 fans piled into the Blue Chip Stadium in Mount Manganui – which was also a speedway venue, meaning a racetrack separated the fans in the stands from the pitch.

“It wasn’t really a very good venue for rugby,” says Nick Baker, one of the key organisers of the BOP Mafia. 

“But for that shield defence against Waikato and then for the second defence against Canterbury, the atmosphere was simply fantastic. We had over 17,000 going [capacity 19,000], which for our little town and our union was huge. I have never been in a rugby atmosphere like that since, not even for an All Blacks game.” 

With an atmosphere that roused the players back up to the highs of the week before, the Bay beat Waikato 26-20 in another cracking game, with Tahana and Cashmore scoring the tries and Jackson contributing another sixteen points. Waikato had come fully loaded with the likes of All Blacks Byron Kelleher, Sitiveni Sivivatu and Keith Lowen as well as Liam Messam and Richard Kahui in the side. At the final whistle a pitch invasion ensued and the partying could begin again. And not just on the pitch. The Waikato match had virtually balanced the books for the Bay, who had come close to financial ruin in 2003 after a disastrous 2002 season on the field. 

With an away match against Taranaki in the diary the following week, the pressure to defend the Log o’ Wood was temporarily lifted and Bay fans had the chance to breathe and to even get used to life as New Zealand’s Ranfurly Shield holders.  

Canterbury, however, were up next and whilst anything felt possible, it would be a tall order against a backline that read: Justin Marshall, Andrew Mehrtens, Marika Vunibaka, Aaron Mauger, Dan Carter, Caleb Ralph, and Ben Blair, whilst the forwards included Brad Thorn, Reuben Thorne, Greg Somerville, Corey Flynn and Sam Broomhall. 

Again the Bay rose to the challenge at a rocking Blue Chip Stadium, but Canterbury’s world class told and they won 33-26. After 21 days of bliss, the Ranfurly Shield was no longer in the Bay’s possession. 

 “I wouldn’t say I was relieved,” begins Jamie, “but I was like, ’yep, OK, that was an incredible three weeks but man we couldn’t have gone for much longer!’ It was, yeah, it was … it felt like it had done all it needed to do in the province. It had anointed us with its presence and all that sort of thing and then it moved on almost organically. It happened to be Canterbury and it was an amazing game as well. It chucked a recharge into the province, that’s for sure.”

That recharge was sustained for the rest of the season, and over the following seasons too as big crowds continued to head down to watch the team that had delivered the most glorious month in memory. Further home wins came against Otago, Wellington and Southland before a win away at North Harbour earned the Bay an NPC semi-final. Unfortunately it was against Canterbury, in Christchurch. Sure enough, Canterbury won 44-12, before going on to beat Wellington in the final to win their fifth NPC title.

The Bay have not had a season like 2004 since. Many of its architects have, however, enjoyed huge success elsewhere – the Bay’s success having seemingly caught the attention of suitors at home and abroad.

For Joe it opened the door to becoming an assistant coach in Super Rugby for the Auckland Blues, the next step in a coaching career that would see him win the World Rugby Coach of the Year award in 2018. Likewise for Vern, who joined Canterbury Crusaders as their forwards coach in 2005, staying for two seasons before answering the call from Clermont. Fly-half Glen Jackson was offered an opportunity abroad to join Saracens, who he played for until retiring from playing in 2010. Paul – aged 31 – gained international recognition for Samoa the following season prompting him to prolong his playing career for a further twelve years in England (he had been intending to retire in 2005). He credits the way the Bay played in 2004, and the Ranfurly Shield success, as carving out another decade for him. He retired in 2018, aged 43, with over 1000 games on the clock.

Rua Tipoki made his way to Munster (via North Harbour) and formed a memorable centre pairing with Lifeimi Mafi, which propelled the Irish province to a second Heineken Cup in 2008. Captain Wayne Ormond remained at the Bay for another season before heading to Japan, with Nili Latu doing the same a few years later. Latu’s international career in the meantime flourished, as he played 54 times for Tonga. Taufa’ao Filise stayed on for one more season before heading to Wales to play for the Cardiff Blues, where he stayed for thirteen years, retiring in 2018, whilst his countryman Aleki Lutui followed a similar route a year later, arriving at Worcester and then playing for Glasgow, then Gloucester, and is still going strong aged 42 for Ampthill in England’s second tier. 

But what of rugby in the Bay of Plenty; has there been a discernible legacy from those 21 days as Ranfurly Shield holders?

The Bay’s CEO Mike Rogers believes there has been, especially on grass roots participation. He told the Rugby Journal that “it would be fair to say that previously Bay of Plenty was deemed to be a small province that from time to time punched above its weight. Now Bay of Plenty is the third largest province in New Zealand (behind Auckland and Canterbury) in terms of participation.” 

The province hasn’t however had a red-letter day to celebrate like 15th August 2004. Only two Ranfurly Shield challenges have been contested in the past seventeen years, against Canterbury in 2005 and Hawke’s Bay in 2014. Over the same period, the Steamers have been relegated from the NPC top division, and hit the bottom of the second division in 2014. But they bounced back up in 2019 to make the play-offs in 2020 – the first time they had done so since 2004.

The fixture list for 2021 could see the Bay contest the Ranfurly Shield against current holders Hawke’s Bay on 19th September. But with Hawke’s Bay having to defend it against Otago and Waikato before the Bay arrive, the Log o’ Wood may have moved on before they get there. But it may not. That’s the beauty of the beast. 

Story by  Jack Zorab

Pictures by Jason Bartley, Getty Images and NZME/Bay of Plenty Times

This extract was taken from issue 14 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.