Wellington Lions hunting fifth bonus point and NPC winning streak record win over Stags on Saturday

Riley Higgins gets his fend away when Wellington and Southland last met in 2023. Photo: Mike Lewis Pictures

The Wellington Lions will be hunting their fifth straight win with maximum points when they face the Southland Stags at Jerry Collins on Saturday afternoon, while it would also be their 18th straight NPC win over the Stags.

The win is the start of their ‘storm week’, with matches to come In quick succession against Otago (next Wednesday) and Tasman (next Saturday) to come).

In the modern era, the Stags traditionally represent a bonus point victory for Wellington, but they are always dangerous quarry.

They are also in good form. The Stags are coming off a 31-26 away win against Northland.

The Lions have won their last 17 NPC matches in succession against Southland who last had a win over Wellington (22-20) at Invercargill on 24 August 2002.

This is the joint longest winning streak for Wellington against another union in the NPC, alongside the 17 wins against Taranaki between 1990-2008. So a win on Saturday will establish a new outright record for most consecutive wins over another province in the NPC.

The above doesn’t include a non-championship match they played at Porirua Park in 2021, won 24-22 by Wellington, so if you included that too that it would already be 18 wins in a row for Wellington over Southland in first-class rugby.

When the Lions and the Stags met at Porirua Park in a non-NPC match in 2021. 

The Lions won their last match 39-17 in round three last year at the Hutt Rec. This was also a Ranfurly Shield defence.

The Wellington Lions and Southland Stags teams go into Saturday’s clash having met 33 times in NPC rugby with Wellington having now won 27, Southland five and one draw.

Overall, they have met 101 times against each other. Wellington has won 70 matches, Southland 24, and seven have been drawn.

Their rivalry goes back 128 years.

The Lions prevailed 11-0 when they first met in Wellington in 1896. Between 1896-1975 (before the start of the NPC era in 1976) they clashed 66 times, the Lions winning 42, Southland 18 and there were six draws.

The following is an abridged passage from an article we wrote for a Lions matchday programme about a decade ago and published on our website in 2015:

Wellington had captured the Ranfurly Shield in 1914 off Taranaki. Owing to the war, it wasn’t until 1919 that Wellington accepted its first challenge. What was also interesting at the time was that Wellington took the Shield on the road and accepted challenges from many of the top unions at their own grounds.

This included three defences in the South Island in a week in 1920 – against South Canterbury, Otago and Southland. On this whirlwind 1920 tour they defeated South Canterbury (32-15) and Otago (16-5), but their luck ran out when they met Southland in Invercargill – losing 6-17 and thus relinquished the Shield to Southland who won it for the first time in just its third ever challenge.

In September the following year, 1921, Southland reciprocated and brought the Shield to Wellington, the Lions duly recapturing it with a 28-13 victory. Five different players scored Wellington’s five tries in an emphatic win.

Following this, Southland were to go on and play a dominant role in the rich tapestry of Shield history in the years before and immediately after the second war world war, holding it again in 1929/30, 1930, 1937 and 1938/39-1947 (interrupted by WW11).

In 1930, Wellington ended one of these runs and once more they held New Zealand’s greatest sporting prize aloft. Wellington, featuring the famous 1924 All Black pair of captain Mark Nicholls at first five-eighth and former Hawke’s Bay star Bert Cooke at second five-eighth, won 12-3 in heavy mud, outscoring the home side four tries to one.

In July 1931 the Lions invited the Southlanders on to Athletic Park for their first home match of the next season for a chance to snatch it back.

Southland was the underdog but were expected to mount a strong challenge having just lost to Auckland 5-6. Dominion correspondent ‘Five-eighth’ was worried. “Although the Wellington side is an exceptional one, the fact remains that it has had only one representative match this year [against Taranaki], and has not had the chances it might have had to develop its team work,” he fretted.

Five-eighth’s fears needn’t have been necessary when the next day the Dominion reported that Wellington won a “substantial victory” and “mainly through the efforts of a swift back division, Wellington’s rugby representatives defeated Southland by 36 points to 13. First five-eighth and captain Herb Lilburne and wings Nelson Ball and EF Barry each scored tries for Wellington. The Dominion went on to report: “It would be hard to find a representative side with a speedier set of backs than Wellington, and yesterday their speed spelt Southland’s defeat.”

Unfortunately, the Lions only had the Ranfurly Shield for one more game. A month later they again took the Shield it on the road and lost 6-8 to Canterbury in Christchurch.