Countdown clock set for 2026 Swindale Shield with draw release

It’s a little over six months until the start of the 2026 Wellington club rugby season, but with Friday’s Premier first round competition  draw release by the WRFU its expectation and anticipation is hanging in the air.

Mark down Saturday 4 April 2026 for the opening round of the Premier first round Swindale Shield. It is unconfirmed, but likely the Premier 2 Harper Lock Shield season and some other grades should start on the same afternoon.

For the first time in a while, the opening round does not pit this July’s Jubilee Cup finalists against each other. 2025 champions Hutt Old Boys Marist and runners-up Tawa will go their separate ways in the opening round.

HOBM will commence their season with their first trip into town, to face the Wellington Axemen at Hataitai Park. Tawa will face Petone at the Petone Rec.

Other matches to start the year will see Northern United hosting Marist St Pat’s at Porirua Park, last year’s unbeaten first round winners Oriental-Rongotai versus 2023 winners Paremata-Plimmerton at the Polo Ground, the Upper Hutt Rams against Pōneke at Maidstone Park, Wainuiomata meeting Avalon at William Jones Park and 2024 Old Boys Swindale and Jubilee Cup champions University versus Johnsonville.

OBU’s home games have all been listed as being at Nairnville Park, but it is understood that is a placeholder venue for the purposes of the draw and their home venue or venues is/are yet to be confirmed.

The first round also falls on Easter weekend 2026.

Anzac Day falls on a Saturday this year, so fourth round matches on 25 April will carry extra weight. King’s Birthday weekend games are on Saturday 30 May.

Eagles and Petone supporters will once again be waiting until deep into the competition for their annual fixture for the McBain Shield match. After being in the 13^th and final round this year it is scheduled for round 11.

A feature of Wellington club rugby is the number of interclub trophies on the line each week, with the McBain Shield being perhaps the most famous of these.

For example, the annual first round ‘Battle of Kilbirnie’ between Pōneke and Marist St Pat’s for the Horan-Millar Trophy is on round 10 on 6 June, while Pōneke hosts Ories for the Jim Grbich Memorial Shield at Kilbirnie Park on King’s Birthday Weekend in Round 9.

The Bill Brien Challenge Trophy is also on the line for the holders in home matches in the first round. This  has regularly changed hands over the past couple of seasons and the Upper Hutt Rams will be defending this first up against Pōneke in their match also for the Alby Makeham Shield and the replay of this July’s Hardham Cup final.

Club rugby Old Timers’ Days are yet to be confirmed.

• View the draw in the image above or download it here 2026 SWINDALE SHIELD DRAW

More details to come in the coming weeks (and months) on all of the above as the countdown clock has now been set.

Meanwhile, it is understood that the WRFU American Ambassadors club rugby 7s series is being held on 22 and 29 November. Details are yet to be confirmed publicly. There is also the inaugural Feilding Blitz 7s tournament on the 15^th so any Wellington teams attending that could get a jump on teams that are not in terms of game-time and match fitness.

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Club Rugby website Draws & Results and database announcement

With the 2026 draw release, it is also timely to tentatively announce our new Draws & Results and player database portal.

As followers of our site will know, February 2025 marked what became known as the Great Website Meltdown (GWM).

The GWM occurred because of a forced server upgrade migration and the entire Draws & Results and story archives 2005-24 section of our website breaking.

The front end of the website returned and can be viewed here https://clubrugby.co.nz/wellington/games-results.php?competition=3&season=21&round=4 (and use the navigation on the lefthand side to change years and competition).

But the issue remained of us being completely locked out of our web administration pages so we couldn’t and still can’t actually get in there and do anything to update teamlists and results! The GWM also had a lot to do with the fact that the website was first designed 20 years previously and the coding language was several versions out of date. Long story short, this became permanent. So we have drawn a ‘line in the sand’ whereby all records from 2005-24 are locked in place at the link above.

On the other side of that line, we have purchased and are in the process of integrating a new website for this. It will be a bit different, but could actually be better, and certainly modern and responsive for all devices, and every Premier player will now get his own profile page which can be updated with his bio and photo and stats as the case may be.

The flipside is that there is a lot of data entry and importing of files still to be done, that first have to be created as CSV spreadsheets, then checked and tagged, to get this up to speed for 2025. Then once this season is in there, we will enter the 2026 Premier draw, and probably look at other grades too.

We thank all our supporters and sponsors for their assistance, which enables us the time to chip away and get on top of all this work to be done.