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Above: Flashback to the 2013 Hardham Cup final with Vaea Fifita skipping clear for the Wellington Axemen. Norths would win the final 26-16, but Fifita made the first of his 52 appearances for the Wellington Lions that season. He subsequently made his Hurricanes debut in 2015 and played 11 Tests for the All Blacks 2017-19 and is now a Tongan international playing for Montauban in France. Will more players like him emerge in 2026?
A new year of club, college and community rugby in the Wellington and lower North Island is almost upon us.
A 39-strong Hurricanes roster opened their season on Friday at Sacred Heart College in Auckland, former home of the Condor 7s, with a 44-36 win over the Blues.
They return home this coming Saturday for their annual pre-season community match. This is at Porirua Park at 1.00pm and will be more a structured match with fewer players and two 40 minute halves, and will feature All Blacks who didn’t play in Auckland.
For those that can’t make it or they are down at the National Club 7s Tournament at Ngati Toa Domain it is live on Huddy Sports. More details to come.
More to come from the middle of this week about the National Club 7s but this includes hosts and defending champions Paremata-Plimmerton, recent Wellington 7s winners Hutt Old Boys Marist and some 10 more of New Zealand’s leading club teams in what will be a quality tournament with no weak games.
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Two months this week to the start of the 2026 Wellington club rugby season!
All clubs are into their pre-season training and putting their pieces together in terms of planning their season, with more details to come in the coming weeks.
This includes annual player movement, and Sideline Conversions has already been sent messages as to the comings and goings of several players. We have set up our ‘Gains & Losses’ spreadsheet, so any confirmed player news please send through (not to be published until later in March).
Details of Old Timers’ Days to come too, but one club celebrating a milestone this year is Wainuiomata. They will be hosting their 80th anniversary on King’s Birthday Weekend when they host fellow suburbanites Tawa in round nine of the Swindale and Harper Lock Shields.
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We have had it confirmed that the annual Academy series between Wellington-Manawatu-Hawke’s Bay is coming up later in February. The Sam Doyle Memorial Trophy will be on the line. Like Last year, this will be run over two Saturdays on 21 and 28 February in Palmerston North in ‘Games of three Halves’ format, which worked well.
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A Kiwi rugby player living in Perth has miraculously walked out of hospital, seven months after he fractured his spine in a rugby game and was feared to never walk again.
Joseph “Peanut” Ritchie broke his C4 and C3 vertebrae and suffered severe trauma to his spinal cord when a scrum collapsed in the first half of a match between Nedlands Rugby’s third grade team and Joondalup Brothers on June 21.
Ritchie, who relocated from the Hutt Valley to Western Australia in 2009, was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital, where he had emergency surgery and was told there was a chance he may never walk again.
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New Draws & Results website
As past readers will know, it was this time last year that Club Rugby sustained much angst after a server upgrade caused the loss of the Draws & Results section. This subsequently came back – and all this history and records 2005-2024 inclusive is online at https://clubrugby.co.nz/wellington/games-results.php?competition=3&season=21&round=4 (and linked to on the website) but we lost our administration access so couldn’t add 2025.
A new website is up at https://stats.clubrugby.nz/ and backfilled to include 2025 with 2026 all set up and ready to go. This is obviously different to the old website, but the positive aspects of it are that it’s purposefully connected with this website we are on now and it’s a modern website and fully compatible with all devices.
The downside is we can only really cover 1-2 competitions as it much more work to set up and run (the old website built in 2004 was still the best out there from that perspective). So that’s the Premier grade (Swindale and Jubilee/Hardham) and one other. This could be Harper Lock Shield or by past request the First XV competition over the winter. Yet to be decided. For everything else, it is hoped that the issues with Rugby Xplorer are smoothed over and this is a reliable experience in 2026 and we can just link to that for click throughs to these competitions.
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Sad news recently with the passing of Peter Osborne, four-time Jubilee Cup winner with University in the 1950s and leading club and union administrator, and in latter years a big club rugby supporter. More here https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1406736431240979&set=a.775196307728331
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Who is the oldest surviving Jubilee Cup winning captain?
Who is the oldest surviving Jubilee winning player?
We think we know the answer to the first question, but not the second.
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A big year for the All Blacks coming up. But first they need a new coaching team. So something to look out for in the coming weeks.
Their coaching saga has dominated rugby headlines this summer. In an impassioned column for Rugby Pass, Hamish Bidwell argued that the decline of the All Blacks set in after the loss to Ireland in Chicago in 2016. Since that Test, the All Blacks have won 83 out of 104 internationals, including defeats in the 2019 semi-final and the 2023 Rugby World Cup final. In 104 Tests before the Irish loss, the All Blacks won 92 Tests, inculding the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cup finals. The All Blacks’ winning percentage dropped from 88.46% to 79.80%.
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It is understood they are taking some 50 players on their tour of South Africa and the USA later this year. In 1996 they took 36 players and played eight games and four tests, the same as this 2026 tour.
Sideline Conversions has also been told there could be some pressure points with the Wellington Lions contracting players later this year, with likely additional players having to be contracted for the NPC to cover for any extras away fulltime with the All Blacks.
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What has happened to the NZ Herald sports department? They don’t seem to cover much local sport anymore. Especially non-international rugby (but also domestic cricket – in fact any sport that is not international is beneath them). They seemingly washed their hands of the Auckland, North Harbour and Counties-Manukau NPC teams last year and perhaps they are doing the same to the Blues?
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Sir Gordon Tietjens led the All Blacks Sevens from their 1994 Hong Kong Sevens win through to the 2016 Rio Olympics. His international sevens coaching record stands out: 80 tournament wins from 183 events, with 891 wins, 142 losses, and 9 draws. His achievements include eight Hong Kong Sevens titles, four Commonwealth Games gold medals, and Rugby World Cup Sevens victories in 2001 and 2013. Over the first 17 World Series seasons, Tietjens guided the team to 12 overall titles. During his 22 years as coach, 56 All Blacks came through his teams, which became known for their fitness and high standards, outscoring opponents 31,121 to 9,860. Tietjens was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2012. He coached Samoa from 2017 to 2020 but faced challenges such as poor governance, limited resources, and the Covid pandemic, and was unable to match his earlier success. As an advisor to China, he helped the national women’s team earn core status in the 2024/25 World Series, and China improved from 12th to 6th at the Paris Olympics. Before coaching, Tietjens played fullback for Bay of Plenty (78 games, 12 tries, 39 wins) and Waikato (14 games, 1 try, 7 wins). He also coached Bay of Plenty from 1992 to 2000, winning 61 out of 123 games and securing the NPC second division title in 2000.
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This Monday column is a collaborative effort, somewhere to collate news and information and some independent opinion looking at rugby from the ground up in a sea of social media which is getting increasingly fragmented and disparate.
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