Rugby Corner

Laundry and beach day was followed by an epic ascent of Corner Peak up above Hawea. I was let off as I had some camp management to do. I’m very good at these kind of excuses. I also could have a meal ready for when they came back - this was the winning one.

Not too far from the top Meg suddenly decided she’d had enough and sat down in protest. At this very moment she received a message from Shannon saying that she and Steve had bought us tickets for the rugby at 6pm. That was all it took. Straight onto her feet and demanding her dad get a move on so that we could make the rugby.

It was a 7.5hr day out on the hill but we made the rugby in time (after I’d got them fed) to see the local Otago team Highlanders come on to a bagpipe sound track against the Crusaders who I think are from Christchurch. This is Our Horizontals home pitch from when he played for junior boys Upper Clutha.

That’s him centre of pic

Getting into the engine room

John Timu was the coach of the young Upper Clutha team and each week there was 1,2&3 points awarded plus a Snicker bar for an overall effort. One week Horizontal got points for “working hard in the engine room”.
These guys were a bit bigger.

There were 7000 tickets sold and the place was full of families sitting around the edge of the pitch. So when they kicked the ball out, it was either duck or catch. I think my favourite moment (Highlanders unfortunately lost to Crusaders) was the pitch invasion at the end…

The teams are at the far left corner. Every child that was able or allowed flooded across the pitch to get to their heroes.

Families could apply to host a player overnight and many kids had spent the day playing In The lake with their heroes.