Carterton Reapers (vs) Birkenhead Wolfpacks
A small but very vocal crowd packed the tiny scaffold-like stand at Howard Booth Park in Carterton on Saturday to watch the Carterton Reapers take on a visiting Birkenhead side. The game, which I’m sure most would agree wasn’t the best technically brilliant football you’ll ever see, was however thoroughly entertaining and funny, and both the players and spectators would have come away happy to have been part of it.
Carterton player and spokesperson Rod O’Leary explained that he had a call from the Birkenhead Wolfpacks organiser, Rod Bray. “He’d been to Carterton a few times, enjoyed it and talked to his teammates about visiting the Wairarapa. So he looked us up, got my phone number, we had a chat it was on.
“We pulled a team together. The main criteria was we had to include the oldest twenty people in the club.” I asked whether he meant the oldest players in the club? “Oh, it’s pretty much the same. I’ve come out of retirement to play, and we have at least one seventy-year-old out there.”
The Birkenhead Wolfpack team have an end of season away trip every year. “This team has been going in various forms since the mid-90s,” says Rod Bray. “We always do a trip at the end of a season and we’ve been to most places in the country but we haven’t made it to Carterton.”
The visitors play in the Auckland veterans ninth division, and this year finished sixth. Before the game started I enquired if they were any good. Rod replied “the club’s really good, but we’re s@#t. We’re all in our 50s and 60s but we’re still playing and enjoying it.”
I have no idea what the score was and I don’t think anyone was keeping count anyway. There was plenty of good-humoured banter and quite a few bevvies consumed - especially since there was a ‘brown card’ rule that meant anybody who scored or were unfortunate enough to make a silly blunder had to leave the field and consume a ‘refreshment’ before being allowed back on.
It was good to cover a non-competitive game - great to see the older guys and a couple of much younger ladies enjoying a run around playing the game they love.
All the photos are online here