Book marks rugby club’s history

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Robert Ellis (left) and Ray Swan with the original Hinds Rugby Football Club Jubilee booklet and the reprint.
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To mark 100 years of rugby at Hinds, the Southern Rugby Club have published a limited rerun of the Hinds Rugby Football Club 75th jubilee booklet.

It has an additional section added detailing the history of the Southern club since the amalgamation.

The Southern Rugby Club was formed in 1994 after the amalgamation of Mayfield and Hinds rugby clubs.

Ray Swan, who wrote the original Hinds rugby jubilee booklet, said the evolution of the book was interesting.

‘‘There is a Chisnall family in Hinds, former mayor Donna Favel was a Chisnall, we were doing some gardening at her place and after finding out I wrote the original book she ask where she could get a copy.

‘‘She wanted about four copies, one for her mother in Australia, and we couldn’t get them.’’

So the idea of doing a rerun of the book was born.

Now that the club is Southern Rugby Football Club they decided to mark the 100 year anniversary with a new print run of the original book with an extra section marking the years of the Southern Club 1994 to 2022.

Ray said there was a group of people involved in the making the book including Peter Lowe, Robert Ellis, Garry Brown and Angela Cushnie.

‘‘Angela put the book together this time,’’ he said.

Robert Ellis said they tried to get reports from past presidents of each year.

‘‘We went through presidents and club records, we saw the benefits of what we did with Hinds and Mayfield really come to fruition with the retention of the players in both districts being able to play up to senior level and achieve. We’ve had several Heartland players, we’ve won numerous Watters Cups,’’ he said.

Robert said for him the highlight in the book was the photo of four boys who all had great grandfathers who had played for Hinds and Mayfield back in the 1920’s.

Southern Rugby Football players who had great grandfathers playing in the original Hinds and Mayfield clubs, from left, Tom McCormick, Logan Bonnington, Bailey Chisnall and Ben Early.

‘‘We have kept that family and community connection.’’

‘‘It is very much Southern and we’re proud of that,’’ Ray said.

‘‘The Southern Rugby Club committee had the foresight to see the advantages of doing the rerun with the extended coverage of Southern, because they weren’t all Hinds or Mayfield people, there was no ‘them and us’,’’ he said.

The book costs $20, contact Robert on 027 534 2859 to obtain a copy.