From the Donny era to now
Right, who remembers the gloomy years before Donny rolled in? Back in my day I'd trudge along to Rugby Park in the wet watching us get thumped, so that 2012 final at Waikato Stadium felt like the sun coming out after a long winter 😄 whole of Tristram Street a sea of red and yellow, blokes I'd only nodded at for years hugging strangers. My first memory though is an old takeaway shop fella in Gisborne with a Chiefs flag in the window in the 90s, figured if he could believe, so could I. Good things take time, mates.
6 posts
-
✓Mate I watched that 2012 final crammed into a Gisborne pub with half my old club team, grown men nearly in tears when the whistle went 🔥💪 then flew up for the parade a week later just to be part of it. Never felt anything like it tbh. Ah well, nowt to do - still gives me chills thinking about Tristram Street that night 🙌You don't abandon your own.
-
Grew up out Hamilton way before the shift to Auckland, and my old man used to take me along when they were still the Chiefs in name mostly. Copped some hidings those years, tell you what. 2012 though, watching that crowd lift the boys in the last twenty minutes, I rang my dad straight after fulltime and neither of us said much, just laughed 😉 funny what a team does to a family, eh.Watch as long as I have and you'll get it.
-
Interesting reading OldSchoolEst66's post because my old man did the same, took me out to Rugby Park when a Chiefs win was a novelty you'd tell your workmates about on Monday. Small sample though, those mid-90s sides did put the odd good afternoon together. Comparing then and now, the honest answer is the 2012-13 bunch peaked higher than anything since. That side had leadership everywhere, Craig Alcock-style understated clubmen alongside the stars, and they simply refused to lose at Waikato Stadium in front of the Tristram Street crowd. The current team has better athletes and more attacking variety, and on their day they've matched anything I've watched, but there's a nuance here: the Donny era teams squeezed out the tight finals games with experience and belief, whereas this lot can still let one slip in the last quarter when the pressure climbs. Both worth loving, mind. Different flavours of the same red and yellow.
-
ha, rugby park in the wet, I was at a few of those myself, frozen to the bone and thinking "surely it gets better than this". then 2012 came along and the whole town just lifted, you could feel it in the streets for days after. good on all you young fellas who never knew the lean years, you don't appreciate a title quite the same way 😉 ah well, we'll seeSeen it all, lads.
-
Rugby Park in the wet: paid good NZ$ to watch us lose and get hypothermia as a bonus 🤣 my first memory was crying into a pie, hold my pint 2012 made up for it 😂Memes are analysis too.