Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

Rugby is king in the Western Bay of Plenty when it comes to grassroots sport.

Last Saturday, an estimated 5000 spectators flooded into two Western Bay venues, to watch the three club rugby finals.

This avid rugby fan was afforded the luxury of watching the BOPRU Baywide premier final, from his lounge, courtesy of live streaming of the title decider.

Going back to the 1980s, local rugby fans could keep up with what was then the Tauranga Rugby Sub-Union finals day with Radio BOP broadcasting from the Tauranga Domain.

Tauranga radio began with the quaintly named 1ZD, who began broadcasting in 1961. The announcers were taught to speak in a correct English tone with rock’n’roll a bad word in the broadcasting studio.

In the 1980, the station morphed into Radio BOP, located in the now gone Bay of Plenty Saving Bank tower at the start of Devonport Road.

Radio BOP was heavily community focused and Sunday morning local club rugby results were listened to by a large number of rugby supporters.

One of the icons of Radio BOP was Brian Kelly who is still in good voice on radio to this day. And every Saturday morning runs a local sport show from 7am to 8am talking local rubgy and another sports.

The initial coverage of live screening of sport was usually fairly basic, however the transition to the current times, resulted in the excellent coverage of the Te Puke Sports v Greerton Marist premier title decider at the Murray Salt Stadium in Te Puke.

Local Gecko Productions based in Rotorua, provided a very professional presentation including replays and two well researched local commentators.

A Te Puke try after 12 minutes opened the scoring to give the hosts an advantage that they never surrendered. The match was well and truly up for grabs at halftime with the Te Puke Pirates in front at 5-3.

Two tries stretched the home team’s lead to16 early in the second spell. Greerton Marist were in desperate straits in endeavouring to win their first Baywide title, and came back hard, to score a converted touchdown with a little over 10 minutes remaining.

A Pirates penalty and a second Greerton converted try wrapped up an intense encounter with Te Puke Sports triumphing 22-17.

Mount Maunganui, gave their large band of supporters on hand at Blake Park plenty to celebrate, in winning the BOPRU Colts/Under 85kg and Western Bay of Plenty Sub-Union Championships.

Only the truly best rugby sides go through a full season unbeaten, with the Mount age-group team achieving that feat when they defeated Te Puna 35-7.

It was hard to know whether the players or noisy supporters sideline were more exhausted, after the Western Bay Championship final stretched to over 100 minutes of rugby, fought out between Mount Maunganui and Greerton Marist

With the scores locked at 17 points apiece after the regulation 80 minutes the sides headed for two 10-minute spells of extra time to determine a competition winner.

Mount Maunganui scored a try and then added a penalty goal in the added time, to take out the title decider 25-17 and kickstart a night of celebration at Blake Park, which wrapped up a day of scintillating Western Bay rugby finals.