Regional rugby

Rugby teams from Whanganui have had success at the lower levels of New Zealand rugby, winning third division titles in 1989, 1996 and 2003, and the Meads Cup (equivalent to the old second division championship) in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2015. Wanganui also won the second-tier Lochore Cup in 2014. A 15-all draw against the powerful Taranaki side of 1964 remains the closest the men from the River City have ever come to winning the Ranfurly Shield.

The Wanganui Rugby Football Union was established in 1888 and in its debut season drew 1–1 with the touring British team. The boys in blue and black went one better in 1913 with an 11–6 victory over Australia, and in 1966 they combined with neighbours King Country to topple the British Lions 12–6 at Whanganui. Wanganui currently competes in the semi-professional Heartland Championship. Along with East Coast, Poverty Bay, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, Horowhenua-Kapiti, Wairarapa-Bush and Wellington, Wanganui forms part of the Hurricanes Super Rugby franchise.  

Great players in blue and black

In 1897 John Blair became the first of 17 Whanganui players to pull on an All Blacks jersey. Until the emergence of Bill Osborne in 1975, Ernest (‘Moke’) Belliss was without doubt Whanganui’s greatest contribution to New Zealand rugby. Belliss made his representative debut for Wanganui in 1914 before enlisting to serve during the First World War. He first came to national attention as a member of the New Zealand Army team which won the King’s Cup tournament in Britain and then toured South Africa. Belliss played in the three home tests against the 1921 Springboks and captained the All Blacks in Australia the following year. A ‘devastating loose forward with explosive power’, Belliss has been compared to later players such as Waka Nathan and Wayne (‘Buck’) Shelford. Commentator Winston McCarthy remembered him as ‘hard, tough, fast, a good handler and a ferocious tackler’ – the embodiment of New Zealand’s rugby ideals. His opponents feared him and he was ‘a grand team man’; players of his era ranked him with the world’s best. His son Jack captained Wanganui until the early 1950s and his grandson Peter was a flanker or lock for the side in the 1970s before turning his attention to bowls, a sport in which he won two world titles.