North Harbour Rugby Union
The
North Harbour Rugby Union, commonly referred to colloquially as
North Harbour, is a provincial rugby team which competes in the
National Provincial Championship's (NPC) Premier League. North Harbour was formed in
1985 from clubs which broke away from the
Auckland Rugby Union. During this time the union's
NPC team has developed a reputation for playing quality rugby football.
North Harbour Rugby encompasses a geographical area that takes situated in
North Shore City and
Rodney district in 12 rugby clubs from Mahurangi in the north through to the North Shore club based in
Devonport, North Shore City, the southernmost area of the union.
Representative teams from North Harbour take part in both national and regional competitions. The North Harbour Senior side plays in the
Air New Zealand Cup.
As North Harbour is one of three NPC provinces involved in the
Blues franchise which takes part in the annual Southern Hemisphere Rugby
Super 14 competition, their players are eligible to be picked by the
Blues without relying on
player drafting, thus, North Harbour players can be seen in Blues jerseys regularly also.
North Harbour has enjoyed a great deal of success on the rugby field having produced
All Blacks and other New Zealand Representative players, and also winning the 3rd division title in their first year
1985, then promotion to
Division 1, and making the finals of the NPC competition on several occasions during the 90's, and hosted the 1995 final at a capacity-crowd
Onewa Domain against Auckland.
North Harbour players play in the Rugby Super 14 competition as part of the
Auckland Blues partnership with the neighbouring Northland and
Auckland unions.
With the development of the
North Harbour Stadium at
Albany in the late 90's, this stadium became the home base of Harbour rugby. This futuristic multipurpose stadium can contain over 25,000 spectators.
The club rugby season runs annually from March through to the beginning of August.
There are also 16 secondary schools fielding close to 100 teams within the North Harbour Region. Due to the ratio of secondary schools to rugby clubs, there is a strong relationship between the two.
The following is a list of players signed to play for the North Harbour NPC team in 2006 who have played for the All Blacks:
*
Jonah Lomu (currently playing in
Wales; will return to North Harbour for the 2006 season)
*
Luke McAlister* Tony Woodcock
Lomu is making a comeback from a life-threatening
kidney disease, culminating in a
transplant in
2004. He was signed to play for Harbour in 2005, but missed the season due to a shoulder injury suffered in
Martin Johnson's
testimonial.
These are players who have played for North Harbour in the past and have gone on to play international rugby and accomplish other feats as listed:
* Frano Botica (former
All Black)
* Frank Bunce (former
All Black centre)
* Walter Little (former
All Black second-five eight)
* Ian Jones
* Glen Osborne
* Liam Barry
* Willie Lose (former
Tongan international team captain and lock, now a TV & Radio personality)
*
Buck Shelford (former
All Black captain)
* Rico Gear
| 1998 .. | 7th | .. |
| 1999 .. | beaten Semi-Finalist | .. (came 4th in the Round Robin and lost to Auckland in the semis) |
| 2000 .. | 5th |
| 2001 .. | beaten Semi-Finalist | .. (came 2nd in the Round Robin) |
| 2002 .. | 7th |
| 2003 .. | 8th | |
| 2004 .. | 6th |
| 2005 .. | beaten Semi-Finalist | ..(came 3rd in the Round Robin) |
*
Official North Harbour Rugby Site
