My rugby history featuring AB great Buck Shelford

 Firstly I'll give you my rugby pedigree as a young whippersnapper at school.  My first contact with the great game was when I was schooling at TaipaDistrict School, north of Manganui.  I can not remember much about the games we played but do know we played barefooted.  When I moved from Taipa to Palmerston North I attended Roslyn Primary school and Ross Intermediate and played football, mainly goalkeeper.  I then moved onto Palmy Boys and switched back to Rugby playing in the lowest team, due to my weight.

I wasn't a great footy player but loved the game.  I was also the tallest in our team and played No 8.  I remember scoring on average 1 try a game.   I never aspired to be up there, just the thrill.  In my 4th form year the first game of the year we were thrashed by Feilding Ag 94-0.  When we met them again at the end of season they won 27-13 - a win for us.

Naturally when I joined the navy as was the case we all played whatever sport was going.  I tended to drift back to rugby and played many ship games over the years.  Initially I was an openside for a number of years but drifted back to Fullback, a position I loved. I also played rugby league at Fullback.

Anyway that's my brief resume.  Onto Sir Buck Shelford.  This following text from a post I put up in the Navy FB Sports Page.

I'm sure many here played rugby, intership, interservices, national honours or just plain ship teams on deployment. I have one question for you. Who was the toughest rugby player you ever played with or against?

Mine was Buck Shelford. Played with him when he was LPTI on Monowai (he had us practising tackling at sea on the flightdeck and on coir matts) and highly skilled and tough. Next year he was playing for Philly in intership against us - Monowai. I played openside for both, but took a hammering from this bulldozer intent on ploughing me into the ground. Those bloody thighs were just too hard to get my arms around.

I have seen two recent photo's of Buck and he is looking in wonderful health.