Issue 64 - editorial

That's one for the books

Tena ano tatou

When my eldest mokopuna was born over a dozen years ago, his mother - my daughter asked me if I had a name for him, as she particularly wanted a name from our Mahia roots.

Without hesitation I offered the name Nepia. My mother's mother was a Nepia from Nuhaka. My mother's first cousin was George Nepia, so as well as naming my mokopuna this was an exercise in family history.

Soon after his birth and in the intervening years, I have regaled or bored people, by telling them that should this boy be any good when he grows up he'll be a Maori All Black. Not so good he'll play for Manu Samoa - his dad's Samoan; and if he's no good at all he'll be an All Black.

Well, I'm writing this on the morning after the Maori All Blacks dealt the Lion's team their first defeat on their current tour of Aotearoa, and boy it's great to be Maori today.

The win was particularly satisfying because it was coach Matt Te Pou's 40th and final game with the side, and capped off a remarkable record of 36 wins in 40 games. At one stage he had 26 wins in a row, and his boys have beaten every international side except Australia.

It also put paid to some bad mouthing the team had received in the week before that match after a narrow win over Fiji in a warm up game.

Matt Te Pou's a former soldier who served in Vietnam, but one of the biggest battles he's had over the years has been saving the Maori All Blacks as an institution and a brand. We have a story about that later in this issue.

And talking about branding, we've devoted a number of pages in this issue to something that's having a unprecedented run in this country at the moment, the rebranding of Matariki, the small cluster of stars that appear on the horizon in the night sky about this time of the year which Maori, and other Polynesians too, regard as heralding the beginning of the new year.

Is the current interest in Matariki just a flash in the pan, or is it a sign of our maturity as a nation where Maori tikanga can take it's rightful place in our society?

And speaking of maturity, Nepia's coming along okay, too.
He's a pretty handy little loose forward, getting into and captaining a representative side for his age group in Auckland last year.

Who knows, maybe one day his grandfather's bragging will come true, and he'll follow in the footsteps of one of his current heroes, Jono Gibbes.

Publisher