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Sports correspondent & historian with |
History buffs know that time-honoured trophies often tell a tale of the changes in sporting society over the decades since they were first presented.
With the local rugby season fast approaching, I went back to my Jordan Cup files, which run back to 1913.
The engraving on the Jordan Cup reads as follows: “Presented to the Tauranga Rugby Union by Mr JA Jordan in 1913”.
The backstory of the man who presented the rugby trophy – still contested 113 years later – is told in a Bay of Plenty Times report dated May 12, 1913.
“There is now to be seen in the shop window of Mr McMahon’s establishment a handsome trophy in the form of a silver cup, which has been presented to the Tauranga Rugby Union by Mr JA Jordan of Dunedin, for competition between the various football clubs which constitute the Union.”
The story went on to tell the tale of Jordan, an old Tauranga boy. For many years he was a member of the Tauranga representative team and also took an active part in the formation of the first union.
An old TRU minute book records the return of JA Jordan to live in Tauranga, where he later became president of the Tauranga Rugby Union.
While Rangataua are credited with being the first winners of the Jordan Cup, perusal of the Bay of Plenty Times’ rugby reports, courtesy of Papers Past, reveals that the winners were listed as the Rangataua/Railways Club.
Other teams that played in the inaugural year of Jordan Cup competition were Wairoa, Star and Matakana Island.
One of the most interesting engravings on this long-time rugby trophy is simply recorded as Air Force in the 1942 and 1943 seasons.
As most historians have a nosey streak, I went back to the web to uncover how Air Force came to win a Tauranga rugby prize.
Mount Maunganui Aerodrome (now Tauranga Airport) was opened in January 1939, but was soon taken over by the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) during World War II, serving primarily as a pilot training station.
The military extended the runways and added a main hangar in 1942 before returning the facility to civilian control in 1945.
World War II history was preserved for 62 years until the hangar was demolished in 2004, with restoration proving too costly.
The Jordan Cup engraving also tells of the demise of teams such as Whakamaramara, Huimai and Tauranga Athletic.
Multiple winners Tauranga (High School) Old Boys and Cadets Old Boys amalgamated in 1988 to form Tauranga Sports and have since gone on to become one of the current heavyweights of Bay of Plenty club rugby.
The coming of the new millennium saw the Western Bay of Plenty Rugby Championship played within the confines of the BOPRU Baywide competition.
After sitting on the sideline as a dormant trophy for two years, the Jordan Cup was reintroduced in 2001 as a Western Bay of Plenty Rugby Sub-Union challenge trophy, contested between Western Bay teams when they met in Baywide competition.
This season, on April 11, Round Two of the 2026 Baywide competition will see 2025 Jordan Cup champions Tauranga Sports put the historic local rugby prize on the line at Tauranga Domain against Te Puna.