 |
Sports correspondent & historian with |
Greerton Marist’s authoritative 37-17 victory over Te Puke Sports in the BOPRU Baywide Premier final on Saturday secured the club’s first Baywide Premier title.
They join fellow Western Bay clubs Tauranga Sports (nine), Mount Maunganui (six), Te Puke Sports (four), Te Puna (two) and Rangataua (one) as winners of Bay of Plenty club rugby’s biggest prize.
The Baywide trophy will sit in the Greerton trophy cabinet alongside another piece of silverware, the Jordan Cup, which the Marist club also won during the 2026 season.
While the Baywide Premier title is relatively young in local rugby history, having been introduced in 1990, the Jordan Cup dates back 113 years to the early days of the sport in Tauranga.
A search through Papers Past revealed this report in the Bay of Plenty Times on 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 donated by Mr J.A. Jordan for competition among the various football clubs that constitute the Tauranga Union”.
Rangataua-Railway were the first winners of the Tauranga Rugby Union’s senior silverware, with the Rangataua name engraved on the trophy 15 times before it was converted to a challenge trophy in 2000.
The first 87 years of the Jordan Cup’s history reveal the rise, fall and disappearance of clubs that competed in the Tauranga Rugby Union and later the Western Bay of Plenty Sub-Union title races.
Whakamārama, long consigned to local rugby history, won the title in 1914, while Matakana Island was recorded as the winner in 1915. Engraved on the trophy in 1916 are the words: “In honour of the boys who played the greater game”.
Competition resumed after the war, with Te Puna dominating the title contests from 1919 to 1923.
There is no winner recorded for 1926, with historical records noting: “The 1926 competition wasn’t completed and discussion at the 1927 Tauranga Rugby Union AGM failed to resolve the issue”.
Another club name lost in the mists of history is Huimai, while Athletic claimed the rugby prize in 1931 and 1932.
World War II brought an RNZAF base to Tauranga, with Air Force recorded as Jordan Cup winners in 1942 and 1943.
It was not until 1955 that Mount Maunganui were first recorded as winners of the Jordan Cup. The Mount would go on to capture the trophy on 10 occasions.
Greerton, before adding the Marist prefix to its name, won the Tauranga Rugby Sub-Union crown in 1971 and 1973.
The end of the 1980s saw the amalgamation of Cadets and High School Old Boys to form Tauranga Sports. The Tauranga Domain-based club won the local title five times between 1989 and 1998.
With the advent of Baywide rugby, the Jordan Cup was reinvented in 2001 as a Western Bay of Plenty challenge trophy contested by Western Bay clubs within the Baywide Premier competition.
Only six teams have achieved the coveted double of the Baywide title and the Jordan Cup in the same season. Tauranga Sports were the first to claim the double in 2003 before repeating the feat in 2007. Te Puke Sports also achieved the double in 2011 and 2018.
Mount Maunganui added their name to the honours list in 2005, while Greerton Marist are the latest club to secure the Baywide Premier title and the Jordan Cup in the same season.
Greerton will retain the Jordan Cup until they meet their first Western Bay of Plenty opponent in the 2027 Baywide Premier competition.
From that point, the trophy will be contested each time the holder faces another Western Bay side, both home and away, during the regular Baywide season.