Sunday Star Times: More induct­ees pledged for bet­ter, brighter NZ Sports Hall of Fame

Remem­ber the old Field of Dreams adage: “If you build it, they will come?” Well, the New Zea­l­and Sports Hall of Fame seems set for a brighter future in Cam­bridge when it shifts there later this year - and more induc­tions have been prom­ised to coin­cide with the move.

The hal­lowed Hall has been based at Dunedin’s ornate Rail­way Sta­tion since 1999, but it closed just after Easter, fol­low­ing just 12 induc­tions in the past 10 years.

Its future became clouded after the Covid pan­demic fol­low­ing fund­ing chal­lenges.

Now the NZ Sports Hall of Fame Trust chaired since 2018 by Dunedin account­ant and former rugby ref­eree Stu­art McLauch­lan - has nego­ti­ated a move to Cam­bridge where the Hall of Fame will be housed in the Grass­roots Trust Velo­drome, home to Cyc­ling New Zea­l­and.

McLauch­lan told the Sunday Star-Times that the exhib­its would be packed for a mid-year move to the Waikato and “Cam­bridge plan to be oper­at­ing’’ at the end of the year.

While the trust was “very appre­ci­at­ive” of the Dunedin City Coun­cil for provid­ing the space rent-free for many years, the move north was “the right thing”.

“We went through a RFP [request for pro­posal, and Cam­bridge came through strongly.”

Dunedin had the oppor­tun­ity to put in a bid, but “couldn’t get the buy-in from the coun­cil”.

McLauch­lan, a trust board ser­vant since the late 1990s, said Cam­bridge, with Hamilton and Auck­land nearby, had a much big­ger catch­ment area and the Home of Cyc­ling Char­it­able Trust, which will man­age the venue, “can take it to the next level, espe­cially the digital side and inter­activ­ity”.

The plans look impress­ive. The velo­drome’s web­site prom­ises “a new chapter with a mod­ern, dynamic and inter­act­ive exper­i­ence in this vibrant sports hub” in a “cut­ting-edge inter­act­ive space designed to inspire move­ment through gami­fied sports activ­it­ies, bring­ing the sci­ence of ath­letic per­form­ance to life”.

It’s a far cry from the static dis­plays at the Dunedin facil­ity where, des­pite its down­town tour­ist pre­cinct set­ting, just 8000 to 10,000 vis­ited on aver­age in recent years down from over 20,000 in 2009.

The HoF used to get a $100,000 annual grant from Sport New Zea­l­and - which provided close to half its total rev­enue - but McLauch­lan said they had not had that for some time, although the gov­ern­ment body con­tin­ued to be sup­port­ive and were con­trib­ut­ing to relo­ca­tion costs.

Honorees and their fam­il­ies, who have loaned mem­or­ab­ilia to the Hall, are also “very sup­port­ive of the move”.

Cam­bridge should get more num­bers through the door. The velo­drome facil­ity

- to be re-branded the Cam­bridge Arena reportedly had 180,000 vis­it­ors last year.

The Cam­bridge News has repor­ted that the Grass­roots Trust had com­mit­ted $1.1 mil­lion plus $300,000 for oper­at­ing sup­port and it hoped to attract 30,000 vis­it­ors a year at $10 a head (Dunedin’s admis­sions rev­enue was around $35,000 in 2019).

But there is more to a Hall of Fame than bricks and mor­tar and whizzy-bang graph­ics. You can build a flash house, but it’s got to have occu­pants. The HoF has 175 indi­vidual induct­ees (143 men and 32 women) and 15 teams - but has added just 36 indi­vidu­als and two teams since 2000.

McLauch­lan acknow­ledges that it is hightime more ath­letes are hon­oured - a pro­cess that had stalled since long-serving chief exec­ut­ive Ron Palenski’s passing in 2023 and while offi­cials were pre­oc­cu­pied with the Hall’s pending move.

Rugby great Richie McCaw and Olympic shot put cham­pion Dame Valerie Adams were induc­ted to the HoF at this year’s Hal­berg Awards - the first elev­a­tions since Palenski in 2022.

The NZ Sports Hall of Fame Trust will con­tinue to drive the induc­tion pro­cess.

McLauch­lan and David How­man, a former WADA (World Anti-Dop­ing Agency) sec­ret­ary-gen­eral, have been joined by four new dir­ect­ors, includ­ing Ath­let­ics New Zea­l­and chief exec­ut­ive Cam Mitchell, Sport Otago CEO James Nation and Waikato-based law­yer Suz­anne Mace, head of legal for Rabobank.

The New Zea­l­and Sports Hall of Fame began with a glitzy tele­vised induc­tion cere­mony in Decem­ber 1990, fun­ded by a $440,000 Lot­tery Grants Board grant. Sixty-six indi­vidu­als and seven teams were induc­ted.

Luminar­ies included Olympic cham­pi­ons Yvette Wil­li­ams, Peter Snell, Mur­ray Hal­berg, Jack Love­lock and John Walker, rugby legends like Brian Lochore, Wilson Whineray, Colin Meads and George Nepia, cricket greats Richard Hadlee, Bert Sutcliffe, John Reid and Glenn Turner, late, great motor racing ace Bruce McLaren and net­ball’s Joan Har­nett.

But the pion­eer­ing Class of 1990 had an eclectic ele­ment - record-break­ing avi­ator Jean Bat­ten, moun­tain­eer Sir Edmund Hil­lary, world cham­pion shearer God­frey Bowen, yacht designer Bruce Farr, soft­baller Kevin Her­lihy, speed­way rider Barry Briggs and gun lawn bowl­ers Phil Sko­glund and Elsie Wilkie all made the cut - recog­ni­tion of the value of grass-roots sports.

Induc­tion cere­mon­ies con­tin­ued apace through the 1990s. By the end of the dec­ade 139 ath­letes and 13 teams had been hon­oured.

Yet they have slowed to snail’s pace since. That rankles with Joseph Romanos, the Hall of Fame’s former exec­ut­ive dir­ector from 1995 to 1998 until it shif­ted to Dunedin.

Romanos sat down with the Star-Times this week and pro­duced a list of 162 ath­letes, coaches, teams, admin­is­trat­ors and sports media per­son­al­it­ies who he sug­ges­ted had legit­im­ate claims to Hall of Fame inclu­sion.

“I’ve put an aster­isk beside the ones I feel are obvi­ous inclu­sions and glar­ing omis­sions,” he said.

“There’s a lot of catch­ing up that needs to be done. How people like Ham­ish Carter, Blyth Tait, the Evers-Swindell [twins], Mahe Drys­dale, Ham­ish Bond, Bond-Mur­ray, Michael Camp­bell, Dan Carter, Daniel Vet­tori,

Stephen Flem­ing, etc are not in there is totally bey­ond me.”

Romanos finds it incred­u­lous that the late John Dav­ies, a 1500m bronze medal­list at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics behind gold medal­list Snell - is yet to be induc­ted when other ath­letes who never earned Olympic medals have been.

His “aster­isk” cat­egory also fea­tures net­ballers Irene van Dyk, Laura Lang­man, Casey Kopua and Maria Tutaia (Folau), two­time Olympic triath­lon medal­list Bevan Docherty, boxer David Tua, row­ing coach Dick Tonks, All Black Zin­zan Brooke and World Cup foot­ballers Ryan Nelsen and Win­ston Reid, to name just a few.

Sail­ing has been one of New Zea­l­and’s most suc­cess­ful sports, yet there is still no place in the Hall for Rus­sell Coutts and Grant Dalton.

Romanos also believes there’s a case for legendary sportswriter T P McLean and broad­caster Keith Quinn.

McLauch­lan agrees with Romanos that there is “some catch­ing up to do’’ and said the trust will hon­our more ath­letes at “a cel­eb­ra­tion that may dove­tail with the move to Cam­bridge”.

The Hall of Fame web­site says it now has induc­tions at least every two years , but in the last 10 years just 12 people have been hon­oured - from row­ing admin­is­trator Don Row­lands, net­ball Les­ley Rum­ball, soft­baller Mark Soren­son and jockey Lance O’Sul­li­van in 2016 through to McCaw and Adams in 2026.

Since 2020, just former All Blacks half­back Sid Going, Palenski him­self, Adams and McCaw have been induc­ted.

McLauch­lan said they would have liked to have induc­ted more, “but the issue is the cost”.

“As an organ­isa­tion we haven’t got the money. So it works very well [to have induc­tions] with the Hal­bergs.”

He prom­ised “more than two people’’ will be hon­oured at future cere­mon­ies, but exact details are yet to be con­firmed.

McLauch­lan pledged the trust would con­tinue to have an inde­pend­ent panel to recom­mend future induc­tions.

The panel used to com­prise three induct­ees, three rep­res­ent­at­ives from sports organ­isa­tions and three mem­bers of the media.

But McLauch­lan said after a con­sti­tu­tion change the panel no longer includes journ­al­ists, although media were con­sul­ted “over Ron’s induc­tion” in 2022.

Romanos believes media bring a broader per­spect­ive and said it was import­ant that the panel meet to dis­cuss nom­in­a­tions.

Nom­in­ees have to be elite sports achiev­ers who have been out of inter­na­tional com­pet­i­tion for five years.

McLauch­lan said nom­in­a­tions should come from sport­ing organ­isa­tions and he “would like to see them be more pro­act­ive in vet­ting their mem­bers” to ensure they meet the cri­teria.

So who should be added to the Hall of Fame?

It’s import­ant that the trust must avoid the risk of recency bias. The Hall must also not become an exclus­ive enclave of Olympi­ans and pro­fes­sional sports prac­ti­tion­ers.

As well as Olympic cham­pi­ons, All Blacks, Black Caps and Sil­ver Ferns, Romanos makes a com­pel­ling case for mul­tiple world cham­pion wood chop­pers Jason Wynyard and David Bol­stad, wool hand­ler Joanne Kumeroa and dec­or­ated shearer David Fagan, shoot­ers, Black Sox and White Sox soft­ballers and Black Jacks bowl­ers.

The teams cat­egory could be expan­ded to include the 1995 Amer­ica’s Cup crew, back-to-back Olympic row­ing champs Bond and Mur­ray and Car­oline and Geor­gina Evers-Swindell, yacht­ing’s Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie, the 1993 world cham­pion Sil­ver Ferns net­ballers - all on the Romanos list - plus the 1982 All Whites (first to reach a World Cup finals) and their 2010 coun­ter­parts (unbeaten at the tour­na­ment) and the 2002 Tall Blacks, who fin­ished fourth at the world cham­pi­on­ships.

While McLauch­lan said there won’t be “mass induc­tions” as seen in the 1990s, the list will grow and it is import­ant the Hall of Fame reflects New Zea­l­and’s rich sport­ing her­it­age.

This article has been quoted in full from: https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/sunday-star-times/20260412/282651809053791

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