Woodlands: the country club that became a lion of Southland rugby

From minnow to rugby powerhouse is the story of a rugby club about to celebrate its 125th year after Covid-19 restrictions forced a postponement last year.

The Woodlands Rugby Club, located in the dot of a township of the same name 16km outside Invercargill, has been a force in premier grade Southland rugby since the mid 1990s and is the reigning champion.

Players like Justin Marshall, Jimmy Cowan, and the McKenzie brothers – the firecracker and ever elusive Damian and his brother Marty – and others have put Woodlands on the rugby map.

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Yet for decades the club was a battler in rural sub-union competitions drawing players from surrounding farms, a canning plant and the railways, and next-to-nothing exists of its early history.

“The first photo we’ve got is 1897,” jubilee committee convenor Alan Duff says.

A quick check online reveals the club might have been revived from another in the district. The Mataura Ensign reported on April 6, 1897: “The youths about Woodlands have revived the football club and Mr J. Forde is captain of the team. Other coming clubs had better look out.”

Duff says the next early records the club are only a few photographs from 1919 and into the 1920s.

The club went into recess, came to life again; went into recess again and in the post Second World War era with farming booming, things picked up, although facilities remained basic: a country paddock and a wool shed dressing room.

By the 1960s Woodlands were in expansive mood.

“In 1964 the club got clubrooms built and two paddocks,” says Duff, “and there were plenty of players around.”

The club managed to have its first Southland representative in 1968, Scott Findlay, and an All Black, Ian “Spooky” Smith, a stock agent, joined their ranks for a few years before shifting away.

“The southern subdivision stopped around 1968, 1969 and in 1971 we were allowed to play in the town competition in the premiers,” Duff remembers.

This followed the Seaward Downs club merging with Woodlands.

“I was playing then. We were bloody hammered by 30 or 40 points.”

Only in the 1980s did the first signs of a transformation occur.

Brent “Pup” Shepherd, finding it hard to gain a place in the Pirates senior team in Invercargill, decided to try his luck with the country boys in 1984.

He stuck with Woodlands and went on to play 105 matches for Southland as a lock/flanker between 1987 and 1997 and was part of a Southland team that beat France 12-7 in 1989.

“In the 1980s we were not as competitive,” says Shepherd.

“We’d get beaten by 40 points, but we built on what we got.”

As other country clubs struggled and in some cases folded, She