The heroics and sacrifices of South Canterbury sportspeople off the sports field are set to be remembered outside the new Fraser Park entrance.
A memorial section titled ‘‘Remembrance Boulevard’’ will feature the names of South Canterbury representative players who were called away to war and had to swap the rugby ball for a rifle.
Project redevelopment manager Phillipa Guerin and South Canterbury Rugby historian Jeremy Sutherland are working hard to gather the names of those players in an effort to remember their bravery and sacrifice.
As part of his book Green and Black Through and Through, which details 125 years of South Canterbury rugby, Mr Sutherland had gone through a lot of provincial history and compiled a South Canterbury Rugby Football Union roll of honour dedicated to the union representatives who had served in the South African War (1899-1902), World War 1 (1914-1918) and World War 2 (1939-1945).
As the new Fraser Park will be a multisport complex, Mrs Guerin and Mr Sutherland are now also appealing to the public to come forward with the names of their loved ones who had both fought abroad and represented South Canterbury — not only in rugby union, but also cricket, rugby league, association football and any other sport that will call Fraser Park home in the future.
Mr Sutherland said it was former South Canterbury rugby chief executive Craig Calder’s idea to have a war monument in the entrance of Fraser Park.
‘‘It started off with rugby, then the question came up about cricket; all their representatives are listed at the Graeme Blanchard Centre, so we may employ the same processes I used to get the union players.
‘‘Fraser Park, of course, was originally the athletics ground but now they have their own stadium so they will probably do their own thing, but when it comes to association football I don’t know about the structure of the game before the Second World War.Did they actually have rep sides that took on Canterbury and Otago? I don’t know, so that will be a big place the public can help us out.’’
Having something like this front and centre in Fraser Park would show that we actually cared about the people who made those sacrifices, he said.
‘‘It’s not just about warfare, it’s about the fact they were just footy players who went out and did their thing.
‘‘There is a well-known poster from the First World War in Britain that said ‘there is no more time for games’ and 90% of rugby union players signed up for the First World War, and I think here would have been identical.
‘‘That’s an amazing amount of people, because they were young and they were fit and played a competitive game. The Duke of Wellington said after the Battle of Waterloo that the battle was won on the sport fields of rugby.’’
Mrs Guerin said that even though Fraser Park was historically the home of rugby union, it would be great to acknowledge all the sporting people who went away to war.
‘‘It’s going to be front and centre at the entrance of the new redevelopment and we have to thank all of our past sportspeople for what they’ve done for us in order to go forwards.
‘‘It’s a wonderful acknowledgement of what those people have done and you’ve got to be thankful and appreciative of what they gave, and I think in this redevelopment the Remembrance Boulevard is a great way to do that.’’
Anyone in the community who had a family member who had played sport for South Canterbury at a representative level and went away to war should get in touch, she said.
‘‘We’d love to have a conversation with anyone who has a relative that fits the criteria so we can . . .put them up on the Remembrance Boulevard panel.’’
It will be free of cost to be included on the panel and anyone wanting to put forward a name can get in touch by emailing Mr Sutherland at [email protected]
