🔥 The War of the West Returns – Dan O’Brien Day is HERE! 🔥
Blood, Sweat, and Rugby – It All Comes Down to This!
What better way to wrap up the 2025 Club Rugby season than with the fiercest showdown on the calendar – the legendary War of the West… Dan O’Brien Day.
This isn’t just another game – this is a rivalry that’s been burning since 1902, when the Shield was first contested between Star RFC and Tukapa. Over a century of hard hits, heartbreaks, and historic moments – and this weekend promises to be no different.
Jump on our website for more Dan O'brien day information
With playoff hopes still alive for Tukapa, United are charging into enemy territory with one goal – upset the Chooks and ruin their party! Tukapa, clinging to their top 4 spot, are under pressure. It’s all on the line. It's a must win fixture for them.
📍 Sanders Park
📅 Saturday 28 June
🕐 Division 1: 1:00pm
🏉 Premiers: 2:45pm
Pack your colours, bring the noise, and let’s paint the Park red, black, and gold. United supporters – this is our moment.
💛❤️🖤 #WeAreUnited | #DanOBrienDay | #WarOfTheWest
Fun Fact!
This is directly from Tukapa RFC 125 year Jubilee book:
The origin of the word Tukapa (as told by an old Maori source) is that local whaler Dicky Barrett required men to stoke the fires under the whaling coppers he operated on Ngamotu Beach as part of his long established whaling station. The process involved stripping blubber off whale carcasses and then rendering the flesh down into oil by boiling it in large copper vats. Apparently one of the men who worked the coppers was a long time resident of what is now Westown. Eventually this character became nick-named as “two coppers” after the work he was so well known for doing. Somehow over time the nick-name morphed into Tukapa and gradually the district where “two coppers” lived had also become known as Tukapa.
Another Fun Fact ...
Dicky Barrett is actually the Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather of this newsletter’s editor! - A bit of personal history woven right into our story. |
