Film review: The Ground We Won

It is hardly original to claim that rugby is the national religion of New Zealand but after watching The Ground We Won (Rialto) I felt for the first time that it really is.

 

THE GROUND WE WON

Directors: Christopher Pryor and Miriam Smith
Cast: Peanut, Slug, Broomy, Socks, Sticks, Turbo, Horse
Rating: (M)
Four stars (out of five)

 

Set around the dairy farming town of Reporoa in the Bay of Plenty, this documentary follows its rugby team as it comes off a terrible year of drought and constant losses.

It seems no coincidence that at the first practice of the new season the drought breaks, the players turn their faces to the heavens in joy and the team starts winning matches.

The team at first seems full of the stereotypical rugby hard nuts to whom rugby is important but not as important as the leer up afterwards.

But as the film unfolds they start to emerge as mostly decent blokes leading solitary lives on their dairy farms.

It is never stated but the debts must be huge as they toil in their state-of-the-art dairy sheds.

After watching them plod through the ceaseless grind of keeping a farm working you start to understand why they need Saturdays, with its promise of a bit of biffo on the field and knocking back a few of the local brew afterwards.

Rugby provides these guys with structure and friendship: a pretty good combination.

There is nothing very sophisticated about these guys, but you know they are exactly the men you would want in a foxhole with you, and if the price of gaining their acceptance is sinking enough beer so they can gauge what sort of drunk you are, well fair enough.

There are far worse initiation rites.

- Christine Powley 

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