TWO former Celtic and Otago rugby league representative team-mates from 60 years ago died recently. Keith Donaldson and Andy Henderson — who were also known in Dunedin for their work outside league — were aged 90 and 85 respectively. Richard Gordon Keith Donaldson (who was generally known as Keith or by his long-standing nickname Fox) attended Christian Brothers School, in Dunedin, for two years, before becoming a boarder at St Kevin’s College, Oamaru, for a further six. It was at the latter that he rose to become a member of the first XV rugby side. His first season of playing league came when he was a teenager in 1953. The year before, while working in Wellington, he had watched a game and saw how fast it was, so when he returned to Dunedin he opted to play the code. League was in its re-establishment year in the city following a 19-year hiatus. During a midweek match at Tahuna Park on September 14, 1955, the 20-year-old Donaldson played in what was New Zealand’s first night league match between his Celtic side and Athletic. [Missing Credit]Keith Donaldson in a 1961 Otago jersey. Photo: Supplied More than 40 years later he recalled the game. “As it was the first of its type, I remember there was a lot of hype about this game and a big crowd came out to watch it,” he said. Described by the Otago Daily Times as the “best game of rugby league” seen that season, Donaldson’s Celtic side came from behind to score two tries in the last 10 minutes to beat the senior champions Athletic 24-20. A tough openside prop who occasionally played at hooker, Donaldson increased his love of the game when he went to Australia on holiday the following year in 1956, where he witnessed some top-grade matches, including the New South Wales final. “I was really hooked after that,” he recalled. Donaldson had to wait until August 1961 before he made his Otago debut: a match against Canterbury at the old Caledonian Ground in South Dunedin. Work commitments at his commercial cleaning business meant that he did not reappear for Otago until 1963, again in a losing cause against Canterbury at the Caledonian Ground. In 1965, Donaldson travelled to Wellington where he played against Wellington and Manawatū in the quadrangular tournament at the Petone Recreation Ground, before making his last provincial appearance the following year against Canterbury and then Manawatū at the Christchurch Showground. By this stage, Donaldson had got involved with administration at Celtic and was on the Otago Rugby League board of control as club delegate between 1965 and 1967. He became vice-chairman in 1972 under the chairmanship of the late James “Rusty” Collins. Donaldson became president and chairman of the Otago Rugby League in 1973-74. One of his first goals was to ensure players were disciplined and focused on playing the game rather than having melees out in the middle of the field. He also went away to many Marist tournaments and became friends for life with Celtic players such as the late Joe Davidson and Andy Henderson, before stepping away from the game to concentrate on his business and young family. A first cousin to the late 1960-65 Celtic and Otago player Neville Bowie and older brother of the 1972 Celtic and Otago player Phil Donaldson, Keith Donaldson was by nature an entrepreneur and after his selling his cleaning business in 1983, he sold advertising before going on to become the manager of the D.W. Johnson smallgoods factory in Dunedin. He then bought Strand Delicatessen in the Octagon, shortly before buying and running the nearby Tip Top Restaurant for eight years. After that he bought the then run-down Law Courts Hotel in 1992 with his partner Shona Young. “We had to refurbish the whole place, the 24 bedrooms, the lounge bar, the restaurant. I think together we built the business up to a good unit,” Donaldson said in February 2002. Donaldson was a popular host at the Law Courts where he introduced lunchtime roasts and sang his own advertisements on the radio, and played the banjo, ukulele and the piano. When time permitted, Donaldson also indulged in his second sporting love of golf, at the St Clair club, and at one stage was club captain. Before moving to Australia in 2003, Donaldson chaired an Otago Rugby League reunion committee for the 50th anniversary of the game’s reestablishment in Dunedin — his first involvement in the game in more than 25 years. Donaldson and Young moved to the Gold Coast and with Donaldson still having an eye for business opportunities, he built a barge called Ship Shop that went out to yachts and boats to sell fishing gear, food and liquor. The pair moved back to New Zealand in 2013 to reside in Orewa, north of Auckland, while still commuting to the Gold Coast for half a year at a time. In 2024 the 89-year-old Donaldson was a regular gym-goer, before a sudden onset of illness saw his weight dramatically reduce, along with his mobility. Keith Donaldson is survived by his son Paul, adopted daughter Anna and four grandchildren. Unlike Donaldson, Andrew Stephen Henderson was not a born-and-bred Dunedinite but was nevertheless a proud Otago man. Born in Balclutha in 1940, Henderson soon moved to Central Otago with his family and was educated at Roxburgh High School while the hydro dam was being built. After the construction had been completed in 1956, Henderson briefly moved to Gore before heading to Dunedin the following year to start work at a post office. In 1959, Henderson went to Australia, not intending to come back but, after hearing the news his father was sick, he returned to Dunedin. Soon after arrival, he was travelling on a bus when he ran into his old friend Joe Davidson, who asked him if would consider playing league — to which Henderson replied “no” as he was playing indoor basketball at the time. Davidson, however, did not back down and soon had Henderson at Celtic club training at Tonga Park. [Missing Credit]Andy Henderson in 1965 in a Celtic jersey. Photo: Supplied In a 2025 interview, Henderson recalled how primitive the ground was at the time, with only a couple of old army huts as changing facilities. “We used to practise with the lights coming from Ces O’Connell’s Kombi van and after the training we would need to then push it as the battery had then gone flat,” Henderson said with a laugh. “Later on, we did get some training lights around the perimeter of the ground, but as we still did not even have showers, we all felt like we were outcasts compared to many other sports codes, who at least had their own clubrooms.” Despite these setbacks, Henderson still felt closely aligned with Celtic, who travelled each year to Marist tournaments at Easter and began to do extensive fundraising, resulting in it becoming the first Dunedin league club to have its own clubrooms from the mid 1960s — on the corner of Jervois and Princes Sts. “We never won any game for two years, but never lost a player,” Henderson recalled. “Despite that, Celtic was the best organised club which had John Walshe being picked from the Kiwis in 1965 and importing former West Coast player Fred Kennedy from Blackball. We also recruited the Christchurch league administrator Brian Curtain when he shifted to Dunedin in the late 1960s and helped to take the pressure off the players in trying to run the club. “Although we were a Marist club, the majority of the players were not Catholic. We did however have written in our constitution that they had to be the majority when it came to running the club. This meant our standards off the field also improved and soon it was a standard rule that players had to wear white shirts and a blazer and tie on club nights.” Henderson played most of his league at hooker, which in the days of contested scrums was a very important position, as he could challenge for the ball. Besides being in the first Celtic side to win an Otago premiership in 1965, Henderson cited making the New Zealand Marist team to play Wellington following a tournament in 1967 as his career playing highlight. A year earlier had seen Henderson being picked for Otago for the Quadrangular Tournament in Christchurch — his only time in the blue and gold jersey. Like Donaldson, Henderson served on the Otago Rugby League board of control for several years as a Celtic delegate in the 1960s. He continued to play league until the end of the 1973 season. His next involvement with the game was when he founded and subsequently ran the Celtic Norths Club in 1988-89, before stepping away one last time, but not before taking over from Australia-bound Donaldson as the chairman of the Otago Rugby League 50th anniversary reunion committee in 2002-03. In the mid 1990s he began volunteering for the Regent Theatre 24-hour book sale, before going on to the trust’s board. He continued volunteering at the Regent for 30 years and was made deputy chairman and eventually a life member. For more than 30 years he lived in Norwood St in North East Valley — close to his favourite watering hole, the Normanby Tavern, before shifting to a modest council flat in Brook St close to the university. The genial Henderson never married but left behind many friends from his work in the Dunedin community. — Carey Clements, Otago Rugby League historian
