The winning Otago team from the Nunnerly Casket tennis tournament had a get-together in Dunedin on Saturday, and they said the win all those years ago seemed like yesterday.
The team won the casket, the pinnacle of women's teams tennis in New Zealand, in 1970.
It was the last time it was won by an Otago team and the first time it had been won by a team from this neck of the woods for many a year.
It was a such a big deal that on return from Auckland the team was met by the mayor at the airport and a mayoral reception took place a few days later.
The team was Margaret Borland (formerly Rennie), Shirley Haig (nee Collins), Lynne Staunton (nee Robertson) and Sue Velvin (nee Blakely).
Borland, who was the veteran of the team and organised the reunion over the weekend, said it was a victory very much against the odds.
The team travelled to Auckland without much of a hope but played well and had added motivation on the final day.
``We weren't expected to win,'' Borland said.
Auckland was the team to beat and before Otago played the host in the final round, the northern team was photographed with the trophy by a newspaper photographer.
``They stood holding the casket as if they were going to win it again because the Auckland paper was going to publish. That set our resolve.''
Fuelled by the determination to defeat the Aucklanders, the Otago team was too good and came away with the silverware, the first time in 35 years a team from the South Island had won the trophy.
Staunton, who is the mother of double All Black Jeff Wilson, said Auckland posing for the photograph made the team mad. At the time she was training as a teacher in Dunedin after a childhood in Gore.
Sue Velvin, who these days lives in Wellington but came from Maniototo, said it was a real surprise for the players.
``It was a real coup for Otago. We always felt we were the underdogs everywhere we went,'' she said.
Shirley Haig, who now lives in Christchurch but who also came to Dunedin to study from northern Southland, said it was southern grit which got the side home.
``We were always performing well at local level. Maybe they underestimated us, I don't know, but we dug in,'' she said.
The Nunnerly Casket tournament ended about 15 years ago when provincial tennis was phased out and replaced by a regional system.
