Let's celebrate our heroes

OPINION: Like the rest of New Zealand, Southland is pretty ambivalent about recognising and celebrating its sporting heroes, writes Nathan Burdon in this week's Straight Up.

Cycling Southland is an obvious standout for developing the walk of fame around the velodrome.

Another good example is the Derek Turnbull walkway, which was unveiled at Stadium Southland on Friday night. Stadium general manager Nigel Skelt has long dreamed of a hall of fame that would celebrate famous Southlanders, but the ambition has struggled to gain any momentum.

Of course, these things aren't as simple as banging up a couple of old photos and calling it good. They have to be done well to provide the proper gravitas and respect. That takes money, time and enthusiasm not always resources that we have in abundance.

Opportunities in Invercargill abound. We have the Ray Harper stand and Sarah Ulmer lounge at Stadium Southland, and now Derek Turnbull will be remembered with some well-displayed memorabilia near the Sport Southland organisation, which he was an enthusiastic patron of. We've now got enough distance on the Sting decade that we can give it a bit of context as probably our most sustained period of sporting success.

Perhaps one day the centre court at the stadium could be renamed the Robyn Broughton Arena, or the scoreboard at Rugby Park could become the Simon Culhane scoreboard, in honour of the union's provincial record-holder.

 Rugby Southland obviously has a few bigger fish to fry at the moment like staying in the first division, for instance but eventually it would be great to see some of our best players immortalised at Rugby Park.

Mike Piper, a noted figure himself, was telling me the other day about sitting in Billy Stead's boot shop and listening to the vice-captain of the New Zealand "Originals" on the tour of Great Britain, Ireland, France and North America talk about that trip and other aspects of the game.

What would we do now to have that on tape? Stead, and a host of other greats, deserve a much better legacy than we have given them.

» Nathan Burdon has been the Southland Times sports editor since 2003 and has won numerous journalism awards, including provincial sports writer of the year.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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