Joe Pope's been a Wellington rugby man for a long time, from being a University player through the 1960s, to being a leader in the sponsorship scene that started in the early 1980s, to being a member of the Hurricanes board - and then the Wellington Rugby Football Union board.
He's a Wellington man through-and-through, and says he's been away from home six times - and has always come back because it's home.
Pope played from third grade through to senior for University from 1960-62, went to Australia for a couple of years or so - and played an Australian trial as a loose forward - before returning to Wellington for another four years' club play.
He had two years of administration with the University Club before going to England to pursue his business future.
He recalls that he went at the same time as Earle Kirton and Chris Laidlaw - both famous All Blacks of the time. New Zealand rugby identity Cuth Hogg rang the chairman of the English Rugby Union at the time to ask him to look after the three when they arrived in London. Pope laughs at the conversation that allegedly went on:
"Cuth said there were three guys coming. Earle Kirton - the chairman said ‘he'd be great for Harlequins. They can use him.'
Laidlaw?
"He's a great scholar. He'll be great for Oxford."
Joe Pope?
"Who's he?"
No matter. Pope enjoyed his time in England and came back as a bigwig with the Apple and Pear Board, which became a Wellington Rugby Union sponsor and was going to sponsor the 1986 NPC until the South African tour question reared its ugly head.
"We were on a hiding for nothing with that so we pulled out," Pope said. "But we sponsored Wellington for just over $100,000 for two years for naming rights."
His friendship with Kirton had continued and the former All Blacks first five-eighth in fact coached Wellington in those two years.
Pope says Kirton's influence in the sponsorship could be noted:
"We got very precise. Our stipulation for the sponsorship was that the team should travel away overnight and not on the day of the match (as it had been doing). That was Earle's doing. That's how far we've gone now," reflected Pope.
Enza (Apple and Pear Board) also sponsored the national sevens rugby team for several years.
Pope pursued his own career for some years from that point but did become a director of All Black Promotions in the early 1990s when the NZRFU was trying to improve the lot of its players without them being totally professional. And in that capacity he had a part to play in the desperate days of now-NZRFU chairman Jock Hobbs charging around New Zealand in late 1995 trying to regain players for the NZRFU who were on the verge of going with the World Rugby Corporation.
"I countersigned every contract Hobbs managed in 1995," Pope said.
Pope became a member of the Wellington and Hurricanes board in 1998 when Murray McCaw was elected to the NZRFU board, and was Hurricanes chairman for three years. He then resigned that position when the Wellington job became available because he believes the positions should be split.
"I believed that should be the case," Pope said. "It's now pretty standard practice, but we were the first to split the two jobs. Because Wellington runs the management contract, I felt the Wellington chairman had to be free to speak his mind to the Hurricanes.
"If you're chairman of both, you can't do that."
Looking back since the advent of professional rugby, and at Wellington's $10 million business built from a state of being virtually broke at the end of 1995, Pope says Wellington was lucky no decision was made to start a redevelopment of Athletic Park.
"In fact we (Wellington) were hugely lucky we didn't spend any money on Athletic Park. If we had started redeveloping that we would never have been able to shift to the stadium.
"So out of problems, opportunities arrive. Of course the Super 12 franchise was hugely important in our success - but put that together with the stadium. We were fortunate."
Pope said that when rugby shifted to the stadium (the start of 2000), "we saw the potential. The feeling of the board was that we might have a period of prosperity like one has never seen. That is proving to be correct. We had to make sure we set Wellington Rugby up for the future."
The money has to be spent wisely. The Academy is one area that takes a lot of it - but Pope says it's worth it.
"It's bloody expensive. But there's more than a team of (Hurricanes area) people playing Super 12 in other areas, and we just kept losing talent. But we committed to growing our own talent and now we have 13 Academy members with (2004) Super 12 contracts, and 24 Wellington players with S12 contracts. Suddenly there's starting to be some depth."
The successful introduction of the specialised Rugby League Park training base just before Christmas filled in another vital gap. The players were sick of going to different venues for training.
Pope: "At the 2003 annual general meeting, (player) Shane Carter said ‘we need a place to go to work in the morning when we wake up.'
"Before it opened they (the players) could go to any of 10 different places in a day. In our survey of all representative teams, the younger ones thought no-one loved them, because they trained in the middle of nowhere and no-one ever saw them," Pope said.
There are other aims for the immediate future, not the least of them tackling the problem of losing players when they turn 16 and encounter the other temptations life holds.
"The critical issue is the clubs and encouraging good administration. One thing is that we haven't been asking why we are losing all those kids when they turn 16. How are we going to keep them and their parents involved?
"If we can break that trend, we'll start getting some strength back in the clubs."
With all the building blocks in place, the ultimate aim of the Wellington Union is to win the NPC on a regular basis, Pope says.
"Winning the NPC is critical. We can't control the Super 12, so the NPC's the most important thing for us."
The people need it as well. For so many years they've put up with Wellington's up-and-down performances, and its lack of Ranfurly Shield and NPC success. They've kept coming back, but Wellington worries that this will not carry on when the Westpac Stadium honeymoon period is over.
Pope says they keep coming because of Wellington's style.
"For some reason or other, Wellington's style of play - under totally different coaches - hasn't changed that much. It's always been one of giving it a crack. If we had become dour, I think we would have lost something."