HART Football Team 1976 – 2025 

Every so often someone asks why there is no “e” in our team’s name. It’s good to think that the reason for HART’s very existence has been forgotten.

Halt All Racist Tours was formed in 1969 to oppose sporting contact between New Zealand and apartheid South Africa, particularly the proposed 1970 All Blacks tour of South Africa. That tour went ahead, but in part because of HART action the NZ government prohibited the intended 1973 Springboks tour of NZ. HART was regularly accused of being anti-sport, so in the debate leading up to the 1976 All Blacks tour of South Africa some of us decided that we should form a rugby team.

Sober reflection suggested that was a bloody silly idea, but in 1976 we did form netball and soccer teams, affiliated to Auckland University and entered in official Auckland competitions. The soccer team did surprisingly well – in the lowly Open F grade we lost only two league matches that year. There were also two knock-out competitions leading to a grand play-off – but we won both competitions and had to play with ourselves in the final. There were those who said we’d had plenty of practice at that.

The netball team lasted about two seasons and the football team would not have done much better were it not for the late Dean Parker – playwright, historian, trade unionist, romantic, and competent right back. He became our manager, crafted our mythology, presented our Golden Boot trophy, and gathered a surprising range of players from sundry public bars – including a Malaysian soccer international, a junior All Black, sundry provincial rugby players, and a future knight of the realm.    

Since Dean we have had just two long-serving managers – Paul Priddey and John Blair. Starting in the open grades we’ve moved up the age grades as the AFA has developed them, so far playing about 818 official games and countless friendlies, plus many seasons of 7-a-side. For the first 30 years we won more games than we lost; it’s been a bit downhill since then, but with an average age of 58 we aren’t doing too badly in an over-45s grade. And we did win 5-0 last Saturday!

We will be celebrating our 50th season with a game and a function at the clubrooms on Saturday 15 November. Details to follow.

Article added: Wednesday 03 September 2025