Scott Waldrom hits a hundred caps for the Avalon Wolves

Above: Scott Waldrom making a tackle on an Axemen player on Saturday in his 100th Premier game for Avalon. Photo by Dave Lintott Photography.

 It’s taken 18 seasons, but this coming Saturday Scott Waldrom will be presented with his 100th Premier game blazer at the Avalon Wolves clubrooms on their Old Timers’ Day.

On Saturday he came off the bench at halftime to play his first Premier match in just under a year and one of only a handful in Wellington club rugby over the past decade.

Waldrom’s rugby career has come full circle it seems, since he burst on to the scene as a young tearaway openside flanker out of St Pat’s Silverstream in the late 1990s.

“It definitely wasn’t a one-off,” he told Club Rugby of his return to playing. “I’ve been training and trying to get fit enough to play Premier rugby again and I played a couple of games for the Bs prior to this match. If I get selected, hopefully I’ll play again this weekend and throughout the remainder of the season.”

“I wanted to get back into Premier rugby, and I have kept training while I’ve been away with the All Black Sevens team earlier in the year. I had quite a long break from playing with injuries as well and the body’s starting to feel quite good.”

With the end of the World Rugby Sevens series, Waldrom and Tomasi Cama have ended their tenure as interim All Blacks Sevens co-coaches and Clark Laidlaw has taken over. Waldrom is back home in the Hutt Valley with his family and has also just started fresh employment with DB Breweries.

A specialist openside flanker with searing speed in his youth, these days he’s happy to play anywhere in the loose forwards. “Logan Blake is a good player with a great work rate, so I’m happy to work around him.”

His Premier career started back in 1999. “I was 80kg and fresh out of St Pat’s Silverstream and Premier rugby was pretty daunting. Avalon was supportive, and the players in the team were welcoming.”

“I remember in the first round we didn’t win a game until the very last week and then we beat one of the teams that went on to make the Jubilee Cup final. We slowly got better from there and our fortunes improved.

“Some players took me under their wings, Jason Goble, Rob Pupeke and Dean Soutar were three players that were a big influence on me during my early days at Avalon.”

Plus former All Black and All Blacks Sevens stalwart Dallas Seymour. “We were assigned mentors at the Wellington Academy and Dallas Seymour mentored me for a couple of years. Probably my biggest memory was playing against Norths and a young Jerry Collins knocking out Dallas Seymour and we had to wait for the ambulance to take him off the field. A sign of things that were to come with Jerry and also showing that club rugby was a bit of a leveller.”

“In those early days when we had those NPC and Super Rugby guys mixing it up with the club rugby players made for a great competition and an enjoyable one.”

Waldrom was a back-to-back Best & Fairest competition winner in 2000 and 2001, the start of a period of several successful seasons for Avalon when they could have and perhaps should have made at least a couple of Jubilee Cup finals and perhaps won.

In 2000, Waldrom’s Avalon finished fifth in the Jubilee Cup. Despite two tries by Waldrom, they lost 21-29 to Poneke in the last round, while Johnsonville pulled out a bonus point win against Ories to leap from sixth to fourth.

In 2001 Avalon won the Swindale Shield in dramatic circumstances. Avalon beat Wellington 49-5 in the last round on their Old Timers’ Day, and Marist St Pat’s lost 22-23 to Petone to hand Avalon the title. Waldrom’s continuity between backs and forwards was a key ingredient in his side’s first round win.

Avalon remained in contention throughout the second round, a. late Mano Flutey penalty that gave them a 32-29 win over Ories propelling them to third as the semi-finals approached. In the last round there was little Waldrom could do as Avalon lost to Petone 6-9 in appalling conditions. At the same time, MSP beat Wests 30-27, meaning that Avalon had to play top qualifier Poneke in the semi-final. They lost that 21-30 and their season was over.

Another near miss was in 2004 when they qualified for a home semi-final, only to be beaten 17-6 by Poneke. “We had a team that was good enough to win the Jubilee Cup but we fell short a couple of times there.”

This period also culminated in Scott’s younger brother Thomas joining him at Avalon. Like Scott, Thomas went on to represent the Hurricanes and later the Crusaders too, before moving to England and forging out a successful career with the Leicester Tigers and now the Exeter Chiefs. Exeter won the English Premiership last month.

“He’s got one more year in his contract and then his family is pretty keen to head back home. So hopefully next season we might see the two Waldroms running around together again.

“I was lucky to play with him for quite a while and we had a good game going there for a while. We used to call moves ourselves. The backs would make a call and we would turn around and say no it’s our ball and do our own moves off scrums!”

“We had a good period there for a while in the early 2000s, and it’s a shame that professional rugby takes over. Hopefully one day we play again, whether it’s Premier or Pressies.”

While Thomas went overseas, Scott remained in New Zealand. He also spent two seasons each playing for Tukapa in Taranaki and Hautapu in the Waikato, so has played approximately 150 Premier club games all up.

Injuries and the loss of head coach Aaron Falloon, who stepped down for personal reasons, not withstanding, Avalon are coming off an underwhelming first round Swindale Shield campaign that saw them slip to 12th of 13 in the standings. On Saturday they missed out 12-22 to the Wellington Axemen in their Hardham Cup opener.

“There’s no shortage of talent in the Naenae and Taita area, it’s just unfortunate that some of the players are moving to other clubs that have a better winning record. But Avalon is a family club and the people that are there are working hard and are passionate. It’s a shame we’re not getting the results at the moment but I can certainly see Avalon making big improvements. We have got some good coaches like Nick Brown and also Johnny Bradbrook and Errol Weston who have stepped in, ex-players who know what it takes.”

Avalon hopes to see a strong contingent of former players and past and current supporters at their Old Timers’ Day at Fraser Park this coming weekend, with the Premiers and Premier Reserves playing Paremata-Plimmerton.