Hato Paora College Oldboys

Te Matatini Performance

Na:  Luke Crawford

E nga mana, e nga reo o te kura Tena koutou

Ko te korero tuatahi he poroporoaki ki a ratou kua huri kaweka atu.  Haere e moe koutou ma.  Ki a tatou te hunga ora, nga mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa.

Ko Ruahine te maunga, ko Oroua te awa, Ko Paroro-o-te-rangi te marae.

Cheers Mahanga

Well,  I think the first thing is to dish out a huge mihi to Mahanga Williams who organised a group of oldboys to waiata and haka at the 2005 Matatini festival at Stadium Manawatu on Sunday just prior to the announcement of the festival winners.

While it might sound like a reasonably simple process to organise a roopu of oldboys it is anything but, so ka mau te wehi Mahanga, Well done brother.

Practice Weekends

A group of about 30 oldboys attended practices at the college over 2 seperate weekends in order to spruce up on a bracket of waiata composed by Morvin Simon.  The bracket consisted of an openning trio featuring the vocal talents of Keelan Ransfield, Mike Paki and Manu Heketa.  This led straight into “Rangitane Kia ora ra” and then a number of Paora golden oldies from the 70s and 80s culminating in the Paora Haka.

Te Matatini - National Kapa Haka Festival 

Sunday was the finals day and it was a beautiful warm and sunny.  As to be expected there was a massive crowd from all over the motu.  About 25 pumped up oldboys in their number ones, Black Trou and White shirts,  gathered in the warm up tents for a final tune up. After a few vocal stretches and hamstring stretches for the tama tino tawhito we headed off along the tunnel to the Atamira.  By the time we got on the stage another 30 or so oldboys (nga Hone haere mai tureiti) and the whole of the current boys at kura had joined us.  Thats close to a couple of hundred Paora-ites.

I had the honour of telling everyone why we were there:

1)                  To tautoko te kaupapa o te ra, Te Matatini;

2)                  To join with oldboys of the college, some old, some not so old to participate in something that we all loved to do and that was to waiata and haka

3)                  Most importantly to acknowledge and pay tribute to Morvin and Kura Simon who had contributed 30 long years of much appreciated effort into Hato Paora College.

With that in mind we sang and for most of us we once again enjoyed the feeling of being on stage and singing Paora songs with Paora men and boys in front of the most decerning kapa haka audience one could find.  And the most amazing thing was that the vast majority of them were actually singing along with us and then wonder of wonders.........they clapped and then clapped some more.

So all in all it was a grand and fitting start to a year that we should be paying tribute to the 30 years of dedication to Kapa Haka by Morv and Kura.  They are finishing up at HPC this year and who can blame them.  This small effort by Mahanga and the crew was making use of an opportunity presented to us by Te Matatini organisers.  We thank them for the opportunity and use this column to invite ALL those oldboys from HPC to come back to the kura on DATE TO BE ADVISED.  We are organising something back at the college to acknowledge Morv and Kura and to sing and haka with each other again.

There is some oraginsing and consultation to be done before we can post a definite programme but please start to speak to guys from your era and get them to put the 4th June aside to come back to the kura.  It will be well worth it and personally I can think of few better reasons.

Updates to follow.

Heoi ano, oku tuakana, aku teina ranei,  tenei te mihi kau ake ki a koutou e noho ana i raro i te ringa atawhai a te runga rawa.  Kia tau mai ona manaakitanga kei runga i a koutou ko ou whanau hoki.