Old trophy puts a new shine on club | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

 W E LIVE in an era of people parking flashy cars on driveways and converting the garage into a junk collection site.

That ritual of convenience is fine until the garage or garden shed becomes so cluttered that one cannot move without tripping.

Consequently, Isabel Wood, of Hastings, last month was sifting through her discarded items when she came across a box of tankards and knick-knacks her son, Murray Wood, of Melbourne, had left in their garden shed in February 2008.

"An antique shop in Napier, Raphael's, was having its closing-down sale so Murray bid on a box of things," Isabel Wood tells SportToday.

"He took what he wanted and put the rest away in the shed so a fortnight ago I discovered the box again."

To her and husband Don's delight, the retired office manager came across a Napier Rowing Club pot (akin to a tankard) dated 1877.

The club, which has metamorphosed to the Hawke's Bay Rowing Club, was formed in 1874 so one can imagine how perked up an eagle-eyed Wood was when she spotted the pot.

The engraving on the trophy, presented as a prize to each member of a scratch four team (who had never rowed together before), states: "C Kennedy, bow; RJ Duncan 2; H Gibbons 3; J Gibberd stroke".

"Kennedy and Duncan were two popular names I recognised so I made a community effort to get in touch with the rowing club," Wood says.

It wasn't easy. She contacted Napier Sailing Club general manager Lyle Tresadern, who in turn put her on to Napier solicitor Peter Twigg, father of Olympic single sculler Emma Twigg.

"Having been lost and unloved for long enough, I felt I needed to make the effort to find out where it belonged," says Wood, who contacted her son in Australia and received his blessings to do as she desired with the trophy.

Consequently, club committee member Jo Tripp gleefully turned up at Wood's doorstep to accept the silverware on behalf of the club.

"She gave me a bunch of lilies, which was really nice, and I certainly didn't expect the newspaper to interview me."

Wood is no novice in spotting antiques, having collected china and teapots regally displayed in her lounge cabinets.

She still treasures a teapot presented to her grandfather, the late Thomas Double, in 1904 and she doesn't intend to give that to anyone.

"It was quite sad that the family of the four rowers didn't hang on it [the tankard].

"With the family history it's so important that it goes back to the rowing club," says Wood, who fears if the pot had ended up in the hands of antique dealers, they would have melted it down to silver for quick monetary returns.

Wood, who is in the throes of tracing the roots of her great-grandmother, the late Mary Cockburn-Jarvie, who arrived in Invercargill in 1875, feels the rowing silverware is part of the original settlers' history.

Rowing club president Neil Pulford says the trophy will become part of its annual prizegiving silverware.

"We haven't decided who the recipient will be yet," says Pulford, adding they have other antique shields at the club shed along Clive River but the latest addition is definitely the oldest.

The Napier club, whose only other rival almost 80 years ago was the Union Rowing Club, became the Bay club in the late 1950s.

Pulford didn't recognise any names on the trophy when matched to old photographs at the club shed but did point out the cox had been short-changed in the trophy stakes.

"The coxless fours have been around in the last 20 years or so," he says, agreeing it looked like the cox "was only seen as being there for the ride".

The Bay club's novice season begins on August 8 as a six-week programme to run every Sunday to entice newcomers.

Bay members of the club are making an impact at national and international level.

Bay rower Emma Twigg, who is based in Hamilton where she is studying, is in the New Zealand Elite Squad.

Adam Tripp is part of the men's four to compete in Brest Belarus from July 22-25.

Giacomo Thomas is a member of the national under-21 single scull team who started competing yesterday in the 2010 Youth Cup, which ends tomorrow.

 Richard Harrison is part of the men's heavyweight double 2010 New Zealand University Crew who will compete at the World University Games in Hungary next month.

Hayley Jenkins is part of the lightweight women's coxless quad national varsity crew to dig deep in the Transtasman Test Series.

Last year the Bay club won the Centennial Oar (for the best club in New Zealand) and the Centennial Scull (for the best sculling club in the country). This year it was third nationally as a club but retained the Centennial Scull bragging rights.