Tony Kidd
Tony Kidd, former Canterbury Rugby League Chair is leading an expansion NRL bid in New Zealand’s South Island.
An out-of-the-blue enquiry from a Sydney-based writer set Tony Kidd on a path from initial sceptic to a role at the forefront of a potential club in the thick of the NRL expansion mix.
The 2021 interaction with renowned journalist and author Patrick Skene planted the seed with Kidd, then on the Canterbury Rugby League Board, which has grown into the genuine prospect of a South Island team entering the world’s preeminent rugby league competition.
“Patrick got in touch with me on Linkedin about Canterbury entering a team in the NRL,” the South Island NRL Bid CEO explains.
“At the time I thought we weren’t really in a position to do it, but he convinced me that it was a possibility.
“We really needed to boost rugby league in Canterbury and a team in the NRL was the way to do it. There was never going to be a ‘right time’, so we had to start somewhere – a journey of a million miles starts with the first step.”
A common thread of Kidd’s broader rugby league journey is helping build clubs and programmes from the ground up.
Raised in Hamilton, he played for Frankton Albions and attended University of Waikato before moving to Queenstown in the late-1980s. There he played for the Cromwell-based Kawarau Bears, predominantly made up of players who were working on the construction of the Clyde Dam.
The Bears wound up and Kidd was at a loose end – so he spearheaded the formation of Queenstown’s first-ever rugby league club, Wakatipu Giants.
“Queenstown had an annual game put on by a group of guys who liked to call themselves ‘The Backyarders’, so I knew there was an appetite for it,” he recalls.
“I was working with a couple of people with a rugby league background and they were keen to get in and play. We got the support of enough people to put a team in, then we had to convince Southland Rugby League [to accept us].
“We never looked back – we had players coming out of the woodwork and made the grand final in the first year. In hindsight I would’ve put a better structure in place; I was only there for one season but the club carried on for a several more years.”
Kidd headed to Christchurch, playing one season with Sydenham Swans before assisting in the formation of the University club that featured at senior level in Canterbury for several seasons in the 1990s. Like Queenstown, however, the rapid turnover of tertiary students presented difficulties in sustaining the club.
Following coaching roles with Riccarton Knights and Hornby Panthers junior teams, taking up a teaching position at St Thomas’ of Canterbury College in 2010 provided an opportunity for Kidd to help lay the foundation for a longer-term – and highly successful – rugby league programme.
“I got a bit of a prompt from one of our students, Tyler Sullivan, to enter the [NZRL] National Secondary Schools Tournament, and [Canterbury Bulls rep and future Bulls and premiership-winning Linwood coach] Andrew Auimatagi joined our staff that year too.
“We were able to build a really good team and culture there over several years, culminating in their win at nationals.”
In 2023 St Thomas’, coached by Auimatagi, became the first team from outside Auckland to win the NZSST title in 23 years – a landmark achievement for the school and youth rugby league in Canterbury and the South Island.
“We ran that programme off the smell of an oily rag, but we had a lot of buy-in from the school and the kids, as well as the clubs in the area – particularly Halswell, Hornby and Riccarton.
“Nowadays kids are coming from all over town to play league at the school.”
Tony Kidd, during his tenure at St Thomas’ of Canterbury College, served both as a teacher and a member of the St Thomas rugby league team coaching group.
Kidd, who took up a Kaiako (teacher) position at Haeata Community Campus – another NZSST regular – in 2022, had a year on the CRL Board during the 1990s.
Picking up further experience on the boards of Love it Local, Purau Bay Ltd, the Christchurch Trade Aid shop and Manawatu’s Manline, he returned for another CRL term in 2017, including two and a half years as Chairperson during one of the more arduous periods for the organisation…and grassroots sport generally.
COVID-19 presented a slew of unprecedented obstacles for the code, not least of all financial.
“They were pretty tough times, but we managed to maintain rugby league and make some positive steps on and off the field, as well as putting a lot of social programmes in place.
“Like most sports, we suffered badly with COVID – there was the period where teams could play but no one could come and watch – but financially we came through it quite well, thanks to the good management of [then-CRL CEO] Duane [Fyfe].”
Roughly 18 months after finishing on the CRL board in 2021, Kidd had formally established the South Island NRL Bid.
“I put it out there to people that now was the time and was anyone interested in taking part in helping making it a reality. A few people got back to us and it went from there,” Kidd recounts.
“Initially there was just a few of us and we were trying to pull out any stops we could and figure out how to make it work. We were very fortunate with some of the people who came on board – [Head of Commercial & Partnerships] Darren Littlewood, [Director of Football] Duane Fyfe and [Chief Financial Officer] Kieran Bligh – and the skills they brought to the bid.
“We spent a lot of time knocking on doors and getting knocked back to start with, but in the last six months we’ve made significant headway.
“Going to Las Vegas [for the NRL double-header] helped us immensely – Kieran was able to talk to [NRL CEO] Andrew Abdo and [ARLC Chairman] Peter V’landys – and getting the support of the various local rugby league boards has been hugely important.
“We’ve put a lot of effort into the money side of things and raising funds – without that it’s not going to happen. We’re on the cusp of making that happen right now and I feel that we’ve done an awful lot in a short period.”
A key component of the South Island NRL Bid team’s make-up is each member has the development and future of rugby league in the region at the heart of what they are trying to achieve.
Kidd played in the Waikato, Otago, South and Canterbury senior competitions before embarking on coaching and administrative roles in the latter regions; Fyfe’s vast experience at grassroots level is headlined by tenures as Northland Rugby League’s General Manager and Canterbury Rugby League’s CEO, and long-running involvement with New Zealand Defence Forces Rugby League; Bligh is a former Papanui Tigers player; and Yorkshire native and Leeds Rhinos diehard Littlewood played in England at semi-professional level, and has been enthusiastically involved in the code as a sponsor in Wellington (where he also was a board director for WRL) and Canterbury.
“We all come from a rugby league background, we’ve all either played or administered the game in Canterbury – with the exception of Darren, who’s English and brings unique strengths to the team in marketing, sales and promotion, as well as a wide-ranging background in the game,” Kidd says.
“In that first six months, with different people it could have fallen over. But we persevered and got things set up – all the small things in the background, the building blocks that will make it happen. We managed to get all that done.”
As the South Island NRL Bid has evolved over the past month, former Gold Coast Seagulls player, and Gold Coast Titans founder, and former CEO and owner Michael Searle, and Poto Williams, a respected public servant, have joined the cause to make the team stronger and more dynamic.
Legendary ex-Canterbury, Kiwis, Warriors and Wigan coach Frank Endacott has come into the fold as an advisor, while further team announcements are coming soon.
“I’m very, very confident now that if we’re not the front-runner, we’re in a very good position,” Kidd asserts.
“There’s bids from Papua New Guinea, Perth and other places, but we’ve got the community support behind us, we’ll have the funding, we’re in a great location and we’ll have the brand-new Te Kaha Stadium as our home.
“A name and branding are coming in the near future – we are excited about what this club will bring to the NRL and how much of a boost it will be to rugby league in the South Island at every level.”