26/08/2024
Jim Spencer - Life Member TCOB Rugby
It is with sadness that we report the passing of Jim Spencer - Life Member of TCOB last week. A private ceremony has been held.
Please see below - the Eulogy delivered by Royce Tunbridge at Jim's Ceremony.
Good Morning
Lyn, Mark Joanne and Families please accept my sincere condolences on Jim’s passing.
Superanda Omnia Ferendo ; All is overcome by working is our motto, prove it true, do your part,no duty shirking to proclaim the WHITE AND BLUE.
An edict that Jim would follow through in his rugby career, I am sure that there was White and Blue running through his veins.
Jim was the best coach that most of us have ever been associated with. He was very uncompromising at practices and game days, yet there was a social side of him. He had the utmost respect of those he coached and by opponents also.
I recall the 1970 season after a poor game by his standards against Hunterville the Tuesday night practice started as usual 3 laps last man sprinting to the front of the line then into the skill sessions. Each lap was almost 1 mile long, up the sand hill round the number 2 ground. Not a bad warm up regime.
JAW was doing his usual ranting and raving berating us for the substandard effort. After 2 laps things got a bit quiet. We thought that perhaps he was either in the changing room which is incidentally still at the hostel or hiding in the bushes so we kept going. After 6 laps one or two of the senior players in the team decided bu**er this enough was enough so we stopped and waited for another broadside from Jim but no he had jogged back home to Selwyn Crescent. He turned up to Thursday night practice as if nothing had happened.
I know that the boys at Newton King weren’t too happy when we had had a substandard game. Jim got them to stand in the mechanic pit and gave them a real bollicking. The poor bu**ers didn’t even play the game. Feel sure you wouldn’t get away with it in today’s world. Think it would be called Bullying.
Not many of us knew that he had had classical ballet lessons. To show how you should jump in lineout he would mimic Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz. Quite hilarious at the time. Remember there was no lifting back then.
He would have joined the Club in the 50s being senior captain in 1957. In 1959 Jim was a member of the winning Tech side that won the combined competition. I would like to quote part of the Proclaim the White and Blue.
“The cause of its success stemmed from a well drilled pack in which every forward played his part and none better than the vigorous Jim Spencer”.
In 1960 he played 12 games for Wanganui. Possibly played every game that year.
He coached the 1969 senior team winning the combined championship. After the disappointment of not winning the 1970 championship he was going to give coaching away but the lure of a new pair of white Skellerup sandshoes changed his mind plus there was an enthusiast bunch of players raring to go he agreed to coach the 1971 Senior Reserve side.
This was a side that performed particularly well finishing co holders with that club at the end of Devon Road.
There was an incredible team spirit. Egos were left at home. It was bloody marvellous being part of that team. Unfortunately some have passed on but there is one player that I would mention who would travel out to see Spencer regularly and that was Pete Theil. I am picking there will be one or two discussions when they get together again.
In an interview in 1973 Jim was asked why our teams are able to perform so well he said the answer was simple good practices well attended plus a good team spirit
Jim was the only double winner of the Jimmy Ward Memorial Shield the Clubs Top Trophy for the Best Club Member winning in 1958 and 1971. I would like to think that his coaching of the Senior Reserve side was part of that.
He was also a life member of the Club.
He often voiced his opinion regarding the way rugby is played and administrated today. Bit hard to argue against those opinions.
In the late 1970s when the Club was building the new Club rooms at the Park he said that we should have stayed in the old club rooms and put our resources into the playing side of things. Thirty or so years later perhaps he was right. We will never know.
While Stan Ambrose was affectionally known as Mr.TOB up to the 50s. Its fair to say the JAW Spencer was Mr TCOB up to the demise of what was once a great club.
RIP Jim
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