The motto of St Gilbert’s College in Dunedin is “he iwi tahi tātou”, the legendary, and probably mythological, statement that Governor William Hobson supposedly made at the first signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. St Gilbert’s headmaster Mr Slane likes to intone the phrase frequently. He does it better than that bloke playing Hobson did on telly series The Governor a few years before. He does it when wondering aloud about the rabble protesting against the Springbok tour. St Gilbert’s might be a Catholic college for boys, but its true faith is rugby.
When Mr Slane invokes the four words of te reo he knows, they largely fall on deaf ears. There are only a few brown faces among all the grey jerseys and blue blazers that bear the motto. It is Dunedin, 1981, after all. One of the few Māori kids on the roll is Josh Waaka, a bookish, bespectacled member of the underperforming second XV and the younger brother
