PHOTO: Waitete Rugby Football Club
WAITETE Rugby Club has vowed not to sit back after an iconic and rare building fixture – a 57-year-old pair of elephant tusks – was stolen this week.
In 1966, Stan Kyle shot the animal in Portuguese East Africa (modern day Mozambique) and brought the trophy tusks back to be displayed in Waitete’s clubroom.
And so, they have sat there ever since. Until this week.
Club manager Neil Macrae said it was beyond his comprehension why someone would want to steal the tusks, though he thought whoever did it must either have a market to sell them to or had done it for the challenge.
Neil was doing a routine check on the building on Tuesday morning when he noticed a back door was open.
He knew someone must have taken something and looked immediately at the bar as the obvious target for a petty thief.
It never crossed his mind that the tusks had been taken, he said.
While Neil and the club president reported information to police about the break-in, the president’s son noticed the tusks were gone.
Neil expected not many clubs in New Zealand would have a pair of elephant tusks on display and they were a point of difference in Waitete.
“They’re a part of a club and a part of the building.”
Neil described the incident as sickening and infuriating.
“We want them back. You just don’t do that stuff.”
While his mind has been racing with theories about who and why, he knows it is mostly speculation at this early stage.
“They’d be sick pr**ks, whoever they are.”
Neil said someone would have to know something and someone would have seen something because the tusks were awkward to manoeuvre and difficult to hide.
Meanwhile, Waitete club continues to search for clues that could lead to finding the tusks and those who took them.
“We’re not sitting down on our a*s, we’re going to be trying to find them.”
