The Pink Report

It’s Pink Time!

There’s only one colour to be seen in this Thursday night in Hamilton and I reckon a few fellas might even be sneakily excited about dusting off the pink paraphernalia that’s been stored away in the wardrobe awaiting the return of the HRV Cup.

If there was one remark I kept hearing over and again around the traps last summer, it was how fantastic it was that so many spectators had got into the pink spirit. And that was almost inevitably followed by: “When they announced the team was going to be wearing pink, I was a bit surprised, like everyone else, but I always thought the public would get behind it, because it’s for a good cause... but I never expected I’d see it go off quite like this. It’s great, isn’t it?”

For the evidence, you just had to scan the Seddon Park banks when the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights played the Stags last year. From official pink caps to candy floss cowboy hats to young men in pink togas to couples in matching pink sunnies, hundreds of Knights supporters had gone the whole pink hog and accessorised, if not draped themselves head to toe, in the team’s new bubblegum colour.

Staunch Knights supporter Jason Uden was an early adopter. He told me that when he rocked up to the HRV season opener in Mount Maunganui in his pink replica Knights shirt, at least 30 people stopped to ask him where they could get one. “One of my mates, with whom I was sitting on the bank, said there was no way he was going near the pink - he’s homophobic and in his mind pink was gay,” Jason continued. “But by the end of the season, even he would have bought one if there had been any left.”

Northern Districts’ entire season order of pink replica merchandise sold out at that first game because even the people who came up with idea didn’t anticipate that supporters would embrace the game colour so readily. When the players auctioned off their own pink playing shirts on TradeMe at the end of the HRV Cup to raise money for the cause - their charity, the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation - the bidding surged to almost $5000.

You might have noticed the team has undergone a slight name change to go along with their pink makeover. A few days ago it was announced that the country’s leading ISP had jumped on board to become the naming rights sponsor of the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights. In an era when cricket sponsorship is proving harder to come by, that’s impressive. New Zealand Cricket has struggled to find naming right sponsors for two of New Zealand’s national domestic competitions (after State ended its domestic cricket sponsorship tenure last year, it was decided the first-class comp would revert to the old name of the Plunket Shield, with no future naming rights sought; the men’s one-day competition is still in sponsor limbo land).

Last season, Jason Uden and his mates were on the front page of the Southland Times, dressed up in their pink Knights supporters’ outfits ready for the away game in Invercargill. That’s pink power. I suspect some cricketers from other teams, having started off having a wee giggle at the whole notion, might even be a touch envious of the way it’s galvanised the Knights’ home crowds. And now their nationwide high profile, impact and good results have scored the Knights a major sponsor whose investment and support will be channelled straight back into increasing their success.

Pink and proud? I reckon.