Southland

Rugby Park Stadium sits in Invercargill with room for 18,000, stretching to 20,000 when temporary stands go up, and it is where the Stags have played out the union's long-running struggle to break into the top division. Southland broke away from the Otago Rugby Football Union in 1887, a split that gave the far south its own team and, eventually, its own grievance.

What Southland has taken, repeatedly, is the Ranfurly Shield — in 1920, 1929 and 1937, then again in 1938 and 1959 before a long gap closed with wins in 2009, 2011 and 2019.

The Otago fixture, played for the Donald Stuart Memorial Shield, carries the old rivalry from that 1887 split forward as the Southern Derby. Among the players who wore maroon and gold before going on to the All Blacks, Damian McKenzie's rise through the Stags shirt is the one still fresh in Invercargill.