Poverty Bay co-captain Keanu Taumata<\/a>, for his efforts in Heartland rugby.<\/p>\nThe Ian Kirkpatrick medal for Heartland player of the year is awarded annually.<\/p>\n
Taumata told the Gisborne Herald he had previously been contacted by New Zealand Rugby about attending the awards, but when no follow-up arrangements were made, he assumed another player had taken out the award.<\/p>\n
![\"Ian]()
Ian Kirkpatrick hands the medal which bears his name to Poverty Bay co-captain Keanu Taumata, for his efforts in Heartland rugby.<\/p>\n
The Poverty Bay flanker and co-skipper said he watched the awards on television and while he was delighted when announced the winner, the biggest honour came in Gisborne yesterday when he received the medal from the man himself \u2013 Kirkpatrick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to get it from Kirky,\u201d Taumata said. \u201cBefore I got it, I was visualising getting it from the man it\u2019s named after. It\u2019s a huge honour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank you, Kirky, thank you very much,\u201d Taumata said to Kirkpatrick at Rugby Park on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou deserve it, mate,\u201d Kirkpatrick replied.<\/p>\n
Poverty Bay improved in 2025, from not winning a game in 2024 to finishing seventh among the 12 Heartland teams and qualifying for the Lochore Cup (fifth to eighth) playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom last season, it was good to put a bit of respect back in the jersey,\u201d said Taumata.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe were clearly 15 points better than them.\u201d Ian Kirkpatrick: ‘I could have wrung his bloody neck.’ Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[196078,6074,3265,64,63,9658,34902,196081,26359,580,67835,9522,196077,84158,196080,324,1697,196079,13834,44948,760,44985,117685,8080,85,245,3205],"class_list":["post-358903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-196078","tag-africa","tag-all","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blacks","tag-blasts","tag-choose","tag-decision","tag-for","tag-great","tag-ian","tag-kirkpatrick","tag-legendary","tag-loosie","tag-neutral","tag-nz","tag-ref","tag-referees","tag-rejection","tag-rugby","tag-rugbys","tag-slammed","tag-south","tag-sports","tag-tour","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}