Former sports editor joins as regular columnist

The chance to write solely about just how bloody good it is to be a Southlander; does it get much better than that?

• Nathan Burdon is a former Southland Times sports editor who now works in communications in the sports sector.

Hello, again.

I’ll kick this off by saying what a huge privilege it is to be supporting this new venture with a regular column.

I was really excited when Logan first told me about The Tribune.

The chance to write solely about just how bloody good it is to be a Southlander; does it get much better than that?

I’ve been lucky. My journalism career came after typewriters and smoke-filled newsrooms but included laptops, cell phones, email and digital photography.

But more than that, it included the Sting dynasty, two Ranfurly Shield tenures, ILT Stadium Southland and New Zealand’s first covered velodrome, Olympic medals in rowing and cycling, a British and Irish Lions tour and a host of other moments which give me goose bumps like a page of braille even when I think about them now.

Since leaving the Southland Times in 2015 I’ve stayed journalism adjacent - comms roles with regional sports trust Active Southland, as well as helping out with media support for some of my favourite events including track cycling, the Kepler Challenge, the SBS Bank Tour of Southland and the NZ Golf Open.

Nathan Burdon has seen sport “from both sides of the fence” and plans to explore that with his new Tribune column.

What all of that means is I’ve been fortunate to see the paddock from both sides of the fence and that’s the perspective I want to explore in this column.

Southland has a truly extraordinary sporting system. Hold onto that thought because I’m going to circle back to it.

But…boy, we’ve got some challenges. We are by no means immune to the sort of pressures the rest of New Zealand and communities around the globe are also facing. Added to the mix, there’s a few wrinkles which are particularly peculiar to our part of the world.

We can get into all of that later, but for now let’s return to that extraordinary Southland sporting system; that beautiful, bountiful blend of selfless volunteerism, passionate coaching,

glorious places and spaces, muscular community funding, an engaged and proud public, a determined spirit and…an unwavering yearning to prove the buggers wrong.

Yep, I could be describing just about any place in regional New Zealand. But nowhere does it quite like here.

It’s what drives everything from the kids playing in the frost on Saturday morning to Alena Saili giving us an ‘antlers up’ at the Tokyo Olympics.

And, as the young kids say these days, I’m here for it.