Halberg Award History

When Auckland Businessman and Sports Enthusiast, Jack Fairbairn, first thought of the idea of a Sportsman of the Year Award, he contracted the noted English silversmiths, Walker and Hall, to make a suitable statuette.  Working from drawings supplied by a sculptor, Walker and Hall obliged for the princely sum of one hundred and five pounds and the statuette duly arrived in Fairbairn’s office.

Fairbairn took one look at the figure representing the goodness and excellence of sport and uttered an oath:” Whack those Pommie shorts off him, give him some Kiwi ones and that’ll do.”

The sculptor had faithfully clothed the figure in the fashionable English shorts of the day, baggy and knee-length with pockets.

Fairbairn, described by Wellington sports journalist Brian O’Brien as “personable, thoroughly likable and essentially masculine”, had founded NZ Sportsman magazine in 1949 after World War II and decided on the Sportsman of the Year Award as a way of boosting circulation

The original inscription on the trophy was Fairbairn’s words: "The New Zealand Sportsman’s Trophy to be awarded annually to the New Zealand athlete whose personal performances or example, has had the most beneficial effect on the advancement of sport in the country". Years later, this was amended by The Halberg Trust to be more in keeping with the manner in which the Trust applied the presentation of the Award.

Murray Halberg in 1962 attended a sports writers’ dinner in Toronto, proceeds from which went to Canadian children with a disability.  Halberg was so impressed and moved by this that when he returned home he suggested to his employers, New Zealand Breweries, that a similar function be organised in New Zealand.  From that suggestion grew The Murray Halberg Trust for Crippled Children. 

In 1963 and in each subsequent year the Trust has organised the Sports Awards.  Previously, under Fairbairn’s reign, the trophy had been presented to the winner at a formal gathering attended by politicians and civic dignitaries.  The Trust adopted the Canadian idea of the dinner with the dual purpose of raising funds and of publicly recognising the leading sportsmen and women of New Zealand.  In 1987 the Awards were changed in format to include categories and in recognition of Sir Murray’s contribution, the overall trophy for the sports person or team of the year is now known as ‘The Halberg Award’.

Today the Westpac Halberg Awards of New Zealand are accepted as this country’s premier sporting awards, which recognise teams as well as individual sports men and women.

The awards dinner moves around the main centres, Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, and the supreme ‘Halberg Award’ remains the original silver statuette won by Bert Sutcliffe 50 years ago. Miniature versions go to the Westpac Sportsman, Sportswoman, Team and SPARC Coach category winners. Recipients of the Lion Foundation Lifetime Achievement, Westpac Emerging Talent and SPARC Leadership Awards also receive the miniature version of the statuette.