PONSONBY UNDER-10s RUGBY DESCENDS INTO ORANGE-RELATED SHOUTING MATCH BETWEEN GROWN ADULTS

A Saturday morning under-10s rugby fixture at Western Springs ended not with a final whistle but with two Ponsonby mothers shouting at each other over the half-time oranges. Twenty children stood on the wing eating nothing.

The roster had Pip Carmichael down for Round 4. Pip Carmichael says the roster had Antonia Beauchamp-Wallis down for Round 4. Both women produced screenshots. Neither matched.

"I brought the fucking oranges last time," Pip told The Daily Yarn, holding an empty Glassons tote. "I drove from Ponsonby with a chilly bin of mandarins because someone said mandarins were easier on the kids' teeth. Now this tosser reckons it was my week again. It was not my week."

Antonia, for her part, was carrying on like a pork chop near the try line. She told another mum the WhatsApp group was "a complete shitshow" and that Pip had "muted the chat in September and never recovered". A father attempting to mediate was told, by both women, to get fucked.

The referee, a 19-year-old from Grey Lynn earning $42 for the morning, said he had "no comment on the oranges". Half-time ran fourteen minutes over. A dad sprinted to the Surrey Crescent Countdown and came back with apples. The children rejected the apples on textural grounds.

My late husband Gerald refereed junior rugby in Marshlands for eleven years. He brought his own oranges every Saturday in a Tupperware. That is the standard. The WhatsApp group has since been renamed "Round 5 — ORANGES (PIP)" by a third party. Pip has left the group.