When even the Kiwis conclude Anzac Day Test is a no-brainer, it’s time to make it happen

May 23, 2026 — 3:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

The notion that there is “nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come” definitely applies to the long-kicked-around notion that there should be a Bledisloe Cup match on Anzac Day.

While both the NRL and the AFL make a huge play of their own matches on that day – see, particularly the Collingwood-Essendon clash – neither code has an iconic New Zealand connection the way rugby union has.

The latest report has it that even the NZRU has come to the conclusion that it is a no-brainer to establish such an annual event, even if it is early in the Super Rugby year and well before the usual international season begins.

But beyond such a Test being part of the Bledisloe Cup series, should there be a separate trophy for that game only, a la the Cook Cup every time the Wallabies play England?

One reader wrote to me with a passionate exhortation there should be exactly that.

“I believe,” writes Rob Deacon, “the contest on our most sacred national day deserves a separate perpetual trophy for what I expect would be an annual event. Accordingly, I recommend it be called The Jacka-Bassett Cup named after Albert Jacka, Australia’s first Victoria Cross recipient at Gallipoli in May 1915, and Cyril Basset, New Zealand’s only Victoria Cross recipient in the Gallipoli campaign in August 1915. They both have amazing stories behind their heroics.”

As grandson of Gallipoli veteran Reginald Keast, Deacon knows his stuff. And I think the idea has merit (though as a biographer of Albert Jacka I have some bias.) In terms of other back-stories for such an event, however, allow me to put down the two most moving stories I know of Australia/New Zealand military interaction, from a couple of my books.

See on, the opening day of the Gallipoli campaign, it is the Australians who hit the shores of Anzac Cove first, shortly followed by the Kiwis. Just after noon, high up on the Second Ridge, a New Zealander suddenly has his entire foot blown away by a piece of shrapnel. As chronicled by Private Herbert Reynolds of the 1st Field Ambulance, the Kiwis is seen hopping forward, calling out, “For God’s sake, don’t leave me!”

On the instant a young Australian jumps up and says, “Come on mate, get on my back,” and the two are soon heading back down the hill, as the very embodiment of the Anzac, spirit.

Three decades later, after the Australians had withstood eight months of being under siege at Tobruk in North Africa – beating back the forces of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, it was the Kiwis who, in December of 1941, were at the forefront of the forces fighting their way through to relieve them, together with tanks of Britain’s 32nd Brigade.

As the Rats of Tobruk fight to get out, the Kiwis and Brits are fighting to get in, with the Germans in the middle.

As the battle begins and the tanks are seen, one German soldier cries to the others, “die Engländer kommen!” even as, to the amazement of the Australian attackers, some break and........

© WA Today