The open mix of writers reflected Fergus’s view that “you get as much innovation and risk taking from the most senior writers as you do from younger writers, and you get as much anxious conservatism and desire not to put a foot wrong with younger writers”.

“Sport was never going to be generational; it was never going to take a position on any of the debates going on about modernism and postmodernism and realism and speculative fiction and anything like that.”

The quality they were looking for was simply “the hair standing up on the back of your neck. Just that this is good, we like this”.

And the older literary generation’s verdict on the young neophytes was soon evident in the clearest way possible. “They sent us their stories to publish. We got an extract from a Maurice Gee novel and an interview to go with it. Allen Curnow started sending us his poems, and he was not publishing many poems in those days—it was possibly only one a year. We would get it and the London Review of Books would get it.”

The first half of Sport’s ‘game’ was captured in the anthology Great Sporting Moments: The Best of Sport Magazine 1988–2004, edited by Damien and published by VUP in 2005.

Now it’s Fergus’s turn to do the choosing, with fiction, poetry, essays, and oddities by 100 of the country’s best writers testifying to the sustained strength of the magazine right through until its last issue, guest edited by award-winning poet and VUP staff member Tayi Tibble.

Tayi features in the new anthology, along with other “emerging glow worms” like Ruby Solly and Eamonn Marra and leading lights such as Bill Manhire and Ashleigh Young, who also works for VUP.

Having helmed the magazine from the start, Fergus looks at the row of all 47 issues in his office and says, “When I go along the shelf there, I can remember the ebbs and flow of energy through those years, the really good ones where everything came together, the ones that were a bit of a struggle.”

But he was always quickly reminded why he did it.

“The time I nearly gave up was after about 10 issues and that was due to my son, Jack, being a small person and me thinking, ‘Have I got the energy for this or should my energy go on something else?’ And then, if you look at issue 11, it’s got ‘Not Her Real Name’, Emily Perkins’s first long story, and Bill Manhire’s story ‘The Poet’s Wife’, and Gregory O’Brien’s essay ‘After Bathing at Baxter’s’.”

Even now, Fergus is loath to say Sport is definitely over, preferring Islands editor Robin Dudding’s insistence his magazine was on hiatus but might still return.

For Fergus, many of Sport’s functions are now better performed through VUP books such as last year’s Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy and this year’s Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, which is edited by VUP staff member Craig Gamble and is being published in November at the same time as A Game of Two Halves.

But never say never. That full stop may yet prove to be an ellipsis.