28/06/2026
What’s your perfect day?
To most, it’s waking up to a sunny day with nowhere to be. You sleep in, wander to the beach with your doggo, then lazily sip a coffee with someone dear.
For some, the excitement level is cranked up to 10—you parachute through the eye of a storm, land in the middle of a human fusbol championship, deliver the motivational speech of a lifetime, and somehow lead your team to a come-from-behind victory while the Queen watches intently.
And for a few, the perfect day is a little more magical—filled with faeries and wizards battling giant tortoises for control of the fantastical Kingdom of Lincoln.
Whatever your perfect day looks like, the OPAL Contest got you covered.
OPAL—an annual interclub competition between Oakland, Pegasus, and Liffey Toastmasters—is not your typical club meeting.
Yes, it’s a speech contest. But it’s also much more than that.
There are no fixed rules, except one: the winning club gets to design the event for the following year.
They also get custody of the giant Talking Stick trophy for an entire year—and, more importantly, the bragging rights of being better than the other two clubs.
This year's event was hosted by Liffey Toastmasters after a two-year hiatus, and true to OPAL tradition, the challenges were anything but ordinary.
The first game, Mime Your Own Business, paired team members together—one speaker and one mime. As the speaker delivered a speech, their partner had the task of acting it out without saying a word.
The second challenge, Picture This, required teams of three. Each member was shown a random picture and had to continue a story based only on the image in front of them, without seeing the pictures assigned to their teammates. Somehow, three completely different images had to become one coherent story—or at least something that vaguely resembled one.
The audience was treated to an evening filled with creativity, sharp wit, laughter, and unexpected twists.
Toastmasters and guests alike enjoyed the evening, and nobody was left on the sidelines. Through a special Table Topics session, everyone had the opportunity to join in the fun and contribute to the night’s chaos.
But in the end, a winner still had to be crowned.
With it came the unenviable responsibility of hosting next year’s OPAL event, the burden of safeguarding the legendary Talking Stick trophy for the next twelve months, but, of course, the real reward: a year of bragging rights.
After a closely contested evening, that honour went to Oakland Toastmasters.
Toastmasters New Zealand & Fiji
