“He’s fast, and has developed into a useful player, equally at home as a flanker or on the wing.”
Lewis arrived back during one of the East Coast’s great eras. The Coast had won the third division in 1999, but declined promotion to the second division in 2000 for economic reasons.
Coach Joe McClutchie used the best of local and recruited players with links back to the Coast — including Lewis, his brother Wirihana Raihania, who captained the team, and Lewis’s Hawke’s Bay teammate Orcades Crawford — and they won the third division title again in 2000.
“Joe had good players and he gave them their head to play their best,” Lewis said.
The Coast took promotion to the second division in 2001 and took on some strong provincial teams. They beat Manawatu 24-22 with the help of thousands of fans who showed Palmerston North what passionate support was all about.
Packed at Whakarua ParkA packed Whakarua Park was the venue for the semifinal against Nelson Bays. The Coast were losing 12-9 at halftime. Players and vocal supporters then worked on a march to victory — Mano Flutey kicked four second-half penalties to give the Coast a 21-12 win.
“The East Coast, our fans and our aura packed stadiums around the country,” Lewis said.
“The ground at Manawatu had never seen anything like it. They say that the crowd at Whakarua Park for the Nelson game was 7500 to 8000. The atmosphere was beyond belief.”
The 2001 second division final was against Hawke’s Bay, and the Coast team and supporters headed to McLean Park. Hawke’s Bay were leading 30-10 with 10 minutes to go when the Coast sparked into life, scoring three tries in those dying minutes, the last from a 45-metre rolling maul. Hawke’s Bay held on to win 30-27.
In 2000, Lewis captained and scored a try for the combined East Coast-Poverty Bay team who lost 51-10 to the touring Scotland side.
Lewis represented the East Coast until 2009, captaining the team in 2002, playing nearly 100 games and scoring 16 tries. He’s lost count of the games he’s played at premier/senior club level and in the 10 years of Te Tini a Maui tournament competition he has taken part in across the 30 years since 1987, but a rough estimate puts it at around 600, including 150 for Hikurangi and 35 for Tawhiti.
A European breakIn 2004, Lewis and his wife Pia took a break and headed to Europe. The trip included a stint with the royals, attending the wedding of his cousin Gary (champion shearer Larry Lewis’s son) to Lady Davina Windsor, a cousin of the Queen.
He appreciated the palaces, but is bemused about this Maori extension of the Windsor gene pool, and that his cousin’s children are lords and ladies in line to the throne.
Now aged 47, the 1.91-metre, 127-kilogram (6ft 3in and 20 stone in oldspeak) Lewis has kept fairly well in shape, although his playing weight in the 1990s was 107kg (just under 16st 12lb).
On the field, Lewis is focused, single-minded and not negotiable as he plays the game he loves.
Off the paddock, he is a genial giant, a committed Christian and a man who cheerfully ponders the vagaries of the world around him.
He relishes every moment of his life back in the Ngati Porou heartland, enjoying his work and treasuring his time with Pia, their three children and three from his first marriage, as well as diving, hunting, fishing and horse-riding. This year he has joined the board of trustees at Hiruharama School, where his younger children are pupils.
Another interest is tweaking the V8 in his Commodore SS Crewman. So far he’s got the output up to over 330kW, and is thinking about adding a supercharger kit to take it beyond 400kW.
Rugby will continue to be part of Horace Lewis’s life, as he plans to continue as a coach and mentor.
