Hawke’s Bay Magpie lock Isaia Walker-Leawere picked for All Blacks XV

The Hawke’s Bay Magpies will have just one player among the 65 named in two All Blacks squads heading to the Northern Hemisphere this year.

Hawke's Bay Magpies lock Isaia Walker-Leawere with All Blacks coach Scott Robertson last month after being called-in as injury cover. He now gets an All Blacks XV tour featuring games against Ireland and Georgia. Photo / Lynne Cameron / action press

The player is lock Isaia Walker-Leawere, 27, who was on Tuesday named in the 26-strong second echelon the All Blacks XV, who will play matches against Munster in Ireland on November 3 and Georgia in France eight days later.

The only other Hawke’s Bay connection, in either the XV squad or the 36-strong full All Blacks team named 24 hours earlier for tests against Japan, Ireland, England and France, is Taranaki wing Kini Naholo, who played for the Hastings Boys’ High School first XV and will also be heading for the matches against Munster and Georgia.

The selection of Walker-Leawere, a Ruatoria-born 2016-2017 New Zealand Under-20 representative who came to Hawke’s Bay via Gisborne and Wellington, and has since played in about 40 games for the Magpies and almost 70 in Super Rugby for the Hurricanes, was foreshadowed by his form in Super Rugby Pacific this year when he was called into the All Blacks’ training squad as injury cover during the home test series.

He has been injured for part of the season, during which injury possibly conspired to end the tour hopes of players such as halfback, two-test 2022 All Black and 2023 All Blacks XV player Folau Fakatava, No 8 Devan Flanders and fullback Harry Godfrey, who at the end of the Super Rugby season were all touted as chances for tours in the black jersey this year.

But life goes on for Magpies head coach Brock James who is expecting to have almost a full muster available for Saturday’s Bunnings NPC Battle of the Bays quarter-final against the Bay of Plenty Steamers in Tauranga.

It’s a repeat of the first-week assignment in last year’s playoffs, a winning quarter-final against BoP in Tauranga, and the focus is now on bringing the best of the season together in the hope of the Magpies emulating that success.

Discussing the pathway of what might and what might not get Magpies into the All Blacks’ queue ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, James said while he doesn’t know what strategy the international selectors have this far our, he presumes they must have one.

But what matters most, now, is the business end of the Bunnings NPC in a season where the best of the Magpies has been inspirational, the worst frustrating.

But the best were the second-half comebacks of Hawke’s Bay’s first-division record start of five consecutive wins, the steel (and the fans’ role he says helped get the side over the line) against Auckland in coming back from 13 points down with seven minutes to play to win 36-35 in Napier a fortnight ago.

Then came the explosive three-tries-to-none, 21-0, 16-minute blitz to start last Saturday’s match against the Wellington Lions.

Other statistics suggest a possible humdinger on Saturday, for in the 10 rounds leading to the playoffs the Magpies had the most “carries” of the 14 teams in the two months of footy, while Bay of Plenty scored the most tries.

Reflecting on last Saturday’s game against Wellington, the first time in six matches the Magpies had scored before any opponent’s first two tries, James said: “The one big thing was we started well, and we put in a really good first 20 minutes.

“But then we let the pressure off, and they [Wellington] took advantage of some [of our] silly mistakes.”

He said the season’s initial target had been to make the playoffs. “We’re here now. We set ourselves some pretty lofty goals, we are where we wanted to be, other than it would have been nice to have a game at McLean Park.”

NPC statistics featuring Hawke’s Bay:

Most tries: Bay of Plenty 51, North Harbour 50, Hawke’s Bay 47.

Most carries: Hawke’s Bay 1382, Canterbury 1367, Auckland 1323.

Most lineouts won: Naitoa Ah Kuoi (Bay of Plenty) 49, Laghlan McWhannell (Waikato) 46, Tom Parsons (Hawke’s Bay) 44.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.