Nick Grigg, 40th game for the Magpies coming up, on Saturday, as the team strive to claim Hawke's Bay's first national provincial rugby championship first division title in the competition's 50 years. Photo / Doug Laing.
Nick Grigg, 40th game for the Magpies coming up, on Saturday, as the team strive to claim Hawke's Bay's first national provincial rugby championship first division title in the competition's 50 years. Photo / Doug Laing.
If there’s one player who inspires the fans to pack the park and back the Magpies to win their NPC quarter-final in Napier on Saturday night, it’s midfield back Nick Grigg.
In four seasons in Hawke’s Bay, he’s played in all but three of the 42 matches, and yet it’salmost as if he believes he still owes us something.
Before he arrived, the Wellington-born everywhere man had played nine test matches for Scotland and, in all, more than 100 games in top-level competitions for clubs in Scotland, France, Japan and the US.
But it was the Hawke’s Bay union that finally gave him the chance to play in the NPC, at the age of 28, and, now 33, he wants to help the Magpies win the competition, for the first time in its 50 years.
Despite the fact that Taranaki have beaten the Magpies in each of the sides’ last four matches against each other, that the Bulls have won the major title twice, and that they have the top points-scorer in this year’s NPC, the TAB rates the Magpies the favourites to win.
Hawke’s Bay’s biggest claims to fame in the NPC are having played their very first Division 1 match, in 1976, had two years off the register during the Central Vikings NPC team merger with Manawatū in 1997-1998, and having won a selection of titles in lower divisions.
Taking a few moments away from the team graze after training on Wednesday, Grigg couldn’t think of anything he doesn’t like about Hawke’s Bay rugby.
While he’s had the blast of playing in front of crowds of over 80,000 at such venues as Twickenham and Le Stade Français, there’s not a lot that beats a roaring crowd at McLean Park, and feeling the “culture and the small town vibes” that go with it.
“The supporters are great,” he said, and adds: “Hawke’s Bay was the only union in New Zealand that gave me a shot.”
Grigg started to make his mark at Newlands College, which “doesn’t even have a rugby team now”, and played for Wellington Under 16, Under 18, and Under 20, and then senior rugby for Petone, all the time rubbing shoulders with Wellington Lions and Hurricanes players, and some All Blacks.
Former Scotland international Nick Grigg, who will play his 40th match for Hawke's Bay in Saturday night's NPC quarterfinal against Taranaki at McLean Park, Napier.
But the closest he got to the big time in Wellington was “a charity game” with a Wellington XV, getting the call while at an architecture lecture at Victoria University and having to call father and “biggest fan” Trevor to come and pick him up.
Clearly being overlooked, a teammate at Petone suggested putting together a highlights reel on YouTube, and it hit the mark when it was seen by a Scotland team analyst.
Short story, Scotland coach Gregor Townsend called Petone stalwart and former All Blacks captain Andy Leslie, and Grigg was invited to a four-week trial, starting, via Stirling County, Glasgow Warriors and the Scotland Rugby Academy, a rapid ascent to international rugby.
In 2015, he played the first of his 95 matches for Glasgow Warriors, was soon in the Scotland Sevens team, and, calling on the Scottish heritage of a grandfather raised in Ayrshire, made his test debut, against Fiji, in Suva, on June 24, 2017.
He was in the team that beat England in their Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield in Edinburgh the following February, and the team that drew the 2019 match at Twickenham.
On the trail to landing in Hawke’s Bay for his Magpies debut, against Waikato on August 6, 2022, he also played first-class matches for Japanese club Red Hurricanes Osaka, Carcassonne in France and American NRL clubs Miami Sharks and Old Glory DC.
The pathway to Napier came at the suggestion of then-Magpies coach Josh Syms, as Grigg was winding up in Japan and wondering where the path might take him next.
He was Glasgow’s Player of the Year in 2017, and a member of the French Pro 14 Team of the Year in 2018, and the path would see him made a Magpies Player of the Year in Hawke’s Bay as well.
The next step is clear, and of the Saturday night prospects, he said: “We know it’s going to be tough. Taranaki have already beaten us. But the boys are good, playing well. They know this is it. We’re up for it.”
Doug Laing has been a journalist for more than 50 years, is based with Hawke’s Bay Today in Napier, and first covered an NPC match in the competition’s first season, in 1976.
