"As an 18-year-old who was covering for someone like Lockey, it was a great thing," he says, learning a lot on training nights with the premier players.
Purvis played only one game for the Blues in the former National League because Locke wasn't available for some reason.
They beat Columbus Waters 1-0, if his memory serves him right, at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.
They were booked to fly to Wellington from Napier airport but they went by road.
"There was torrential rain and wind so we drove and the game was delayed," he recalls, adding he played the entire game but there were a couple of tense moments with goalkeeper Clive Holmes.
A teenager in Locke's position did cause some consternation, too, among teammates but he told them to mind their own business.
"I'll manage my game, you manage yours," the then 18-year-old barked.
Purvis played in Chatham Cup matches for the flagship side as well after making his debut as a 16-year-old former Napier Boys' High School pupil.
He played in the first Hawke's Bay men's rep team, taking on the club's elite side in a game.
"I was no longer training with them so I was up against Phil Jackson and Chris Jackson.
"We used to have good tussles because I was always strong in the legs," he says, adding the tackles were clean even though some people feared players were going to break their legs.
Peter McGlashan snr, who still teaches at NBHS, had left an indelible impression on the youngster.
"He had a huge influence on my football thinking.
"Peter's coaching was based on pragmatism. It wasn't simply about passing the ball but placing a guy because you could probably see things he can't," he says, after popping in to see McGlashan who was coaching pupils futsal at the school gym.
"He's still doing the same thing with the same ethos and mentality."
It's a source of pride for Purvis that as a defender he had never received a yellow card because "I was so good at what I did".
Born in Pahiatua, he moved to Napier with his parents, the late Colin Purvis, and Delza Purvis, who lives in Hastings, when he was aged 8.
His paternal family were always involved in the transportation business, which spread to Taupo, so he sees the irony of spearheading that department at McLean Park in the past few days although he had broken the trend in straying from that filial career path.
"My father wasn't a football man and my mother was an accomplished hockey player," Purvis says, believing stalwarts such as Jeff Doolan, Phil Holt and Roy New became his "football fathers".
"There just wasn't enough mentoring of the younger guys at the Rovers at the time," he says, revealing he was treated like one of the seniors.
On reflection, he feels that would have been an excellent addition to the "brilliant" club structure and facilities.
"We struggled a little bit on the human side."
They were based at McDonald St and trained under lights at Port Hill Soccer Club's surface that was "nothing like" Park Island.
Reduced to measuring himself next to better players and getting picked, he left in his late teens for Melbourne where his parents had moved to.
"You're growing physically and technically but not in terms of desire and objectives so there was nothing holding me here."
The feeder Melbourne club of Ringwood City Wilhelmina Soccer Club beckoned.
"It was a Dutch club with one Dutch player," says the man who played in the Victoria Premier League but damaged his knee badly after five games.
"That was it, football over," says Purvis who still plays veteran rugby in France and loves it.
A 19-year-old who played rugby for NBHS and its first XI cricket team, he accepts the medical expertise didn't exist in those days to diagnose his injury properly so he took up triathlon.
Only then it dawned on him how unfit the footballers were in those days.
David Swailes, a member of the Rovers elite team, was a cyclist and he remembered how fleet-footed and fit he was.
Unable to be involved laterally after his injury, triathlon was "straight" so it appealed.
"A lot of people said in 1989 that we won the league because we were the fittest team," says Purvis, emphasising the number of goals they scored in the second half was a testimony to that sense of fitness.
"We may have been [fit] but I saw some insight into other forms of fitness that there were a lot of cross training that needed to be brought into football and rugby," he says, much wiser after 13 years of cycling.
Purvis is looking at moving away from the freelance side of his profession to settle in New Zealand with his family.
His French wife, Anne-Cecile, who has a similar occupation but in broadcasting, prefers to move to Auckland but he is sold on Hawke's Bay.
They have three children, Eleonore, 12, James, 10, and 7-year-old Charles, "all named after royalty".
"I call them our French-iwis kids."
Their first child was "made in South Korea", the second "made in Portugal" (2003) and the third "made in France".
Charles was born between the quarter-finals and semifinals of the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.
"If the All Blacks had got up I would have named him Richard [after captain McCaw] so it [the loss] probably saved my marriage," Purvis says with a grin.
But please excuse his French even though he's been living there since 2002.
"It was an interesting phase. Those of us who learn a new language as an adult would understand me when I say, 'The more you know the more you realise you don't know'.
"So you've got to keep soldiering on and hope you get it right and not worrying about how it comes out," he says, adding they speak English at home while the children learn in French.
