The passing of Hawke’s Bay rugby hero and dancing star Norm Hewitt

Norman Jason Hewitt

(November 11, 1968 - July 15, 2024)

The Hawke’s Bay Magpies’ biggest success in international rugby is being recalled as the rugby world mourns the death of “Stormin’ Norman” Norm Hewitt.

Norm Hewitt in one of the diverse features of his post-rugby career, fronting a "One of the Family" presentation for the RNZSPCA at Napier Intermediate School in 2012. Photo / NZME

The 29-17 win over the British Lions at McLean Park, Napier, on June 22, 1993, with Hewitt as captain and scoring one of the tries in a three-tries-to-one triumph, was effectively the game that spawned the nickname and propelled Hewitt, then 24, into the All Blacks.

By the end of that year, he would have appeared in six of his eventual 23 games for the All Blacks, although in a twist the Magpies lost all eight games in the NPC first division that year and were relegated to the second division.

Norm Hewitt playing for Hawke's Bay against Otago at McLean Park in August 1993, less than two weeks after the famous win over the British Lions on the same Park. Hawke's Bay was beaten in all eight NPC games that year and was relegated from the first division. Photo / NZME .

A year later he would have played the last of his 92 games for the Bay as the side after - winning all eight games in the second division regular season - was beaten in Invercargill by Southland, for whom Hewitt would play 22 games in 1995-1997. He was also there for the arrival of the professional era as a Wellington Hurricane. He played 66 games over six seasons for the side.

Hewitt grew up in Central Hawke’s Bay, where parents Russell and Mabel ran the Wanstead Tavern. He finished at Te Aute College and started senior rugby with Napier Tech Old Boys, with whom he won two Maddison Trophy finals, in 1990 and 1992, before transferring to Taradale, with whom he again won a Maddison final in 1993.

Norm Hewitt back almost where it started, at a Ross Shield Primary Schools Rugby Tournament breakfast in Hastings in 2015. Photo / Paul Taylor.

The effort he put in to achieve was recognised by former Tech and Taradale coach Keith Price and Graeme Taylor, who became the Magpies’ coach in 1990 and was still in charge at the time of the win over the Lions.

From the time he first saw him, Price was convinced Hewitt would become an All Black, with Taylor claiming that while the player would be remembered for many things he did on and off the field, he most remembered the “hard work”.

“A young abrasive cannonball, short in size, but powerful,” he said.

“He was a bit unlucky to be the era of Sean Fitzpatrick (who played 92 matches at hooker for the All Blacks from 1986 to 1997),” Taylor said. “It might have been that toughness that helped him emerge from that shadow.”

Fellow Magpie and Maori All Black Murdoch Paewai, who also played in the win over the Lions, and with Hewitt again 12 months later in a win over France (between France’s two test-match wins over the All Blacks), had known Hewitt from schooldays at Te Aute.

It was not just the strength but also his presence, Paewai saying that when Hewitt spoke “no one was speaking in the background”.

Born in Hastings on November 11, 1968, Hewitt had about as diverse a career in the spotlight as any All Black front row forward could have.

Fronting the haka was nothing unusual for Norm Hewitt, pictured at the start of a match against Boland in South Africa in 1996. He more famous for a similar face-to-face preceding a test match in England two years later. Photo / NZME.

On the field, his first test was at the 1999 Rugby World Cup in South Africa, where he played in a 145-17 win over Japan, which remains an RWC record, and in 1997 there was the infamous pre-match haka face-to-face with English hooker Robert Cockerill.

Off the field, there was a drunken night in a Queenstown motel, where he mistakenly broke into the room of another motel guest. It was that incident, along with a public admission of a battle with the bottle, that sparked a mainly post-rugby career in public speaking, often on the subject of men’s behaviour associated with alcohol. He experienced the reality show limelight when he and professional dancer Carol-Ann Hickmore won the first season of Dancing with the Stars in 2005.

Norm Hewitt with reality TV dance partner Carol-Ann Hickmore in Dancing with the Stars in 2005. Photo / Neil McKenzie.

Hewitt had in recent times been battling motor-neurone disease, and died on Monday night, aged 55, survived by wife Arlene, daughter Elizabeth and son Alexander.