{"id":202390,"date":"2025-10-10T07:24:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202390\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T07:24:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:24:18","slug":"the-coach-who-reignited-hawkes-bay-rugby-peter-russell-dies-aged-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202390\/","title":{"rendered":"The coach who reignited Hawke\u2019s Bay rugby \u2013 Peter Russell dies aged 62"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Magpies beat Waikato in a quarter-final and reached the semifinals, Russell labelling Guildford a future All Black<\/a>. It set the path for a five-season Magpies coaching career of 66 games, including 40 wins, and culminating in a bottom-half Championship division final win in 2011 over Manawat\u016b, after beating three premiership sides during the season.<\/p>\n

He was also an assistant coach in Super Rugby with the Highlanders from 2009-2010.<\/p>\n

Russell was three times named the Hawke\u2019s Bay Sports Awards Coach of the Year and afterwards headed to Britain to become head coach at Newcastle Falcons<\/a>, taking the club back to first division rugby in the first season by winning the RFU Championship.<\/p>\n

After two years, he headed for Japan and later returned to New Zealand to coach the Manawat\u016b Turbos from 2019-2022.<\/p>\n

He also had more than a decade as a lead coach at the International Rugby Academy New Zealand (IRANZ).<\/p>\n

Tributes on Friday included a Hawke\u2019s Bay Rugby Union post, saying the union was saddened to hear of the sudden passing of a coach who alongside assistant Tom Coventry \u201creignited Hawke\u2019s Bay Rugby\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe legacy of this period set the standard for which future Magpies teams have continued to strive to uphold,\u201d the post said.<\/p>\n

A post from the Greytown club of his roots in Wairarapa said that after \u201ca remarkable career and countless achievements as a professional coach and servant of the game\u201d, Russell chose to \u201cbring his wh\u0101nau home, to give back, to share his knowledge, and to pour his passion into our club and community\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Magpies beat Waikato in a quarter-final and reached the semifinals, Russell labelling Guildford a future All Black.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[126183,124656,115070,64,63,9826,3181,105297,10852,28543,13057,126181,9492,126182,64697,24705,1101,126179,126180,760,60652,161,25906,85,126184,320,9357,3853,3605],"class_list":["post-202390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-126183","tag-124656","tag-aged","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bay","tag-coach","tag-died","tag-dies","tag-division","tag-first","tag-fortunes","tag-hawkes","tag-helm","tag-historic","tag-magpies","tag-peter","tag-reignited","tag-revived","tag-rugby","tag-russell","tag-season","tag-semifinal","tag-sports","tag-suddenly","tag-the","tag-thursday","tag-who","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}