{"id":534593,"date":"2026-07-20T04:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T04:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/534593\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T04:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T04:36:09","slug":"ryan-fox-kings-college-first-xv-history-of-british-open-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/534593\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Fox: King\u2019s College First XV history of British Open winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cRugby and cricket were my main two sports,\u201d Fox once said. \u201cI didn\u2019t start competitive golf until after I left school when I was 18 … I certainly was a 2 or 3 handicap that struggled to break 80 other than at my home club.\u201d <\/p>\n

His dad finished his All Blacks career with a World Cup title<\/a> along with 46 test caps and 645 test points. Fox\u2019s maternal grandfather, Merv Wallace, was a test cricket captain for New Zealand and coach of the side when they secured their first test victory, against the West Indies in 1956.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s finished the 1A season in fifth place with a notable win against St Peter\u2019s College and won the championship for the first time since 1969 the following season.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Auckland Grammar were 1A victors in 2004, winning 20 of their 21 season games and beating Mount Albert Grammar 15-9 in the 1A final. Daniel Bowden, later an Auckland and Blues first-five, kicked five penalties. Additionally, Grammar beat King\u2019s 31-10 in the annual Cooper-Greenbank Trophy match, which Grant played in three times for two wins and a draw.<\/p>\n

Future New Zealand cricketers Tim Southee and Mark Craig joined Ryan Fox in the King\u2019s First XV, along with future Blues representative James Parsons and Simon Munro, who had a useful rugby career for Northland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cRugby and cricket were my main two sports,\u201d Fox once said. \u201cI didn\u2019t start competitive golf until after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9980,14801,795,12784,1888,4131,1861,33488,24560,27981,111,139,69,1118,5493,5128,213,10508,27982],"class_list":["post-534593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adam","tag-british","tag-bruce","tag-college","tag-first","tag-fox","tag-history","tag-holloway","tag-julian","tag-kings","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-open","tag-ryan","tag-sports","tag-winner","tag-xv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}