All Black number 515 and former Taranaki player, Roy Roper, pictured in his cap and very first All Blacks jersey. He died on Thursday. Photo: Stuff / Vanessa Laurie
The only All Black to reach 100 years of age, Roy Roper, has died.
All Black number 515, Roper died peacefully in New Plymouth on Thursday a few weeks after he celebrated his 100th birthday.
Roper first started playing rugby at New Plymouth Boys' High School in 1936.
He went on to play for Taranaki and was in the South Island for games against Southland and Otago when he first got the call-up for the national team.
Roper's first game with the All Blacks was against Australia in 1949. He played three positions on the day and scored his team's only try.
''We lost our fullback after about quarter of an hour and there were no replacements in those days, so we played with 14 men," he said in an interview last year.
"I had 15 minutes on the left wing where I was selected for, 15 minutes at fullback and after half-time I had half a game at centre three-quarter.''
In interviews celebrating his birthday last month Roper reckoned he would have been too small to play rugby in the current era - he weighed 72kg and was 1.73 metres tall in his prime.
Described as "a speedy, clever and elusive threequarter, and a prolific try scorer" by allblacks.com, he scored three tries in five tests for the All Blacks, which included the series against the British Lions in 1950, in which the All Blacks won three and drew one.
He stopped playing in 1950 because he had a new family and wanted to focus on his career as a public accountant.
Everything was happening in 1950, he said in 2022. He gave the game away as he could not afford to play.
But he continued to serve the game as treasurer of the Taranaki Rugby Union for 20 years and was on the Rugby Park Committee for 30 years. He also was treasurer of the Taranaki Rugby Union for 10 years and involved with New Plymouth Old Boys all his life.
On Queen's Birthday weekend, 1944, Roper played rugby for Taranaki against Whanganui. The game was played in the morning and in the afternoon he hopped on a train to go and join the Royal New Zealand Navy.
During World War II he was first called up into the army in 1942, when he was 18, but then discharged in 1943, because he was underage. He was called up again aged 20 - but by that time he had joined the navy.
In 1944 Roper and 19 other young men from the Royal New Zealand Navy went to the UK for officer training.
They had boarded the RMS Queen Mary in New York along with 13,000 American troops, Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of Britain, and other officials.
During the voyage the Kiwis took turns on sentry duty along the hallway where Churchill had his cabin.
When Churchill left the ship Roper and his mate had a look in what had been Churchill's cabin and Roper helped himself to some rhubarb sponge.
While overseas Roper played six games for the New Zealand Services XV in England in the 1944-45 season. He was also selected for a Combined Dominions team, but sea duties prevented him playing.
Roper kept his memories from his time in the navy and his rugby days. They include his original All Blacks jersey, which was second hand and a British and Irish Lions jersey that is missing a Welsh symbol.
They will be passed down to his family to remind them of him and a life well lived.
Roper leaves behind two sons, seven grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
- This story was first published by Stuff.