Tears and pride as son helps lead haka for dad’s 500th rugby match milestone
Sam Nichols was honoured with a haka by his rugby club after playing 500 senior games.
Five hundred games of senior rugby is a milestone that’s difficult to achieve for some of the best players of the game.
But that is what Sam Nichols achieved last weekend with Paremata Plimmerton Rugby Football Club.
However, the emotion of the occasion overtook club members as they performed a haka to celebrate Nichols and teammate Justin Minhinnick both reaching the milestone.
Nichols’ son, O’Hara, could be seen near the front of the group putting his all into the haka and welling up as he did so.
“It definitely brings a tear to your eye,” Sam said. “I just kept staring at him and when he was crying, I just winked him in the eye and said ‘you’ve got this’.
“It is quite powerful because even when you’re not facing the haka, when you’re just watching the boys do it in the club for the other milestones, it certainly makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck.”
He said he knew the haka was coming and his son had been practising before the event.
“If there are any milestones in the club, the boys, mainly all the Prem boys and anybody else that wants to come and join in, will jump up and do the haka for any milestone.
“So I sort of knew that was coming and my young fella has to practise the haka for the big Taupō tournaments we take them to, so they’ve all got to know it.
“So I sort of expected him to jump up the front as well and obviously it was pretty emotional for him.”
It wasn’t just family members who became emotional at the celebration, other members of the club were too.
“Straight after, everybody was saying how emotional it was, and how special, and even once everybody went over the videos, and seeing O’Hara crying doing it.
“And I myself, you know, I’ve always said, ‘right, I love watching the boys do it’ and I said to myself, ‘one day I’ll face that haka’ and yeah, obviously that night was my night to face it.”
Sam started playing rugby for Paremata Plimmerton, but said he made the switch to rugby from football later in life, something he won’t be moving back to.
“I’ll stick with the rugby as long as I can and then when I think when I can’t play no more, I’ll probably just take up refereeing or something.”
For now, he’ll continue playing social grade rugby and coaching his kids through the junior club, but has his eye set on the next milestone.
“We might as well go for six.
“I’ll just go as long as possible, I’m only my fourth season in the Presidents [social grade], so I expect to stay there for the next decade hopefully, but you know, you can only go with how the body will go.”