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Brian Steele, who, having played three test matches in 1951, in 2025 became the oldest living ex-All Black. He lived in Hawke’s Bay for almost 60 years and died on Monday.
Leo Brian Steele
(January 19, 1929 – November 9, 2026)
A funeral will be held in Hastings next week for Brian Steele, who had been the oldest-living ex-All Black, and who lived in Hawke’s Bay for almost 60 years.
He died on Monday, aged 97, and his funeral will be
at Terry Longley and Sons Crestwood Chapel next Wednesday, starting at 1pm.
Steele played in nine of the 12 matches on a 1951 tour of Australia, including all three tests as New Zealand regained the Bledisloe Cup, which Australia had won two years earlier.
The next-most recent oldest-living All Black was loose forward Bill McCaw, the two having made their debut in the same match – against Newcastle on June 11, 1951.
McCaw died in Christchurch on May 6, 2025.
Steele was a surprise choice for the All Blacks at age 22, being at the time second-string in Wellington to the All Blacks No 1 halfback Vince Bevan.
He starred in the final trial and, with Bevan out injured, he was favoured in selection for the tests over Waikato’s Ponty Reid, who was injured early in the tour.
He didn’t score any tries on the All Blacks’ unbeaten tour, but he did kick a dropped goal in a non-test match, against a Combined XV at Wagga Wagga.
On the lists he was 5ft 6in tall and weighed 10 stone and five-and-a-half pounds (1.67m and 66kg) and played 20 games for Wellington in 1950-1953 and six for Horowhenua in 1954.
The son of a train driver and having grown up in Wellington railway village Ngaio, he played for the Onslow club (now part of Western Suburbs).
He worked as a carpenter on high-rise developments in Wellington and moved to Hawke’s Bay in 1968 with wife Margaret and the first four of their five children.
He was a carpenter at Tomoana freezing works for about 20 years.
A great-uncle of 1996-2003 All Blacks great Christian Cullen, he prided himself on fitness, being a mountaineer and a runner of about 25 marathons, and an avid follower of rugby through the years.
He would for many years mark his birthday by running laps of the now closed Nelson Park athletics track in Hastings in numbers equivalent to his age.
He would also closely follow the local government politics, including campaigning to save the park, which closed in 2007 to make way for big-box retailing including The Warehouse and The Park Megacentre.
Because of his interest, often expressed in letters to the editor, he was urged by friends to stand for council election, but reckoned it would take up too much of his time in retirement.
He also became a big supporter of charity through his work with Telethon, the 24-hour live television spectacular raising funds for charitable causes in the country that ran through the 70s, 80s and 90s.
At one stage he lived in a 1.82m x 1.21m hut atop a pole for a week, with people dropping food and donations into a bucket attached to a rope.
His wife of 65 years, Margaret, died on February 5, 2020, and the couple are survived by daughters Sandra, Jan, Karilyn, and Tracy and son Damian; 12 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren.
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