Another Petone stalwart, Frank Walker had been a tough front row forward, and he trained his teams the same way.
The "sawdust pit" at the Petone gym offered many a mouthful of dust for his forwards as they ripped from one bag to the next. Fitness and hard work was Walker's crede, but he did have some problems working against him.
When he took over from David Kirk, the world of rugby was about to be turned on its ear by professionalism - and already the depth of Wellington rugby was being plucked year-by-year by the rich clubs of the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan.
And to put not too fine a point on it, Wellington rugby was on the verge of bankruptcy, so replacements did not readily come because all they could be offered was a place in the team and probably a job.
Thus Walker struggled to get a team firing on all cylinders - as his three mid-table finishes showed. At various times Walker says he had players organized to come, but they withdrew late in the piece and almost always lack of money was the problem.
Hurricanes captain Bull Allen, Canterbury's prop Dave Hewitt and five-eighth Steve Bachop were amongst those almost netted. But they didn't come. Two or three years earlier All Black Robin Brooke had almost decided to come. But didn't.
"The union was broke and it was very hard to recruit players in that era," Walker says. "The area we were always weak was our tight five. We had marvelous loose forwards and backs, but we didn't have props and locks to put them on the front foot.
"And as hard as we tried to recruit in that era, we were banging our heads against a brick wall."
Walker started 1995 with a narrow 13-10 away loss to Auckland which promised much, but not too far down the road came that dreadful Ranfurly Shield challenge against Canterbury. The PR machine, which wound up the challenge all week, more than enough to have a ravenous Canterbury fully stirred up when the Wellington team arrived, ignored Wellington's moderate lead-up form.
Walker says the whole thing was a nightmare; the score was 36-3 at halftime and 66-17 at the end. The players, he says, were caught up in the hype and the build-up was the worst of any team or game he's been associated with. So it was a forgettable season.
There was a good start to 1996, but a couple of close losses saw the side plunge to mid-table again. The next year was pretty much the same, with the team lacking firepower and being outscored 38 tries to 27 in the NPC. The loss of prop Mike Edwards with injury early on was a major one, says Walker.
But even worse was the loss of depth with players like Tim Mannix, Brendan Reidy, Damien Geraghty and Isaac Feaunati going overseas.
"When guys didn't think they had any show of making the Hurricanes, they up and went - Japan, Europe etc. So we had no depth, we lacked the tight forwards - and we still do, I suppose," Walker said.
So the Walker years were not the success he would have wanted. But he knew why. The time had come for a fulltime coach, and Walker could not afford the time to do that.
So the following year the union went outside the area to Taranaki, and found a former All Black captain in Graham Mourie who also had strong Wellington connections.