Leading player manager Stan Martin, a well-known figure in the rugby league world, has passed away at the age of 72.
For more than 20 years Martin and business partner Dixon McIver have worked as agents for hundreds of players with the company Martin founded, Sports Vision Management.
Current One New Zealand Warriors NRL squad members Bunty Afoa and Erin Clark are on the books while Martin previously acted for Chanel Harris-Tavita.
Former Warriors Sam Lisone, David Fusitu’a, Agnatius Paasi, Tuimoala Lolohea, Ken Maumalo, Mason Lino and Chris Satae are also among SVM's clients along with the likes of Brisbane’s Deine Mariner and South Sydney’s Brandon Smith plus Kiwi Ferns star Georgia Hale.
A plumber by trade, Martin was among the leading hookers on the Auckland Rugby League scene in the 1970s and early 1980s.
He was from an era when hookers struck for the ball and were routinely intent on winning the scrum count at all costs. Martin was certainly in that camp, always keen to know after a game whether he’d finished ahead of his opposite.
In 1973 he was in an Auckland under-23 team that toured Australia when his teammates included future Kiwis Dane O’Hara, John Smith and John Wright.
He went on to be a key figure in the great Joe Gwynne-coached Richmond side which won back-to-back Fox Memorial grand finals in 1979 and 1980. Named the Auckland player of the year in 1980, he also played for the Auckland provincial side.
A keen thinker about the game he gravitated to coaching where he achieved significant success highlighted by guiding the Kiwi Ferns to victory in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup final.
In 2001 Martin coached an Auckland team made up of Bartercard Cup players on a two-match tour to Australia which produced a win and a loss. In the victory Dan Floyd, the Warriors’ current long-serving NRL manager, scored two tries and kicked eight goals.
In other coaching achievements he guided the Counties-Manukau Heroes to victory in the Lion Red Cup and took the Cook Islands to the 2000 Rugby League World Cup while he also coached the Junior Kiwis, had a stint with Whitehaven in England and coached Auckland.
