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Player Ben Lythe

Date of Birth
Oct 14, 1975
Birth Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Nationality
  1. 🇳🇿 New Zealand
Height (cm)
173 cm
Weight (kg)
88 kg
Position/s
  1. Halfback
Warrior #
79
Warriors Debut Date
Feb 26, 2000
Warriors Debut Details
February 26 2000, Round 4 vs Newcastle Knights at Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland, New Zealand
Warriors Years Active
  1. 2000
Signed From
Widnes Vikings
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Lythe
Rugby League Project
https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/players/ben-lythe/summary.html

mt.wellington

Contributor

Ben Lythe (born 14 October 1975 in New Zealand) is a former professional rugby league footballer. His position of preference was at Halfback. He was also a noted goalkicker.

Hailing from West Auckland, Lythe played for the Mt Albert Lions and Glenora Bears in the Auckland Rugby League competition and also played for the Waitakere City Raiders in the national Lion Red Cup. He was part of the team that lost the 1996 Lion Red Cup Grand Final, although he kicked three goals in that game. In the Auckland competition he also had some game time at hooker, swapping positions with Duane Mann.

His good performances earned him minor rep honours in 1996, being selected for both the North Zone in the inter zone challenge and the New Zealand XIII in the Pacific Challenge. He was also part of the Lion Red Cup selection that embarrassed the touring Great Britain Lions, drawing with the much more powerful side.

In 1997 he joined the Widnes Vikings in England, linking up with former Raiders teammate Boycie Nelson.

He then returned to New Zealand in 1998 and led the Glenora Bears to the Fox Memorial title, scoring 324 points (more than 130 clear of the next best on the points-scoring list). He also was involved in the Auckland representative side, scoring 98 points in only five games. He married Mardie Harkness in November 1998, however the honeymoon had to be postponed due to an Auckland-Canterbury match the next day.

In 1999 his point scoring reputation earned him interest from overseas and he joined the Burleigh Bears in the Queensland Cup. The Bears won the competition that year and Lythe was the competition's leading scorer, with over 200 points.

He was signed to a one-year contract in 2000 by the Auckland Warriors, who needed a replacement for the injured Stacey Jones. He played five games for the club, however after Jones returned from injury he found himself surplus to requirements at the Warriors.[10] Due to the Warriors feeder agreements, when he was not selected by the first grade side he was sent to Brisbane Souths to play in the Queensland Cup. He toured Australia with the New Zealand Residents in 2000.

In 2000 he joined the Mt Albert Lions in the new Bartercard Cup competition. At Mt Albert he formed a strong halves combination with Steve Buckingham and the pair led the Lions to three Bartercard Cup titles.

His return to domestic competitions again earned him representative selections and he was part of the New Zealand 'A' side that toured France and the United States in 2002 and was selected for the New Zealand 'A' 2003 tour of Great Britain. However he ended up withdrawing from the 2003 tour due to family reasons. In 2005 he was selected to be part of a Presidents XIII that played a warm up game against the New Zealand Warriors.

He changed codes in 2007, joining the Mahurangi rugby union club as a player-coach. Mahurangi compete in the North Harbour competition.


 
I mentioned on the old forum Ben is now a builder. We had him do a deck at our old place on the North Shore. Really good work. We ended up getting him to rebuild a weird little enclave we had that went onto the deck and we turned that into a cupboard as the house had no storage.

This was around 2010 as I remember some talk of his business partner going down to Christchurch for the earthquake recovery.

Ben is running the company down in Tauranga now.

After he finished working on our deck I mentioned his name in passing to one of my mates. He mentioned he had played for the Warriors which I didn't realise back then as his games were at a time I wasn't many games as I was flatting and we didn't have Sky. My mate mentioned playing against him in the old Lion Red Cup and that he was the star in that competition.
 
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