\u201cIt was a fairly quiet upbringing, but I didn\u2019t know any better at the time,\u201d the No9 says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have had any official games, but ran around with 15-year-olds from two and three years old. It was just the way it was. You grow up quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty big island land-mass wise, but the population is small. It takes ages to get anywhere as the roads are sparse from top to bottom. I spent a lot of time in the water, on the beaches, rolling around in bare feet, on my bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can fly to Auckland from there, but it\u2019s a small plane so I wouldn\u2019t recommend it. I\u2019ve had some dicey flights\u2026 far out. There\u2019s a passenger ferry that runs for four months through summer, which takes two hours, otherwise it\u2019s 4\u00bd hours. It\u2019s a bit of a trek, but it\u2019s well worth doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/a6bd26ef-ee88-4302-9ecc-2d712277dc68.jpg\")
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Gibson-Park posted this picture of himself paddle boarding in the company of dolphins on Great Barrier Island, which has a population of just over 1,000, in 2015<\/p>\n
INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n
His mother, Tara, is the eldest of four daughters, so she wanted him to keep the Gibson part of her name when she married Billy Park and had children \u2014 hence the double-barrelled Jamison. Gibson-Park\u2019s story is a little complicated as he has Maori heritage, from the Ngati Porou and Ngai Tai tribes, yet his mother\u2019s family are from Armagh, Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
His journey from the island in the ocean to inspiring the sea of red Lions fans has been long and winding \u2014 his first leap came when his family left home to live and work in Gisborne; the town in Poverty Bay on the northeastern side of New Zealand.<\/p>\n
![\"Coastal](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/f5f897e7-0a5d-4a8c-98c1-336b187b24a1.jpg\")
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Great Barrier Island, which was named by Captain Cook, is a 4\u00bd-hour ferry ride out from Auckland<\/p>\n
INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n
There Gibson-Park joined Gisborne Boys High School and started playing rugby around the same time as Blade Thomson, who ended up with ten Scotland caps. Their coach was a man called Tom Cairns, now the headmaster, who knew Mark Robinson, then the Taranaki Rugby chief executive, now the departing head of New Zealand Rugby. Robinson gave Michael Collins, a former Chiefs, New Zealand A, London Irish and Glasgow Warriors prop a job as a rugby development manager, and he went about finding good kids. Gisborne Boys\u2019 High was a decent place to start.<\/p>\n
One recruit was Gibson-Park, who he convinced to make the eight-hour drive over from Gisborne to New Plymouth, on the opposite side of the country, to join Tukapa Rugby club and the Taranaki Bulls provincial side.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our players would leave school and go to university, so we needed to find kids that didn\u2019t want to go to university but wanted to do trades,\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he grew up he worked on fishing boats, and started building an apprenticeship and working in construction. The first year he came in out of school he was a skinny kid, really quiet but he had this confidence about him.<\/p>\n
![\"Person](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/797d2e05-719d-49af-ac1c-5a9a4b6f26c3.jpg\")
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Gibson-Park said that he spent much of his childhood immersed in nature on the island<\/p>\n
INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was slight, but really tough. We had no concerns around putting him into senior club footy, even though he would have been 75kg ringing wet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an 18-year-old he was so tough and could take a hit, having grown up playing with older kids. He was one of the few guys who we never had any dramas with. He had really strong support from mum and dad, who weren\u2019t helicopter parents. They\u2019re the exact opposite. They would float in, watch a rugby game, say g\u2019day to us, and his dad was the most laid-back character in the entire world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you spoke to Jamo, he wouldn\u2019t say much in a crowd but if you asked him a question he\u2019d be quietly spoken and would nail the answer nine times out of ten. He wouldn\u2019t stand out as a rugby nerd, just an immensely talented kid who never showed off or made too much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibson-Park quickly started to fly in Taranaki. He paired with Beauden Barrett at half-back, behind lock Scott Barrett and turned heads whether playing sevens or XVs. His fitness trainer was a Welshman, Aled Walters, who is now coaching him with the Lions. It is funny how the world works.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe scored some fantastic tries [in] that first year, you could see what a special player he was,\u201d Collins remembers. \u201cHe ran great support lines, he was really quick, he was always really fit, had a great instinct for running support lines, and his box-kick always set him apart. He just had this long box-kick, before box-kicking was a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aged 21, Gibson-Park quickly moved up to the Blues Super Rugby side in Auckland for three years around the time when he played eight times for the Maori All Blacks.<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/1b3c4129-a867-4b2a-b3e9-eb4b685ef365.jpg\")
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Gibson-Park played eight times for the Maori All Blacks<\/p>\n
CLAUS ANDERSEN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
Yet despite having so much so soon, he could not find a way into starting teams, or the All Blacks, stuck behind TJ Perenara \u2014 who ended up winning 89 caps for New Zealand and a World Cup \u2014 and Jono Kitto \u2014 who did not make it, so moved to Europe. The Taranaki crew always felt that guys from Canterbury, like Kitto, were overly favoured.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was more his game management,\u201d Collins says of Gibson-Park. \u201cHe was a really good runner, a really good passer. He had a box kick like no one else, but it was controlling the game, controlling his forwards, because he wasn\u2019t the loudest guy. He missed out on the New Zealand under 20s, but I always believed he was good enough. Everyone in Taranaki knew he was good enough \u2014 he was just a bit slight. Back in Gisborne and Great Barrier, there probably wasn\u2019t a lot of weights programming.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Gibson-Park was at the Hurricanes, in 2016, where he sat behind Perenara, Collins fielded a phone call. It was from Leo Cullen, the Leinster coach. He wondered if the 24-year-old scrum half was available.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/9b8c6b8f-1db4-435f-a8ed-60c9deb5af8b.jpg\")
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Gibson-Park joined Leinster from the Hurricanes in 2016 aged 24<\/p>\n
DAVID RODGERS\/GETTY<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wanted to negotiate an early release,\u201d Collins says. \u201cHe still had a year on his Taranaki contract, but we had a chat and we understood that we were a pathway for players and we would never stand in his way. We were happy for him. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe would\u2019ve loved him to stay in the New Zealand system, but were also happy that he was going off to play professional rugby for Leinster.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Jamison](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/\/ffe12c0a-5999-446e-b78a-ca6bb3d8773d.jpg\")
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