The captain of the New Zealand men’s netball team has died after choking on a piece of food while eating dinner with his wife.

Mike Siave, 35, was at the dinner table in his Canterbury home with his wife of 10 years, Amanda, on Friday when he collapsed to the ground unable to breathe.

He died at the scene from what the coroner later ruled was asphyxiation caused by a food blockage.

Ms Siave told the New Zealand Herald she’d lost "the love of my life" and the "wonderful" father of their two sons, Jackson, seven, and Cooper, five.

Mr Siave was also a senior salesman at Telecom and a long-term member of the Canterbury men’s netball team, which has pledged to dedicate its 2012 season to him.

Netball is similar to basketball and was first developed in England in the 1890s.