FINAL YEAR DIARY: London, 4 November 2014

Recorded via Skype just after the All Blacks touched down in London, following their 72–6 victory over the USA Eagles at Soldier Field in Chicago.

This is my last northern hemisphere tour. But it was also my first visit to the US with an All Blacks side, running out into a sold-out NFL stadium in Chicago. For the most part we play in familiar countries, against familiar opponents and at familiar stadiums. Not last week — none of us has played the Eagles, or in the US, and no All Blacks team has ever played in Chicago. The week has been extraordinary. We went to a Blackhawks hockey game, and felt the passion of the Chicago fans. They screamed the national anthem, with a level of intensity you’d never see in New Zealand. All for a regular season NHL game.

The same thing happened on Saturday. We took the field and were instantly in awe. A packed stadium, with over 60,000 people watching, in a country which barely knows rugby exists. There were maybe 5000 or 10,000 Kiwis, but the majority were Americans, there out of curiosity as much as anything else. They sang their anthem with the same kind of ragged emotion we saw at the Blackhawks, which helped lock us into the game’s importance. It was doubly affecting for me, as I’d been included in the playing side, something which looked unlikely earlier in the week.

Mentally it has been so liberating, the transition from hearing critics doubt whether I should even be making the tour to getting 30 high-quality minutes. I haven’t been so excited to play in years — as reserves we warmed up after halftime, but I just didn’t stop. Too much energy. That might have been why they put me on around the 50-minute mark. And also why I made a couple of mistakes early on. You can be over-hyped.

The nerves came, too. I haven’t been able to train with the team all year. Even though I’ve been in camp a bit, you need to run the moves at full pace with the team. It was all pretty new to me, so it was more about just fitting in and not mucking it up, rather than driving the show too much. So I was lacking preparation, and I’m going to be lacking preparation for the rest of the year. But just to have some minutes feels amazing, after such a messed up couple of years.

Before each tour we create objectives for it. As usual, one of the focuses was to dominate every opponent. The current All Blacks team strives to be the most dominant side in the history of world rugby. That’s what we’ve worked towards for the last couple of years. For the team, having evolving goals helps keep you fresh and engaged. Another focus for us was to treat this tour as a test run for the Rugby World Cup in 2015. We play very little knockout rugby, so it’s good to simulate it where you can. That’s one of the most challenging things about the World Cup — you get through your round robin play and then you’re into the quarter-finals. If you don’t win that then you go home.

Usually the game before the knockout stage is a slightly easier one, so this tour represented an ideal opportunity to replicate the feel of a World Cup. The USA game is like the last round robin game; it’s a weaker opponent, ahead of the London game against England, which we’re treating as effectively a quarter-final match — a do or die.

Following that we get another opportunity to do the exact same thing: repeat the round robin-to-quarter-final feel against Scotland. It’s also played in Edinburgh, close to Newcastle, where we’ve got a game during next year’s World Cup. It helps to familiarise yourself with regions ahead of time. The following week we have to travel to Cardiff, something we’ll likely do next year for the quarter-final. Going into the games with that mentality helps us stay locked in for the tour in a way we might struggle to otherwise, after such a long season.

We’re staying on Kensington High Street, at the same hotel we always do. Often we make camp on the outskirts of cities, and the focus on rugby can get a bit much. Here we can train, talk and focus — but also escape into London and get away from the game for a few hours when we need to. The routine of touring can make locations blur into one another. Today’s a Tuesday, and will run a good 12 hours. All the tens will meet with Fozzie [Ian Foster], the backs coach at 8.30 am, to run through strategy ahead of a presentation this afternoon. From there I head straight off to a full body gym session. Following that I’ve got some time with our physio, just to rehab some minor injuries. Next I see a massage therapist to work on my leg injury.

I’ll break for a quick lunch, then do a half hour of pre-workout, called ‘trigger point’, getting strapped at the same time. We have a quick team meeting, where Aaron Cruden, Beauden Barrett and I will deliver our strategy for the week — the game plan, the key areas of focus. After that it’s on to the bus for a ride to training. We’ll arrive at 2.30, train for two hours, then hit the pool for recovery. After that we’ve got an activity, a team-bonding exercise known as clubrooms. We all wear our club jerseys, tell stories, have a bite, a drink and a laugh. I’m clubrooms president, so will help organise that. We’ll wrap that in the early evening, then I’ve got a series of stretches to run through before bed. Every minute’s spoken for.