The moment I remember most vividly from my first year of playing senior provincial rugby with Waikato – the moment when I reckon I made the decision to grow up – happened while I was sitting on a toilet in Palmerston North feeling very nervous ahead of a game against Manawatu.
I was just over a year out of school and hadn’t had much rugby experience. Although I had started working on my conditioning and building up my body, I was still a bit on the light side for a loose forward playing senior rugby.
In fact, when I was first selected, my Waikato coach, Lindsay McIntosh, told me that I shouldn’t expect to play much rugby in that first year. Tony Green was the experienced incumbent at the time. That didn’t sit well with me, but Tony got injured and I ended up getting an extended opportunity.
That day in 1985 in Palmerston North wasn’t long after I had watched the 1981 series between the All Blacks and the Springboks as a schoolkid. One of the revered and feared New Zealand players then was Mark Shaw. I particularly remembered the destructive punch with which he had struck Burger Geldenhuys at the corner flag during one of the Test matches.
But that was then; now I wasn’t going to get a spectator’s view of Shaw – I was going to see him face to face. He was marking me for Manawatu. We try to be big, we try to be brave, but rugby players are only human, after all, and I was thinking, ‘Jeez, today I’m playing against Mark Shaw! What if he gives me one of those left hooks?’
To make matters worse, as I was sitting on that toilet, I could hear Shaw’s voice. Now a grizzled veteran, ‘Cowboy’ was revving up his team before the game, exhorting them to come out at us with all guns blazing and at full intensity. It was scary stuff.
I carried my nervousness onto the field, and, to be honest, the only thing I did during the first half was to keep thinking, ‘I am playing against Mark Shaw, I am playing against Mark Shaw …’
At half-time we were down and, as I stood with the rest of the team, thoughts went through my mind that accelerated my growth in senior rugby. I had some harsh words to say to myself: ‘Mate, if you are going to grow up and survive at this level, you will have to get rid of all this stuff.’
The second half went much better. I lost my respect for my direct opponent, and got stuck in. I felt I had gone through a barrier.
Much of that first season was just about survival, from both an individual and a team viewpoint, and, in the end Waikato were relegated. So it wasn’t a memorable first year for me in top rugby.
It was a period, however, when I broke new ground in every game I played, and Cowboy Shaw wasn’t the only player I had idolised as a boy whom I ended up playing against. Murray Mexted was still playing when I started. I was still a baby then and I looked up to him. I also played against Wayne ‘Buck’ Shelford.
By the time I came up against Buck, as well as the top young player in my position at that time, Zinzan Brooke, I had already been through the Cowboy Shaw experience and had started having a crack. But Buck made sure I never got too cocky and he cut me in half in one game. He was such a great player.
In my first year of playing provincial rugby, I had a setback that would stay with me for a long time. I was nominated and accepted for the New Zealand Colts trials. Only about half a dozen of us were playing for first-division teams, so I thought I had a good chance of making the side, even though there was a group of talented loose forwards contending at the trials.
Among the guys I was competing against were future All Blacks Zinzan Brooke, Michael Brewer, Michael Jones and Richard Jerram, who was an excellent provincial player. I was part of the Possibles team that played against the Probables in the main trial. It was a case of training a bit and then playing: there wasn’t much preparation.
You know when you play well and when you don’t. I was playing against Michael Jones on the blindside flank. At full time, I had scored one try; Jones had scored two. It is not as though scoring determines whether you have played well or not, but I still felt that I had had a good trial and the try made me feel confident that I would make the team.
But then came that dreaded moment. We were all gathered together and some old crony, I think it was Ces Blazey, made a speech and then announced the team. If you were announced in the squad you would move to the left and board the Colts bus; if you weren’t named, you would move to the right and take the other bus home.
I ended up on the right. I was distraught. Grant Mickey was selected ahead of me, and although he was not a bad player, I thought I was better than him. One consolation was that Michael Jones didn’t make the team either – a consolation in that perhaps it was an indication that the selectors didn’t really know their stuff, because Jones ended up playing in a World Cup for the All Blacks just two years later.
My father picked me up when I arrived home and he could immediately see that I was dejected. He consoled me by pointing out that the selection process had been based on only one man’s opinion. To my dad’s credit, he reminded me of that when I came home 10 years later from my first and only All Black tour.
It was a bad experience for me, though – probably because I had always enjoyed such success as a basketball player and had great self-confidence as a result. I had knocked on the door of age-group national rugby and felt I had been treated poorly. It hung over me for some time, and that may have played a role in why it took way too long for me to become an All Black – at least as far as I was concerned.
Nevertheless, those early years of provincial rugby were also a lot of fun, and I was on a steep learning curve. Warren Gatland and I were flatmates. He played for Hamilton Old Boys while I was playing for Fraser Tech. The two clubs were just 250 metres apart as the crow flies, and when the clubs were due to play each other, we had an agreement whereby we would stay out of the house in the run-up to the matches for the purposes of keeping the peace.
Gats and I got on really well, but we were also different in some ways. I remember getting badly told off for putting towels in the old agitator washing machines we had at our digs, as I had put them in on the Friday and the agitator was still going on the Sunday.
Years later, when Gats and I crossed paths as professionals – we would both become coaches with English clubs and, later, when he coached Ireland, I was involved with England, and then I became the All Black coach – it was strange to look back to that time we had spent together.
Lloyd Parkes also stayed with us. He was my best man at my first wedding. Lloyd was an outstanding player, albeit someone who was a bit lazy and loved his chow. And then we had another flatmate, a Maori guy, Tim Ainsley, an amazing character. Tim once fell out of the Fraser Tech bus, but fortunately he survived the experience. He just had a bed and a money jar, and lived off limited resources – and was the sort of bloke who would go to sleep with a beer in his hand.
Once I had made the decision to dedicate myself to rugby, I never regretted it, and it has presented me with opportunities to see the world that I doubt I would have had in basketball. One of those opportunities came at the end of my first year of senior provincial rugby: I was offered the chance to play club rugby for Lyon University, in France.
I had only ever been to Australia before, so I was a green traveller when I boarded the plane for Paris. I remember arriving at Orly Airport and having to navigate my way to the domestic terminal for the connecting flight to Lyon, and feeling utterly lost in the big world. I couldn’t speak a word of French and was asking people, ‘Where does the Lyon flight depart from?’ (‘Je parle nothing.’)
Former New Zealand players Chris Laidlaw, Mark Burgess and Murray Kidd had all played for Lyon University, and the stories I had heard made me think it was going to be like a medieval village. So I was shocked when I arrived there and found that it was a large city of four million people. I vividly remember my first meal in France, at the cafe owned by the captain of the team. I was handed a plate of runny puréed potato topped by a steak that looked like it might well walk off my plate.
While I was in France, I got to know two South African brothers, Nick and Dave Mallett, and now, years later, I am working with Nick as a studio analyst at SuperSport. It was an enjoyable experience living in France and finding out about a different culture. I have always enjoyed exploring. The players there spoke only French, and I had to quickly learn to stand on my own two feet. I would drive across the border into Switzerland. It wasn’t a long drive to Geneva, and I used to enjoy the fish and chips you could get there – expensive ones at that!
I played in France in the northern hemisphere winters of 1985/86 and 1986/87, so along with my commitments back home in Waikato, I ended up playing rugby for five seasons in a row. This took its toll in the form of a serious groin injury that required a lot of anti-inflammatory treatment. My concern about overuse injuries meant that I later turned down an opportunity to play in Italy.
I got married in 1987, when I was just 23. I think one reason for choosing to marry was my need for stability. I had to explain to my first wife, Kay, that I had got a girl pregnant when I was 18, which was difficult for me. Women used to run away from me at that stage of my life, as I had issues and, clearly, once they knew about the pregnancy and that I had a child out there somewhere, it became an issue for them too. The pregnancy hung over me for a long time and, when I look back, I realise I judged myself very harshly for it.
In New Zealand I developed as a provincial player, becoming captain of Waikato in 1989, when Glenn Ross was the coach. Ross was extremely well organised. He was a teacher at Hamilton Boys’ High, where he was also the rowing coach. He has now gone back there and today it is one of the best rugby schools in New Zealand.
Before I was made captain, though, I was dropped in 1988 due to an injury. Despite the fact that I wasn’t even playing, Gats told me I got three votes in the team vote for the captaincy. Gats had been the captain in 1988, but then Glenn took over and he preferred me. I think the fact that I had captained Waikato Colts early in my career might have played a part in his choice.
What really drove my appointment as captain, though, was my role as a mediator between the factions that made up the Waikato team. There were some very strong personalities in the change room at that time, in the form of Richard Loe, Brent Anderson and Graham Purvis, and then, on the other side, there were the schoolteachers, such as Gatland, Andrew Strawbridge and Tom Coventry. It was basically an intelligent group pitted against a strong-minded group.
It was amazing that these two groups managed to play rugby together at all because there was a time when they couldn’t stand each other. My role was to mediate between the two factions, as I was considered to have enough nous to handle both of them. In many ways, this ability was what helped me cope for such a long time at that level of rugby leadership and then, later, as a coach.
If I had become a teacher, as I had intended to, I would have found my process, and the understanding of my process, a lot earlier. But I was very much self-taught, so I had to learn from my own mistakes and from the perceived conflicts that I faced from time to time. I only found out much later, after many costly mistakes along the way, that it is not what you say or how you say it, but how you make people feel that defines you as a leader.
Then, Glenn dropped me as captain in 1991. He wanted to play Rob Gordon, who had played for the All Blacks on their tour of France in 1990, and appoint Richard Loe as captain. We were in Australia at the time and had just played against New South Wales in what was known as the Cannes Series. Later we played against NSW Country, and before that game Glenn chose to conduct what I would describe as school-type interviews.
Glenn was a schoolteacher – and he behaved like one. He called us in four hours before the kick-off. He told me my position was in jeopardy and that I would have to play outstandingly to remain the captain – and even, for that matter, to make the starting team for the National Provincial Championship (NPC) that was to follow. He framed this in such a way that I just had to accept that it was going to happen. Obviously, that is not what you want to hear just before you are about to play a match.
During that game, I saw one of my teammates, Rod McIntosh, get slippered by a player from NSW Country. I ran straight at the guy who did it, and I took out another of their players after he had scored a try. I was angry and I played really dirty rugby in that game.
As I left the field, Glenn took me aside and looked at me with such disdain. All he said was: ‘You were filthy!’ So I knew what was coming.
But, meanwhile, my son, Daryl, had been born just before I’d flown to Sydney with the team and I hadn’t yet had an opportunity to celebrate. I made sure that I did celebrate.
The next week I got home from the tour and saw my baby boy properly for the first time. It was a huge moment for me and deprioritised what I was going through in my rugby career. It was one of those moments that brought some perspective.
The following Monday, Glenn summoned me to Hamilton Boys’ High. I knew I was going to have to accept my fate of losing the captaincy and being dropped from the team for Rob Gordon. Richard Loe had been working hard for the captaincy, and Rob Gordon, Richard Jerram, Duane Monkley and I were competing for three starting positions at loose forward. Richard Loe is my mate and we played for the same club for a long time, but he is never shy to jump at an opportunity.
I felt that Glenn should have been upfront with me at the start of the season, so I wasn’t happy about his approach. The first NPC game was against North Harbour, away from home, and he chose Rob. But then Rob got injured before the game and I got to play anyway, with Richard Loe as captain. I was carrying a slight injury and was in some pain, but I survived on anti-inflammatories and made it through the game, which we lost.
The second NPC game was against Canterbury in Christchurch, and again we got flogged – with Loe as captain. Loe was so pissed off that he verbally abused us in the showers afterwards. He really tore into us. He smoked each and every player. He moaned and whined, saying that the result had been an indictment of his leadership. It didn’t go down well with the team.
We got back to the hotel for the after-match team ceremony, what they call the Kontiki in South Africa. I was with Warren Gatland and we were peeping through a keyhole, watching Glenn Ross, assistant coach Alistair Scoun and Richard Loe having it out. When they made a sudden move towards the door, Gats and I sprinted around the corner so as not to be seen. When we entered the team room, Loe was not far behind us.
Something was clearly afoot because, as Loe walked into the team room, he just glared at us all.
The next day he was not on the team bus to Dunedin. So when we stopped after about an hour into the journey, Glenn Ross said, ‘I don’t know if you have noticed, but we don’t have a captain. Richard is not here.’ He told us he would be naming a new captain that evening.
By the time we got to the little town of Timaru, it was clear that the bus was divided into two camps. Everyone might have been eating the same hamburgers, but otherwise they were in different factions. However, both parties were asking me to be captain. Glenn and Scoun spoke to Gats and asked him to persuade me to accept the captaincy. But I was still being obstinate. I told them that Glenn couldn’t keep behaving the way he was and expect to get away with it.
Eventually, my mind was changed by a phone call I made to Tony Wynne, a rugby commentator on radio who was a mentor to me. He told me not to be stupid, to do it for the players, who all liked me and who would die for me if I led them.
So I decided to captain the team for the sake of the players, and we ended up only just losing to Otago. We played with great passion in that match at Carisbrook, and it was clear to me that Tony Wynne had been right: the players were playing for me. I will never forget, after that loss, that Duane Monkley, one of the finest players I ever played with, had tears streaming down his face.
We came right after that, and won our last five games, finishing about fourth overall, which for us at that stage wasn’t bad at all.
Interestingly, years later, in 2004, when I was coach at Waikato and Glenn Ross was manager, we went for a run together before one of the games. He made it clear that he still hadn’t let go of the decision to take the captaincy away from me, and tried to explain himself and apologise. I said, ‘Jeez, Glenn, let it go. I have.’
I asked him to remind me how old he had been at the time. He said 34. I replied, ‘There you are, then – maybe you just weren’t as experienced at that stage of your career as you had thought, or as you are now.’
Loe continued his career in the B-team. Richard is a good bloke but a tough customer, and he played Test rugby that year while playing for Waikato B. He came back into the squad in 1992. We let bygones be bygones and it was a year of great achievement for us. It is interesting how sometimes teams have to go through negative stuff like that before they become successful.
Richard let go of his ego, and so did the others. I had spent so much time working on team issues that it took a while for me to get my own form right. Once that was done, I could play my best football. The 1992/93 seasons were the most enjoyable of my career, and a great time for Waikato. Good teams create good All Blacks and, later on, I was a beneficiary of the success.
In the New Zealand summer, before the start of that great 1992 season, I played for Garryowen, in Ireland, in the northern hemisphere season. I have some excellent rugby memories of that time, and my stint there was to pay off later in my first exposure to an international team in a coaching role.
Our major goal at Waikato in the 1992 season was to make it to South Africa. The top four teams in the NPC would qualify for the inaugural Super 10 the following year, and that would mean playing in South Africa. None of our ageing group had played there, and it was one of our major motivators in 1992, particularly during the middle stages of the championship, when we experienced a bit of a blip.
We finished fourth on the log, which meant we were in the Super 10, though we still had to play Auckland at Eden Park in the semi-final of the championship. With players like Sean Fitzpatrick and Zinzan Brooke, Auckland had been the standard-bearers for most of my career: we were like the little brother. We waited for our opportunity once a year to measure ourselves against them.
We looked up to Auckland and, in some ways, it was not surprising, as they set the bar for a decade. A year after the 1992 season, when we took the Ranfurly Shield off them, I said as much in my speech when I accepted the trophy from Zinny Brooke. I said that it had taken us ‘so long to believe, but these guys set the standards’.
Auckland were considered invincible and we were the only team that ever toppled them. There is a lot of rugby folklore in New Zealand, and many people may not understand the significance of beating Auckland in a major knockout fixture. I suppose that, in a South African context, it would be similar to when Natal won the Currie Cup for the first time in 100 years by beating the mighty Northern Transvaal at Loftus in 1990.
Auckland were at their height then, with all those All Blacks in the side and, as time passes, people may not grasp the significance of that victory.
I played against Sean Fitzpatrick, the most influential Auckland player of that time, throughout my career. Fitzy was perceived as an arrogant, physical footballer, a complete irritation for opponents, as he constantly played on the edge. He was totally confident in himself and utterly ruthless. I remember playing against him in 1988 at Eden Park. We had had a good start and felt we were in with a chance. I had been playing well but then got my head ripped open, which totally unsettled me. The referee didn’t pick it up – but it was Fitzy who had slippered me. That’s just the way it goes.
Fitzy came to the Waikato Centurions’ Dinner at the beginning of the new millennium and spoke about his experiences of playing against Waikato, and how we had become his nemesis later in his career.
Then there were the Brooke brothers. Marty was the lesser known of the three, but he was a good bloke, as were Zinzan and Robin. Zinny is a Maori guy who just loves his rugby. I got to know the brothers well through our long period of being adversaries on the field, and when I later became an All Black, there was a lot of mutual respect between us.
Michael Jones, another legendary All Black whom I played against many times, was also with Auckland. He was an exceptional athlete, but when I played against him in that Colts trial early in my career, he did not yet have the explosiveness he became known for later. He achieved what he did through incredibly hard work. In that sense, and in many others, he was ahead of his time. It suited him that in those days the ball was more above the floor than on it, as he was not a traditional fetcher.
Although our 27-21 win over Auckland was an epoch-making moment, our task in 1992 was not completed with that semi-final. We wanted to win the NPC. As a group, we had been together a long time and had worked hard to get to that point. In those days, the core of a team stayed together a lot longer than is usually the case now.
Otago came to Hamilton for our inaugural final. It was played at Rugby Park, a venue that could best be described as an un-stadium-like ground. There were 33 000 fans crammed in – a sea of red, yellow and black, the colours of Waikato, everywhere you looked.
Otago had given us plenty of motivation beforehand. Richard Jerram, our blindside flank, had been to the airport the day before the game to pick up his parents and had reported to us how he had seen huge numbers arriving from Dunedin, all wearing ‘repeat championship’ T-shirts (Otago had won the NPC the previous year). He told us at the captain’s meeting that Otago thought they were going to repeat their championship win.
Like Auckland, Otago also fielded several All Blacks; Michael Brewer was one of them. Brewer could play all three positions in the back row, and had good leadership skills. He was another of those players who, like Fitzy, had total confidence and self-belief. Brewer was not as big or muscular as the other guys, but he had the nickname ‘Gold Balls’, as everything he touched turned into gold. I never got to know him well, and injuries curtailed his career, but he was exceptionally all-rounded.
In his book, Mike Brewer: The Authorised Biography, he wrote that he thought we were on drugs in that Hamilton final. We weren’t: we just knew we would only get one shot at it and we couldn’t let that sea of red, yellow and black down. And we didn’t, winning 40-5.
That was when the Waikato Mooloo cow bell started to become a merchandise item. Back in those days, the Waikato Rugby Union was run by a photocopier, a treasurer and a telephone, but our popularity grew substantially in the build-up to that final and in the aftermath. That marked the beginning of where Waikato and the Chiefs are today, with their modern new stadium and all the trappings that come with it.
The breweries, our sponsors, were quick to take advantage after our win. They called me in on the Monday after the final and asked me to ring all their customers and suppliers, and I had to place my signature on a run of National Championship beer cans. They were distributed within a day.
It was a great time in my rugby-playing life. It is always special to feel as if you are part of the creation of history, which that Waikato team was. And what made it so special was that we’d been together for a long time and had built up the club together. There were nine of us who had been with Waikato from the mid-1980s and, needless to say, winning that NPC had us dining out on it forever.