Machete and the Ghost

by Griffin, James; Kightley, Oscar;

  But instead of being happy for me, there was silence and then he said, ‘Mate, what if New Zealand picks us?’

  Sure, the idea of playing for the ABs had crossed my mind, but only in the way that you look at a travel brochure for, say, Mt Kilimanjaro and you think, ‘It’d be kinda cool to climb that mountain one day, I reckon.’ Ghost, being Ghost, had thought things through way further and, in his mind, we were playing side by side, brothers in arms, dressed in black.

  So, from that day on, I was a man torn in two directions at once. Ghost’s vision of us was appealing, but I had made a commitment to Biggie Dave himself and the thought of going back on that — as well as betraying all my Samoan ancestors from the last 3000 years of Samoa’s existence — terrified me. I was almost glad that at that time the ABs squad was dominated, for reasons known only to the Cantabrian board of selectors, by many Crusaders players, despite the Crusaders’ legendary uselessness.

  And so I just carried on climbing the mountain in front of me, playing in a high-performing Blues team, while Ghost was riding the roller-coaster that is any type of connection to the Hurricanes. And while we both kept carving it up for our respective teams, ABs selection talk always included us in the mix but it never happened — until the day I got the call.

  They say you will always remember where you were when you get the call. I know I certainly do, because I was in Biggie Dave’s car, on the way to sign up for Samoa, when the great ABs coach Grunter phoned to tell me I’d made the team. I remember to this day how confused Grunter got when I pretended he was my mum, so Biggie wouldn’t get suspicious. And also to this day, I’m not proud of the way I told Biggie Dave of my choice — by waiting until the car stopped at some traffic lights and jumping out and running away and sending him a text message later. But I needn’t have feared because Biggie Dave was a great and magnanimous man when he replied to my text, wishing me the best of luck and telling me never to come back to Club Poly again.

  Yes, that hurt, but by then I was an AB, standing atop the mountain of mountains, so the sting was not so bad.

  Like a Hurricane

  by Ghost

  It might make me sound like a bit of an arsehole when I say that in my last year at high school I could have made the Hawke’s Bay rugby team. But you have to remember that this is Hawke’s Bay, where all their best players are immediately stolen by Otago when they go to university there. In my Year 13, I promised Fridge, the Hawke’s Bay coach, that I would never let Otago steal me.

  True to my word, when I left school, I let Wellington steal me when I went to Victoria University. Yes, I thought about moving back to Auckland to be near Machete and to maybe even play for my beloved North Harbour. But Victoria suited my intellectual needs better and also North Harbour were even direr that year than usual and, to be completely honest, it just seemed like too much hard work.

  And so it was that Wellington — which you can’t beat on a good day but which beats the shit out of you on all the bad days, with its gale-force winds and sideways rain — and the eternal rugby enigma that is the ’Canes, became my rugby-playing home for the bulk of my career.

  I’m not going to lie. At first it was something of an emotional roller-coaster for me, playing for the Hurricanes. Sure, every Hurricanes game was a roller-coaster of emotions, where brilliance and stupidity battle it out on a minute-by-minute basis. But that is just the way the Hurricanes play and I’m down with that now. No, the emotional thing for me, back then, was the lingering hope that I would get dropped by the ’Canes and picked up by the Blues, so I could go back to Auckland and play for my North Harbour homeland.

  But after my stellar first season at both NPC and Super 13 level, I was too entrenched in the selection psyche as a Wellington-based Bay boy by now, so all I could do was watch as my friend Machete turned into a big star in the north and the Blues won title after title — the Super 13; the Super 17; the Super 13 again; and the epic Super 21. I was happy for him, sure, but I still would rather have been standing beside him week after week than going head to head with him in local derbies and semis and, twice, in the final.

  Machete and I kept in touch through these years — often talking on the phone, late into the night when we were lonely, in a hotel room in Argentina or South Africa or Taiwan (during the short-lived Super 21 incarnation). One of my fond memories is the time we arranged beforehand to stage a ‘fight’ so we’d both get sent to the sin bin together. Machete had been having emotional troubles with one of his baby mamas and we had a really useful talk about it in the 10 minutes when we pulled our naughty chairs together by the sideline. It was almost a shame when the referee’s whistle called us back onto the pitch.

  I was in the middle of a pretty damn good season with the ’Canes when I got the call up to the ABs but, to be honest, I wasn’t really expecting it. I was still young and still working on my post-match comments skill of saying nothing while moving your lips. So, a couple of weeks earlier, when I was asked in a post-match live TV interview, after we’d smashed the Crusaders by 40 points in Christchurch, whether I thought my three tries that night had helped my ABs chances, my answer, from memory, was quite pointed and involved wondering aloud if the one-eyed Cantabrian selectors had finally figured out that the patch on their eye patches actually goes over the bung eye. It was also being broadcast over the stadium PA system and the Crusaders faithful started pelting me with cans of Canterbury Draught, some of which weren’t empty.

  But, insanely, get the call-up I did and, true to the old adage, to this day I can remember exactly where I was when the phone rang — which, in my case, was sprinting down Cuba Mall, fleeing from two enraged loose forward teammates who wanted very much to kill me.

  What I was dealing with at that moment was the fallout of one of those classic pranks that rugby players play on each other, just to alleviate the monotony of everyday rugby player life. This one had started innocently enough, with the old laxative-laced protein powder gag, but somehow it had taken a bit of a sideways turn and had ended up with me getting sprung in a three-way with the two sort-of-girlfriends of the two loose forwards, in an inner-city Wellington hotel.

  So, there I am, sprinting down Cuba Mall, shouting over my shoulder that I was doing these two guys a favour in showing them that these girls weren’t right for them. ‘They want different things in life from you,’ I was trying to explain. ‘As exemplified by the fact that just now they wanted me, not you!’ This was not really pouring oil on troubled flankers, so legging it at pace was proving my best option.

  As I’m running, I feel my phone, in my pocket, ringing. Obviously, I’m in no position to answer it, so it rings until it stops. And then it rings again. And again. Over and over, my phone is ringing and I am unable to answer it, for fear of death.

  Eventually I manage to lose the loose forwards by hiding somewhere in Wellington where no forward, loose or tight, has ever been: Te Papa. As I’m catching my breath and trying to figure out how to sell the three-way as just a jolly jape, part of the prank, I check my phone and I see I’ve got a whole bunch of calls, mostly from numbers I don’t recognise — and also one from Machete.

  So, I’m just about to call Machete to find out what the heck is going on, when this little Maori kid comes up to me.

  ‘Are you The Ghost?’

  I tell him that, indeed, I am The Ghost.

  ‘I heard you just made the ABs,’ says the kid.

  And that is how I found out I had got the call-up.

  ‘Yeah, you and that fella from Auckland, Machete. Yous guys are in,’ says the kid. Then he turns to walk away, adding as he goes, ‘That Machete, he’s awesome. But you suck.’

  So I call Machete to see if the little shit kid is bull-crapping me or not. And it turns out he wasn’t. And I talk with Machete for ages about how cool it is that we both got the call on the same day. Machete bangs on about mountains and stuff, while I’m just walking round Te P
apa on cloud nine, until I realise I should probably call the coach and say ‘yes’. So I figure out which number is Grunter’s and I call that and I talk to the Great Man and I still remember to this day the words of advice and encouragement he gave me: ‘You’re okay on the pitch, son, so for f**k’s sake don’t f**k it up with that numb-nuts shit you get up to off it.’

  I assure Grunter I won’t.

  It is only when I get off the phone, after walking round Te Papa for the best part of an hour, that I realise that in my hurry to escape the hotel room, I am wearing no pants.

  But what the f**k do I care? I’m a f**king AB!

  Love Thine Enemy

  [On 12 June 1970, in very unusual circumstances, the American baseball player Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter whilst playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the San Diego Padres. This story, of our debut test match, is kind of like that story.]

  MACHETE: I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous as I was over the couple of days after Grunter told Ghost and me that we’d be making our test debuts against Scotland, in Dunedin. Mainly I was nervous for Ghost. I mean, I knew I’d be fine but I was just worried he’d find a way to screw things up — which, as it turned out, he almost did.

  GHOST: The run-up to your first test match is very weird. As well as all the usual things you do, like training and strategy sessions, there’s all this other stuff that goes on. There’s a ceremony where they give you your Book of Black; there’s another ceremony where they give you your first jersey; and they wheel in all these old guys to supposedly inspire you, and all the old guys deliver pretty much the same message: ‘Don’t f**k this up.’

  M: By the morning of the game I was so nervous — for Ghost, like I said — that I needed to go for a walk. Or that the two of us needed to go for a walk, so that I could make sure he didn’t find a way to f**k this up — which, as it turned out, he did.

  G: So, Machete has been crazy nervous all week and as we’re all starting to get ready for the game he tells me we need to go for a walk. It was an afternoon test, back in the days when they used to play afternoon tests at Carisbrook so they could get the game done before the students got too drunk and started setting fire to the couches they’d snuck in.

  Anyway, Machete and I went for a walk, just so he could calm the f**k down and, as chance would have it, when we were out walking there were these lovely young ladies having tea outside their decrepit flat. And they smiled at us and I got chatting to them as Machete paced nervously. And then I realised one of them looked vaguely familiar and she reminded me that we used to date when I was at school in Hastings. Oops. Awkward. But she seemed cool about it and she was the one who asked if we’d like to take tea with them.

  M: It was a cold day, as it always is in Dunedin, so I figured that a nice warm cup of gumboot couldn’t hurt.

  G: So we drank our cups of tea and then they wished us good luck for our big game and we turned to go. But as we turned to go, I noticed that the one I used to date was giggling. I asked her what was so funny. Which was when she told us that the tea we had just drunk was liberally dosed with GHB, the liquid form of ecstasy. It was then that I remembered that we had broken up because she sprung me in bed with her best friend. She wished me good luck for the game.

  M: By the time we got back to the hotel I was freaking. I’m on drugs! I can’t play my first test high on drugs! But also the world was already starting to feel like a kinder, gentler place, where everything is warm and lovely and the wind feels interesting when it brushes your skin. But I was on drugs! You can’t play rugby on drugs! Not at test match level anyway.

  G: Back then Machete was a real lightweight when it came to drugs. Actually, he still is. But it was lucky for us, that day, that for a while I had dated a student/pole-dancer/drug-dealer so I knew what to expect. I told Machete I would hold his hand through this and we would be just fine. So he took hold of my hand. I told him I didn’t mean that literally and could he please let go of my hand. He reluctantly let go of my hand, saying that he loved the feeling of my hand.

  M: By the time we got into the dressing room I loved everything. I couldn’t stop grinning. I would look at Ghost and he was grinning and I would grin back. And then Duck would tell us to ‘stop f**king grinning, you look like idiots’ and Ghost explained we were excited about it being our first tests and Duck said he didn’t give a f**k. The feeling, of the black fabric, when I pulled on my jersey, on my skin, was amazing.

  G: So, we were kind of peaking as we took the field. If you look at the TV coverage you will see that during the anthems Machete and I have an arm round each other and we’re nodding our heads. This was because, to us, in our state, even ‘God Defend New Zealand’ sounded like deep house music.

  M: I have to say it felt pretty disrespectful, trying not to giggle during the haka. I am not proud of that.

  G: Then, just before the actual kick-off, Machete comes over and tells me he has this terrible, terrible problem.

  M: So I tell Ghost about my terrible problem which is that I’m looking across at the Scottish players and I love them all. I don’t want to tackle them, I want to hug them, with their pale little legs and their ginger facial hair. I want to hug them and hold them and soothe their pain at being subjugated by the English for all these years.

  G: While I totally got what Machete was saying, in that the Scottish team did indeed look lovely, I could see the inherent problem, in that hugging the opponent is not so much what rugby is all about. So I thought for a second and then I had my brilliant idea.

  M: ‘Purity,’ he said. ‘You love your sister, Purity, right?’ I told him that I did and started to tell him that I worried about her going off the rails. But time was tight, as the crowd counted down to kick-off, so he interrupted me. ‘And you love tackling her, right? In the backyard. And you love it when she tackles you. It is how you express your love for each other — through barely controlled violence. So that’s what Carisbrook is this afternoon — your backyard of love, where Purity wears a jersey with a thistle on the front.’ And I totally got what he meant.

  G: The first time Machete tackled a Scotsman that day he completely levelled him, Machete style! Then he grinned at me from the ground and I knew he’d be okay. Sure, he was kind of running his hand over the guy’s leg in a slightly creepy way at the time, but the guy was too winded to notice, so that was also okay.

  M: I loved smashing Scotsmen/Purity that day. I kept on doing it over and over until I realised that tackling someone is just like hugging them at high speed. So I kept on doing it.

  G: Meanwhile, I was fine. In fact, I actually found that playing footie on GHB did interesting things with time and space that helped me ghost my way through gaps that no mortal could see, to set up Tiny Dancer out on the wing for a couple of tries. I even managed to score my first-ever test try and the feeling of the grass as I dived over was amazing. Then Machete and I hugged and I didn’t want to let him go.

  M: I didn’t want to let him go, either.

  G: Then Duck growled at us to ‘man the f**k up’ and we let each other go.

  M: We both played awesome games that afternoon and, in the papers the next day, the journalists raved about me and Ghost — our inventiveness and instinctiveness and boundless energy and the obvious love of the game we brought to the team, grinning all the way through the match.

  G: It was only after the game, after we had hammered the poor Scots in front of 30,000 drunk students in the Edinburgh of the south, that things started to go pear-shaped as: (a) the drugs started to wear off and the come-down began; and (b) the very real prospect of being selected to do a drugs test sank in.

  M: I started to cry, realising that if I failed the drugs test due to there being party drugs in my system my career would be over just after it had begun — and also my mum would come down from the stands and take to me with her jandal. And also because suddenly my world seemed emptier, for some re
ason.

  G: But I guess the gods of rugby knew that it would have been unfair to ping us that day for a substance we had taken unwittingly, at the hands of a vengeful ex-girlfriend. So it fell to others to pee in the cup that day and then we both started crying.

  M: And as we both sat in the dressing room, crying, Duck came over, looked at us and nodded at us. ‘That’s the spirit lads,’ he said. ‘Now you know what it feels like to wear the black. Good on ya.’ I could have hugged him except now I didn’t feel like it and he would have punched me in the mouth.

  G: And I didn’t have the heart to tell him we were coming down hard.

  The Book of Black

  MACHETE: When they first call your name to represent your country; when you assemble with the team for what you hope will be your first test; the first night you dine with your brothers in arms, you are presented with a book. The cover is blank — a blank black cover. It is called, by those who carry it close to their hearts, The Book of Black. It is a sacred book.

  GHOST: The Book of Black comes in two parts. The first bit is basically a bunch of inspirational quotes previous players have, allegedly, come up with. For me, this is where my problems with the Book of Black began. Most rugby players I know couldn’t come up with an inspirational quote to save themselves. For starters, most forwards cannot actually read and struggle to write anything longer than their names. Okay, maybe, in the backs, there are some who fancy themselves as thinkers, but for the most part ‘full credit to both teams’ and ‘it was a game of two halves’ is about as deep as it gets when you’re dealing with professional rugby players.

  M: The problem with Ghost is that because he’s bright, he thinks he’s smart, but sometimes he isn’t.

  G: So I was already convinced most of the quotes that are allegedly the (unattributed) work of former ABs are actually penned by the marketing boys at Rugby HQ. To test this theory, while stuck in some soulless hotel in Jo’burg, I got a bunch of props together and asked them what they thought the aphorisms in the book meant. (Obviously I didn’t use the word ‘aphorism’ because I’d still be there trying to explain what an aphorism is. Instead I used the phrase ‘the words in the book’.)