Machete and the Ghost

by Griffin, James; Kightley, Oscar;

M: You’re such a hero.

  G: Thank you. Shall we, as Plato says in his post-match speeches sometimes, ‘flush away the turds and move on’?

  M: I’m sure there’s got to be a better way of saying what Plato thinks he’s saying when he says that, but I can’t think of it.

  G: I know what you mean. Next.

  Handbags at Dusk

  by Machete

  ‘Regrets? I’ve had a few’, said a famous old guy from America once, and you know what? Sometimes I feel like that old guy from America, whoever he was. I’ve had more than a few regrets. If my regrets were like children, I’d be the Octomom. Remember her? She had eight kids and everyone hated on her.

  Sometimes I feel like the Octomom, but whereas she’s probably quite happy, I just torture myself like a father tied to a chair forced to watch Peppa Pig for eternity. Sometimes I even feel like Peppa Pig. Imagine that. Feeling like that old guy from America, Octomom and Peppa Pig.

  Anyway, I digress. What I’m trying to say is I’ve got, like, their amount of regrets combined, if not more. Quite a few regrets, gathered up, over the years. But, by far, one of my biggest regrets is what has been labelled in the media as ‘Handbag-gate’. Yeah, this is something that I really regret, not because it was in any way evil or morally shameful, but because I just really regret it.

  Handbag-gate, for the few people reading this book who haven’t watched the YouTube and Facebook and every other damn form of social media clips, was that time early on in my ABs career when myself and Duck, my captain at the time, got ourselves on CCTV in a bar, getting into an argument which ended with him whacking me, many times, with a handbag.

  Even now, when I do media interviews for stuff, the question that’s like the elephant in the room is to talk about ‘Handbag-gate’. I often feel that elephant in the room even when no one has asked me about it in years — mainly ’cause of a whole bunch of other things I also regret that have happened over those years that they do ask questions about. But still, imagine what it is like for me to feel the elephant in the room that no one talks about, every time no one talks about it.

  So I’m going to talk about it now — the elephant that never dares speak its name. And for the first time the full story of what happened that day in Wellington, all those years ago, will be spoken out loud, for all the world to hear. But only if you imagine me speaking as you read this book, otherwise you’re just reading it.

  As a baby AB, Duck was like a father to me — despite the fact he was Tongan. Sometimes I would even infer to people that he was my father, until they would do the maths and figure out he would have been 12 when he fathered me and that would be pretty gross. Then I would laugh and pretend I never inferred what they thought I inferred.

  Anyways, the point is Duck was perhaps the most loved AB at the time. And also the scariest person to be stuck alone in a lift with, as I was that day in Wellington. He was one of those old-school leaders who led with his actions. If he did talk, it would be to say stuff like ‘You bloody buy the drinks! I’m the captain!’ He also said more traditionally inspirational stuff like ‘When you wear the black jersey you’ve got to be prepared to break every bone in your body and still score the try’ and also ‘When you wear the black jersey, don’t eat dessert’ — which was a bit odd at the time, but still good long-term career/dietary advice.

  Duck has never spoken about Handbag-gate in public, because that’s the sort of guy he is. True, he has never really spoken to the media about anything at all — even when he was speaking to them. Duck was the master of the meaningless post-match interview. He could string three or four clichés together in one grunt and within seconds of the words being uttered it was like they were taken away on the wind, never to be remembered again.

  But I’m nowhere near as staunch as Duck, so, here goes.

  We were in Wellington for a Rugby Championship game against the Aussies, and as expected, we put 70 points on them, so needless to say, the team were in high spirits afterwards. Adding to the spirit of bonhomie was the fact we had a week off before heading to Argentina, so there was a bit of a team function at a bar near the hotel.

  For some reason due to SANZAR wanting to maximise viewing numbers and advertising revenue during breakfast television in Tokyo, the Wellington game had been played in the afternoon. This was good because it was nice to play on a shitty Wellington afternoon instead of a shitty Wellington night, as per usual.

  I’d even scored my first test try that day, so I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself as I waited for the lift to go down to the foyer to meet the rest of the boys, to head off to the bar. Then the lift doors opened and Duck was the only person in there. I stepped in, said g’day and Duck said nothing, as was his way. Then the lift doors closed and he turned to me and started to speak.

  What people don’t know is that Duck was not only a fearless leader, he was also the sort of captain to make the juniors in the team do jobs for him. He did this not really to prove anything, other than that he could be an arsehole sometimes and make the junior players do jobs for him — the jobs he didn’t want to do.

  So, in that long, slow, interminable lift ride down to the hotel foyer, Duck told me that today, now, my job was to buy a handbag for him that he needed to give to his wife, because he’d been caught talking to a woman at his rugby club in Rotorua, so he was in big trouble.

  He wasn’t cheating on her or anything, his wife was just hardcore like that when it came to her husband talking to other women, so he was getting her a handbag as a goodwill gesture — and because she wanted a new one and this would get him back in her good books and stop her nagging. He told me he was meeting his wife for a romantic candlelit dinner in the spa pool in his room after the team function so I needed to bring the bag to the bar. Then he told me some other stuff that I didn’t hear because I was too busy freaking out but which, in the long run, turned out to be things I really should have paid attention to.

  When the lift doors opened, in the hotel foyer, Duck walked off like nothing had happened while I was a sweating, melting pool of jelly.

  So, in my panic, I went to the man who I thought would know the most about handbags: Ghost. I thought this because one time when I was trying to decide what to buy this woman I was dating for her birthday, Ghost had told me this story about how his dream was to be dating a supermodel and to give her a Birkin bag, just because, and then they would fly off in a private jet and join the Mile High Club together on the way to Rio. I remembered it because I thought, at the time, that a Birkin was a fake minge that actors wore to cover up their bits. Ghost had explained to me that a Birkin was a super-expensive handbag named after the actress and singer Jane Birkin who recorded the song ‘Je t’aime . . . moi non plus’ with Serge Gainsbourg which had been playing when he lost his virginity to his French teacher at high school and that the thing I was thinking of was called a merkin.

  Anyway, to cut that rather sordid story short, it wasn’t long before I found myself trailing behind Ghost as we cut through the Wellington streets, heading for Kirkcaldie & Stains. It also wasn’t long before the store would close for the day, but thankfully when you’re in Wellington you’re never far from everywhere else in Wellington, so we made it with minutes to spare.

  So, there are Ghost and me, in Kirk’s (as Ghost called it because he lived there and had assumed an overfamiliarity with all things Wellington), looking at handbags and talking about which one would go with Mrs Duck’s eye colouring. It didn’t help that neither of us had been close enough to Mrs Duck to know what colour her eyes were because: (a) Duck didn’t like other men talking to his wife (they were very much alike in this respect); and (b) Mrs Duck looked, from a distance, quite a lot like Duck and we were therefore terrified of her.

  The store was closing now and Ghost had abandoned me because he was having issues with a shop girl there who he had apparently promised to call the morning after some weeks before but he
never did and them sorting out this apparent misunderstanding evidently needed them to disappear into a changing room. I was left on my own so I chose the bag I thought was the prettiest.

  Afterwards, on the way to the bar, as Ghost hummed ‘Je t’aime . . . moi non plus’ and wondered aloud how a bug-eyed French dude who didn’t even really sing managed to bag heaps of beautiful women, I was happy. I had done the deed I had been sent to do and now Duck would be happy with me because he could pretend to his wife that he had gone to the effort of buying her a handbag.

  Then we reached the bar, where Duck was already a few lemonades in. He saw me walk in, clutching the shopping bag, and he nodded — good boy. I was ecstatic as I handed it over.

  And then Duck took the handbag out of the bag and saw it.

  And his eyes ran cold, like the tap in the sink that gives us cold water. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that cold look of coldness, and what he said next: ‘I wanted Marc Jacobs, you clown! I told you to get the Marc Jacobs!!’

  And then he whacked me around the head with the handbag that, apparently, wasn’t a Marc Jacobs handbag. He whacked me several times, actually. And it hurt, every whack, because man could that man swing a handbag.

  I looked around for Ghost to defend me, but suddenly (miraculously) he was standing across the other side of the bar, with our teammates, glass in hand, like he’d been there all the time, watching me getting pounded as Duck was telling me that if I thought this hurt imagine how he would feel if he were to turn up to his romantic dinner in the spa pool with the wrong handbag!

  Of course, also watching me take a handbag beating from my captain was the CCTV camera above the bar, and if I thought my shame ended when Duck flung the bag aside in disgust, I was wrong. Within minutes the footage hit the internet and I learnt that it is called ‘viral’ because when it’s you on millions of screens, all over the world, it feels like you’ve come down with a virus — a really stink one.

  The next morning, I was called forth from the blanket fort I had built in my hotel room to a meeting with team management where they played the video. I explained what had happened. They explained that the video was silent so you couldn’t hear Duck bollocking me for getting the wrong handbag. I suggested that someone might be able to read his lips. They pointed out that Duck was one of those people who didn’t move his lips when he spoke, so good luck there. Then they explained to me that no way could it get out that the captain of the ABs bought handbags for his wife. I explained that actually I’d bought the handbag. They explained they didn’t care and that the official story was that I was a junior who was misbehaving on a night out with the team, and that Duck was giving me a much-needed clip around the ears, to get me back in line.

  And that, until today, has been the official story. Who knows, maybe Duck will never read this book and never find out that I broke the sacred oath that comes into effect when team management tell you what to do. But in the unlikely event that Duck actually reads — or if someone who knows him can read and then tells him — then I am prepared to take another pounding, in the name of the truth.

  And then, after that, I will hunt out ‘Serge1967’, the prick who clearly picked up the bag in that bar, that night, and then sold it on Trade Me for an exorbitant sum, just to extend my shame, and I will give him a pounding to match the one I received on the end of that handbag.

  A Wee Confession by Ghost

  Okay, to cut a long story short, it was me who picked up the handbag that night.

  At first, I intended to give it back to Machete because, after all, he was the one who paid for it. But then I thought that one man giving another man a woman’s handbag was a bit sus, so I shelved that idea. Then I thought about giving it to the cute shop assistant from Kirk’s, because Machete had actually chosen a really nice bag and she was still a bit mad at me when I didn’t call her again the next day.

  And then the video went viral and I thought, ‘Hang on, I’m on a gold mine here.’ So I listed it on Trade Me and boy did things go crazy. Almost overnight over a million people had looked at the listing — pushing it well past some weirdo on the Kapiti Coast and his stupid haunted printer. And the bidding went equally crazy.

  As I say, to cut a long story short, eventually I sold the bag for heaps — more than enough to buy an actual Birkin bag. Which is exactly what I did.

  Now all I need is the supermodel, the private jet and Rio, and the dream will become a reality.

  World Cup Australia, 2005

  GHOST: Looking back, the omens were not great heading into the 2005 World Cup. For starters, there were questions over the make-up of the squad. Despite having finished dead last (again) in the Super 13 competition, behind even the South African franchise who were so divided by internal politics that half the team wore one uniform and the other half another, there were 21 Crusaders named in the 31-man squad.

  There were murmurs that having a Canterbury coach, a Canterbury chairman of selectors, two other Canterbury selectors making up the selection panel, and a Canterbury captain (Munty), along with Canterbury’s legendary tendency towards one-eyed parochialism, may have had something to do with this. All the Cantabrians involved in the squad fervently denied this and said it was just Aucklanders bleating as usual and they were just bitter because despite having won the Super Pick-a-Number for the third year running they still didn’t have the ticker to play for their country.

  Also, the 21-forward/10-back split of the squad tended to suggest a certain style of play — especially when you consider that one of the so-called backs, Spanner, was picked for his ability to cover any position from fullback to tighthead prop. That he ended up playing tighthead prop against England rather supported this theory.

  The inherent and underlying honesty of the Australian organisers was also called into question at a very early stage. At first this was dismissed as us Kiwis stereotyping Australians as inherently dodgy people, all descended from criminals. But when the draw was announced and it turned out New Zealand would be playing their pool games at midday in Darwin, Alice Springs, Townsville and, worst of all, Canberra, even the old boys at the top table in London felt something had to be done, so the games were all shifted to 2pm, when it is actually hotter. Our rugby bosses, of course, protested this but were told: ‘Stop bloody whinging you bloody Kiwis. Where the hell do you want to play your games then, eh? Bondi?’

  MACHETE: Ghost and I were both sitting in the stands for our first game, in Darwin, against Namibia. This probably wasn’t a bad thing given that the match was played in a swamp in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. The Canterbury pairing of Lunk and Screwf played in the midfield, at least until Lunk got bitten by a snake in the second half and had to be flown to civilisation by the Flying Doctor Service, at which time Spanner moved from blindside into centre and they brought on another prop to shore up the pack. At the end of the day, three converted penalty tries from scrums got us home against four unconverted tries from lineout drives, 21–20. The press described the performance as ‘rusty’ which wasn’t really surprising given the amount of water everywhere.

  G: Thanks to Lunk’s career-ending snakebite brush with death and also the fact that most of the team from the Namibia match came down with some freaky mosquito-borne virus, Machete and I both got to start the next match, against Machete’s historical nemesis, Tonga, in Alice Springs, in what became known as the ‘The Dingo Stole the Ball!’ test.

  M: The conditions could not have been any more different from Darwin, on a ground that was harder than even the hardest Tongan head and hot enough to make your sweat sizzle when it poured off you and hit the ground.

  G: Machete and I played an absolute blinder in the first half, so we were leading by 30 at oranges. But in the second half the conditions were starting to get to us and Tonga were threatening a comeback when the pack of dingoes invaded the ground and stole the match ball. In the break that followed, while the bloke with
the high-powered rifle shot the dingoes who were roaming the pitch, we managed to regroup and hold on grimly on the blood-splattered pitch for a 44–28 win. Two from two, but neither of them what you’d call ideal.

  M: Georgia was up next, in Townsville. After the tough Tonga game, Ghost and I had hoped to sit this one out, but after Screwf and Spanner both gotten bitten by spiders in the changing room we were thrust into the team at the last minute.

  G: Georgia, it turned out, were like England but even more boring, so Machete and I spent most of the game standing round while the forwards beat the shit out of each other. Occasionally their fly-half would kick the ball to us and we would run it back for a try. By the end of the game, Machete and I had a brace apiece and I’d spent most of the second half spotting the hotties in the crowd. Oh, and then the game was called off five minutes early when all these freaky flying-bug things swarmed all over the ground. Not that it mattered because we were up by 50 points.

  M: Then it was on to the scenic wonderland that is Canberra for the group decider against France. This is when I became aware of Ghost’s weird thing about sniffing players.

  G: Machete thinks my thing about capturing the smell of different countries is weird. I put it to him that rugby is a contact sport and when you contact someone you can’t help but take in some of their scent. What he says is strange, I say is unavoidable.

  One of the biggest clichés in world rugby is that when you play the French, they smell of garlic. This is not true. For the most part the French smell the same as any rugby team — of sweat and desperation and adrenalin and the natural body odours that come with professional sport. But when you tackle a Frenchman — especially a winger — you will also get a whiff of an exquisite eau de Cologne that will throw you, just for a second, into wondering where he bought that. Was it from a department store, possibly Bon Marche? Or is there a little parfumerie in the backstreets of Paris that only he and a few other players know about? And, if so, how do I get on their mailing list? But then the moment passes, as you drive them into the turf and get on with the game.