The Real McCaw: Richie McCaw: The Autobiography

by Richie McCaw

  On the positive side, you’d have to say that Ted & Co. got the forward pack right. The scrums, lineouts and restarts were excellent. Ali and Rodney had fine games, and the front-rowers bested their opponents. Keith Robinson did well enough and Jacko lifted us when he came on. I wasn’t the presence at second phase that I usually was, and Jerry wasn’t his usual self either, though he had an excuse after he got crippled by Dusautoir.

  But the game was won and lost in that last 20, and you’d have to say we didn’t have the right people in the right places for that critical time. Some were absent through injury, but a couple were sitting in the stand.

  Continuity or a new broom?

  I remember a quote I use a bit: ‘If you learn from your own mistakes you pick up experience, if you learn from someone else’s mistakes you pick up wisdom.’

  Choosing between Ted and Robbie on the basis of RWC experience is inconclusive. They’ve both been there, made mistakes, come home with their tails between their legs.

  Given their formidable rugby intelligence and dedication to their craft, they were both going to learn from their experience and from others’, and be better and wiser coaches in that environment next time round.

  The question is whether it’s better to stay with the incumbent or get a new broom in there and start again. Because that’s what a choice in favour of Robbie would mean.

  As a player and captain, I already know I’m going to be asking for another chance at RWC glory. Talking with Ali and Mils and others, there’s a feeling that surely we can be better for this, surely we can build on the good things that we’ve done, if we’re given the chance. Should Ted expect the same opportunity?

  However, I’m beginning to realise that Ted or Robbie? is the wrong question.

  The applications in front of the NZRU are telling. Robbie hasn’t named his assistants, though Pat Lam’s name has been mentioned in some reports. But Pat hasn’t coached at Super 14 level yet. So the question actually is: Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen or Robbie Deans and Unknown Assistant Coaches?

  That’s a critical difference right there.

  While Ted’s the man in charge, maintains a bit of distance, and is tough to get to know, he works well as part of a team. He’s great at the big picture, always looking ahead, getting a handle on who we’re coming up against. He watches an awful lot of rugby and looks at trends, where we need to be, what we need to do to get there, while we’re busy just looking at our own stuff. He’ll say, ‘This is what I’ve seen from the northern hemisphere, this is what I see from Super rugby.’

  Before we went on the Grand Slam tour in 2005, for instance, he knew that the biggest game was going to be England, the third one. He was planning around how to get to that. I didn’t think England had been playing that well, but he was dead right and that was the toughest by far.

  Again, in 2005, after we’d dealt to the Lions, he knew that South Africa were going to be the toughest in the Tri Nations. He’d have in mind how we were going to play against South Africa and what we needed to do to be right for that. He’d have regular meetings with the senior players and plan what we needed to do to win the campaign, rather than get lost in what’s ahead of us this week or next week. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in that.

  Ted had all the percentages. He’d be looking at stuff like tries from turnovers and where they come from, what the northern hemisphere were doing to create tries. How the game had changed. ‘Okay, what’s our strength,’ he’d say, ‘and how are we going to make that work for us?’ For all that, he was never a one-man band in this or in anything else.

  Smithy’s similar to Ted in that he does a shit-load of research about what other teams are doing and how to exploit what they’re doing—and most importantly, he has an understanding of what might actually work in the heat of battle.

  While he’s big on stats, it’s because he can interpret them in a useful way. He’s not blinded by them, uses them as a good indicator, but isn’t bluffed by quantitative measurements—he’s looking for the quality. Twenty tackles against a player’s name is meaningless, unless you further analyse how many of them were weak and how many were dominant or turnover tackles. Smithy’s got a great eye for detail and how to translate that detail to individual skill-sets. He’s big on systems but also sharp on detail.

  At the same time—and this is probably the paradox with Smithy—as much as he likes a good stat, he’s also big on emotive drivers. What gives a team that mental edge?

  Steve Hansen has a different but very complementary approach. He has a great feel for how things are now, and he’s able to get in front of the team without doing as much homework but work his way in and get the best out of the players. He’s bloody good at handling stuff on the fly. He’ll be your good mate, but has a way of being able to have a straight conversation with a player. Instead of saying, ‘This is what I think,’ he’ll ask, ‘What do you see?’ You end up picking your game over. He won’t blow wind up your bum, but you’ll go away thinking that you really got something out of the session.

  Steve was apparently quite tough on the Welsh team when he went there in 2001, but he turned them around, and some of the Welsh boys who worked under him have told me they’d die for him.

  The three of them make such a strong unit, that’s the thing. Smithy and Steve have been international head coaches in their own right and they’re happy to defer to one another, and all of them are prepared to try stuff and then put up their hands and say, ‘I got that wrong.’ Notwithstanding all that, there’s never any doubt that Ted makes the final decision if one is needed.

  For me, the fact that Smithy and Steve have committed again to Ted speaks volumes. That must have been a difficult decision for both of them. Smithy won’t have done that without a lot of thought, and Steve probably considered putting his own hand up.

  Then there’s the support staff those guys have put around us: Sir Brian Lochore, and the specialist coaches—Mike Cron with the scrum, Mick Byrne with the kicking and catching, Graham Lowe, the trainer, Gilbert Enoka, the sports psychologist. It’s such a powerful coaching nexus.

  Is it a bird, is it a ball? Or am I boring them?

  Robbie is different.

  Robbie doesn’t appear to want to be challenged by his assistants and won’t allow the kind of full-on debate that Ted encourages with Smithy and Steve. Robbie’s approach is to say, ‘This is what we’re doing,’ then convince people that that’s the way it’s got to be. He’s very good at that.

  But when you look at the record of Robbie’s assistant coaches, there’s quite a lot of turnover and fallout. Robbie’s intransigence and reluctance to delegate might have been a factor.

  It was certainly a factor with Steve Hansen, who was Robbie’s assistant at Canterbury and the Crusaders from 1997 through to 2001, before Steve departed for Wales. I was involved off and on in the 2001 Crusaders campaign and it was pretty average: we finished tenth, and there was a lot of tension between Robbie and Steve. It was then decided that you couldn’t coach at NPC and Super rugby level, so Robbie got the Crusaders and Steve got hold of the NPC team. Steve brought some good ideas to that NPC team, got buy-in from the guys, and we had a really successful year—and a lot of fun.

  But Steve is just one case in point, if you look at the names of some of Robbie’s assistants. Colin Cooper, Vern Cotter, Don Hayes, Todd Blackadder. It’s tempting to draw the conclusion that if Robbie gets a strong assistant coach, the assistant won’t last, and if he gets one that lasts, he’s not that strong.

  Despite that history, Robbie’s stature is such that he could have pulled some excellent coaching assistance in with him for the application to the NZRU—after all, a year as Robbie’s assistant is probably going to teach you more than most other positions in world rugby.

  So when I see that Robbie hasn’t really nailed anyone down to back him up, I wonder whether Robbie’s gone into the process believing that he hasn’t really got a fair shot and is just going through the mot
ions.

  There’d be some history in support of that attitude.

  Some in the media see a Crusaders monopoly in the NZRU, with Steve Tew and Darren Shand and Shag and Smithy—not to mention me—all with strong Canterbury and Crusaders connections (even Ted was born and raised in Christchurch), and imagine there’s a Canterbury power bloc running New Zealand rugby, but nothing could be further from the truth.

  When Robbie was sacked as All Black coach after the 2003 RWC, his nemesis Steve Hansen came back from Wales and stepped into the All Black coaching team, and Steve wasn’t alone in making that move from the Crusaders to the All Blacks. Steve Tew, the CEO, left the Crusaders for the same job at the NZRU, Darren Shand left as manager of the Crusaders to become manager of the All Blacks, even Errol Collins, the Crusaders baggage man who’d been around a long time and had been part of the glue of the team, left for the same position with the All Blacks.

  These changes could all be explained in terms of career opportunities, but I’m not sure if Robbie and Hamish Riach, the Crusaders CEO who replaced Steve Tew, shared that sort of equanimity about the movement of Crusaders personnel to the NZRU. Both Robbie and Hamish are paid to work their own corner, and I could be wrong, but my feeling is that the ones who left were seen as defectors from the cause.

  That’s been borne out by the All Blacks not really being made welcome when it comes to using Canterbury facilities. Every other franchise around the country gets the NPC team to move out for the week the All Blacks are in town. Canterbury just said no, which was a bit embarrassing when so many of us, management included, were from Canterbury.

  On the positive side, if Robbie was appointed All Black coach, it would bring an end to all that, you’d hope. But that’s not a good enough reason to change the All Black coaching set-up, to throw everything out and start again.

  The conclusion I come to has an inevitability about it.

  While Ted versus Robbie might have been a fair fight, Ted and Smithy and Shag versus Robbie and Persons Unknown never could be.

  So when Steve Tew phones me for an informal catch-up on this and that, I tell him I’m happy to work with either, but I do have a view on which option might be better for the All Blacks.

  Whatever decision the NZRU make, I’m about to spend the next six months with Robbie and the Crusaders. I hope expressing my views won’t come back and bite me on the bum.

  Getting back to the Crusaders set-up for a new season at Rugby Park, St Albans is a bit like sinking into a warm bath. Familiar settings and people, a ritual I’ve been part of since 2002, and before that with Canterbury.

  This time, it’s not quite so comfortable. There’s an anxiety hanging over everything, born out of uncertainty. We know that Robbie’s up for the All Black coaching job, and there’s been a lot of media speculation about the Aussies courting him too. If either eventuates, where does that leave the Crusaders?

  I can imagine the NZRU allowing Robbie to see out the Crusaders season as incoming All Black coach, but if he misses out on that and gets the Aussie job, he’s suddenly in the enemy camp, and how will that sit with being coach of a New Zealand franchise?

  My own state of mind isn’t helped by my conflict over the Robbie vs Ted contest still being played out, and the bath really loses its heat when Robbie tells me that he and I need to have a sit-down.

  We adjourn to the little café just across the road from Rugby Park. Robbie has a great shock of hair and the face of eternal youth, but when he’s serious, you know it. His first question confirms it.

  ‘Captain of the Crusaders,’ he says. ‘Do you want to do it?’

  I’m a bit startled at the question. I tell him I don’t see why not.

  ‘I want you to tell me why you want to do it,’ he insists.

  By now I’m getting a bit defensive. I’m wondering if he’s heard a whisper. ‘There’s no one else really, is there?’

  ‘That’s not a good enough reason,’ he says. ‘I want you to give me a good reason why you want to do this.’

  I’m thinking, Oh shit, what’s going on here? But once I get over that, I realise it’s a fair question and gives me a chance to think whether I really do want to do it and, if so, why. It’s wonderful how quickly this threat to my captaincy of the Crusaders crystallises things for me.

  Happiness is . . . leading Canterbury to the 2004 NPC Division One title.

  I tell Robbie I know I can be a better captain for the experiences that I’ve been through—and I’m not just referring to Cardiff or to the All Blacks. I’ve been on a huge learning curve since I was appointed captain of the Canterbury NPC team in 2004. That year, I tried to be one of the boys too much and went over the top instead of just being myself. I tell Robbie I still feel like I’ve only just started, and while I’ve still got so much to learn, I know I can contribute a hell of a lot more than before.

  That’s what he wants to hear. There’s no ulterior motive, it’s just Robbie being the great coach he is, making me recommit to the captaincy, instead of just rolling up and expecting things to be the same this year because that’s the way it was last year.

  On the way home, I take a leaf out of Barney McCone’s book, 94 leaves actually, when I buy a Warwick 2B4 ruled page exercise book and start putting my thoughts together on the page. I write down a heading—Why I Want to be Captain. It helps to write it down: that I enjoy having an influence on how the team operates and performs; that I like the pressure and responsibility that comes with the captaincy; that I believe I can improve with experience; that I care about how the team goes and want to help set high standards; and that, selfishly, it helps me stay engaged and become a better player.

  That prompt from Robbie is an example of the much talked-about Canterbury/Crusaders culture in action, which Robbie has played a huge part in building. There are different elements to it, but one of the biggest mantras is that no player is bigger than the team: the team always comes first. All the guys know that, we respect each other for that: pricks don’t last. And although we’re all well looked after from the word go, we’re not feather-bedded.

  In that first year as captain of the Canterbury NPC team, I missed the start of the season because I got badly concussed playing for the All Blacks against England and was out for three months. When I came back to the NPC team, I lacked confidence and suggested to coach Aussie McLean that I forgo the captaincy for the first game at least, until I got rid of the doubts and found my feet. He said he’d discussed the situation with Steve Hansen, and they wouldn’t have a bar of it. Aussie told me that I’d agreed at the start of the season to be captain, and that if I played at all, I was playing as captain. I was initially taken aback, but it was the best thing he could have done: the captaincy forced me to put aside my self-doubts, stop thinking about my problems and commit myself to the team.

  That sort of psychological savvy is the Canterbury/Crusaders way. It’s why I came here straight out of school, though putting it like that makes it sound a lot more straightforward than it was.

  I was an age-group player for Otago when I first became aware of the Canterbury phenomenon.

  I was selected for the Otago Under 16s and we travelled to Ashburton for the South Island inter-provincial tournament. We were still mucking around, getting ourselves and our gear organised, when the Canterbury team arrived in a flash bus, immaculate gear, organised, ready to go. We were billeted; they stayed in a motel. None of that would have mattered particularly. What mattered was they thrashed everyone.

  I went back to Otago Boys’ and kept developing my game, with the help of some great rugby mentors. As in Kurow, I was able to move through the grades with the same group of guys, with the same coach, David Cook. That made for enduring friendships and a real feeling for each other, on and off the field.

  In the fifth form, the First XV coach, Brian Ashwin, gave me a couple of games for the First XV. They were club games, not inter-schools, but we played in the Under 21 grade in the local club competition in Dunedin, against
the likes of Otago University students who were up to five years older. I was used to battling for survival against older boys—as a five year old at Haka Primary, I was in boots and all for the pick-up games at intervals and lunchtimes. That served me well as a 15 year old when I went up against 20 and 21 year olds in my first game for OBHS First XV against Taieri at Peter Johnstone Park. By halftime I was a bit battered and bruised, and it didn’t help to overhear the Taieri coach urging his players to climb into ‘these effing schoolboys, get some boots and hair flying so they don’t want to be here’. That certainly hardened me up for the following year, when I became a regular in the First XV.

  The last time I appeared in the blue and gold: Otago Under 18s; I’m fourth from left.

  That year, when I was a sixth former, Brian Ashwin made an inspired decision to enlist the aid of David Cook, because David had already been with us for a couple of years and knew us so well.

  Brian became another of my important rugby mentors. He was utterly dedicated to the school and to rugby, and also taught me Accounting. He was always available in class for a chat about rugby, but it couldn’t have been too much of a distraction from the academic side, because in the seventh form, I won Scholarship in Accounting under his tutelage. I remember myself as being a bit shy and reticent, but Brian remembers me sitting up the front of class asking questions.

  That Canterbury encounter, and others in the Otago Under 18s, must have simmered away as I completed my sixth and seventh form years, because halfway through my last year I heard that Lincoln University had a rugby scholarship that paid all your fees. My family had always assumed I’d go to Lincoln University and do a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree, so when Lincoln got back to me and offered me the scholarship, it all seemed to fit; the die seemed cast.