The Real McCaw: Richie McCaw: The Autobiography

by Richie McCaw

  When I got the whack on the head in the first game against the Chiefs, I was probably overcautious in taking the next game off. I didn’t quite feel myself. I got a bit anxious about it probably. As soon as I decided I wasn’t playing, all of a sudden I was feeling good again. By Saturday I was thinking maybe I could’ve played, but the right decision was to be overcautious.

  The problem is that if you miss a game, you’ve got to say why. With my history, that’s going to be news. That’s shit I don’t want to deal with, but you can’t start making decisions, particularly about your health, because you don’t want to deal with the media interest it will inevitably generate. So I took that week off when I probably didn’t need to, but I’ll always be ultra-cautious because of what I’ve been through.

  In 2004, I was in a head clash during the game against England at Dunedin and missed the second test at Eden Park. I came back for the next test against Argentina in Hamilton, then a couple of days later I had a bit of a headache. I got worried about it and started to think about everything. Some days you don’t feel that good anyway, and I do get neck symptoms which give me tension headaches occasionally. I think I got confused with all that, and there might have been a bit of delayed stuff too, and I started going around and around in circles, worrying about it. I was uncharacteristically short with people, particularly those who kept asking me how my head was!

  By then I’d missed the first two matches of the Tri Nations and was never going to play the next two, so I decided to take a break from the whole series and work my way back for the NPC.

  That’s basically what happened, though I’d got myself in a state where I didn’t know what was wrong in the end. It might’ve been the head knock, or it might have been me worrying about it too much, but I began thinking it was never going to be right. Then someone suggested that I just get back and get training, and when I did that I felt fine. When it came to actually playing again, I still lacked confidence and didn’t want to come back as captain, but that was when Aussie McLean and Steve Hansen told me I was playing as captain or not at all. That worked, forced me to think about the team, not myself. No further worries.

  Stretchered off after my close encounter with Richard Bands.

  The following year, I got knocked unconscious at Loftus in a front-on tackle of Richard Bands, part Springbok prop, part Brahma bull. That was easier to deal with. I recovered pretty quickly and after a week or so I was feeling pretty good again. I just took it really easy to make sure I was right and stayed on the sideline for about a month. But it was a pretty spectacular hit and I was carried off on a stretcher, still out to it, so there was a lot of media attention, a fair bit of it urging me to give the game away, given my problems the year before. Things weren’t helped later that year, on the 2005 end-of-year tour, when I got a head knock against Ireland and withdrew from the English test. It was a worry at the time, and you hope that you won’t get any more majors, but it does mean that I’m very careful with any head knocks.

  So when I got the bang against the Chiefs, I did the conservative thing and took a week off, even though by the Saturday I felt okay.

  That’s the thing. I’ll never play if I have symptoms. People might say, ‘But you passed the test.’ Okay, that’s the first stage, all the psychometric and other testing that the team doctor will carry out, and that of course is terribly important, not least because the team doctor is always there and knows everything about me. He or she will have a very comprehensive medical profile of every player for comparison purposes, particularly a player like me, who’s been around for a while. The team doctor also has access to the huge research that has gone into head injuries from contact sport. There’ve been two big global conferences with leading people from all round the world getting together to share knowledge and experience about how best to manage this area. So I’ve got the benefit of all that. But even if I’ve passed the tests and my brain function and everything is fine, it doesn’t mean I’m good to play—not if I still don’t feel quite right.

  That’s what I’ve learnt: I know when I’m right. It becomes clear. You get that moment every time you get a knock. You might feel a bit funny for a day or so, then bang, you’re good again. Although ‘bang’ might not be the best word.

  Resting the brain—not reading or watching television—is definitely tougher than resting a knee.

  The rehab goes well and by Round 10, I’m ready to come back against the Sharks.

  Start again.

  Todd Blackadder . . . calm, steely and great self-belief.

  If you could pick someone to be standing in front of the team after winning one game out of the first six, including three losses in a row, Toddy would be that man. He’s calm, steely, and his self-belief never wavers. It’s not so much what people say in those situations, as how they say it. Some coaches can be talking up a storm about belief and you can see the doubt and panic behind their eyes.

  After drawing the first game against the Force while I’m away, the boys manage to put together some results, albeit pretty scratchy ones—a three-point win over the Waratahs in Sydney, a six-point win over the Stormers at Jade, three points over the Bulls at Jade, before having the bye and taking stock.

  We’re eighth on the points table, but just three points adrift of the top four. We’re on the cusp—the season is still salvageable if we win the next game against the competition leaders, the Sharks, but a loss will see us lose touch. Our defence has been pretty solid, but we’re not scoring tries and we’re not getting bonus points. We’ve lost four of our stars from last season—Mose’s gone to Japan, and Dan and Corey and Casey are injured—but guys like Thomas Waldrom and Stephen Brett and Ryan Crotty and Tim Bateman are doing their damndest to step up.

  But the biggest problem is yet another change in the referees’ interpretation of the tackled ball rule. Correction: there has been no change in interpretation, officially, but there’s been a change of emphasis.

  Whatever they call it, there seems to be an annual rotation. Year One, the referees decide to make sure the attacking team gets just reward for its endeavours. Year Two, they decide to make sure the tackled ball is contestable for the defending team. This is a Year Two. Anyone who looks half on his feet seems able to have a go for the ball and is getting away with it. So instead of having just your really good fetchers getting into good position, anyone within cooee of the tackled ball can have a dig with impunity. I’m half expecting to see the ballboys and spectators join in.

  The result is that there’s no advantage in playing with the ball in your own half. Too dangerous.

  So when we travel to Durban, we adopt a new strategy against the Sharks. Instead of moving the ball wide, we kick and try to keep them in their own territory, then pressure them in lineouts and breakdowns, and with suffocating defence try to knock them off their stride. It’s not much fun—we prefer to play rugby with the ball, not without it—but it works. We get home by three points.

  I have a good game, considering how long I’ve been out, and score a try off a Kieran Read assist. My base fitness—and the fact that my knee injury only stopped me running for about 10 days—allows me to see out the full 80. The lungs and legs are fine, but I get a blow to the forehead and have to get the medics to stop the blood.

  We blow it at Bloemfontein a week later, getting beaten by the bottom-of-the-table Cheetahs 20–13. We forget the lessons of last week, try to run it at them after being encouraged by scoring early, and make a ton of handling errors.

  Which makes the next match against the Lions in Jo’burg a must-win. But there’s a problem.

  Against the Cheetahs I collect another blow to the head, which opens me up above the eye. I’m named in the team for Saturday, but I’m still not feeling 100 per cent right at Thursday practice. It’s not just the sore eye under the gash, but a familiar feeling that’s difficult to describe, a kind of cloudiness. It’s not bad, but it’s not right either, so I follow my own protocols and withdraw, even though I know this
latest withdrawal will precipitate speculation that my days in rugby are numbered.

  I can’t look that far ahead or allow the speculation to deflect me from doing the right thing in the moment. If I feel I can do the job right, I’ll play. If I can’t, then I won’t.

  As it happens, they don’t need me. Jonathan Poff plays well in my place—George Whitelock is injured too—and it’s one of our best attacking performances of the season. We get the win and the priceless bonus point, which takes us up to sixth on the points table, still three away from making the semis. We’re still in the hunt.

  By the time we get back to Christchurch I’m feeling fully recovered, and although I’m initially bracketed with Jonathan for the game against the Reds, there’s no way I’m missing it.

  The Reds have suffered decimating injuries, including Will Genia, whereas some of ours, like Brad Thorn, are coming right.

  Making a break for the Crusaders against the Reds at Christchurch, 2009.

  We belt them 32–12 in a cold, slippery southerly, get the bonus point and stay in the race. Toddy unloads the bench and I end up defending at first-five for the final minutes. I think it might be the only time I’ve ever played in the backs. Bet Dan, probably still on crutches, in front of a TV, is worried!

  The calculators come out before our last game against the Blues at Eden Park, and the general consensus seems to be that we’ll need another bonus point to make the semis. But we realise as early as the first half that it’s not going to be a bonus point sort of game. It’s all we can do to get the win.

  We’re down 13–12 with four minutes to go, when Rangi—Leon MacDonald—scrapes over a wobbly drop-kick. The media aren’t slow to make the Cardiff comparisons. Neither am I. It was a planned move, fellas. And it’s also Rangi’s farewell to rugby in New Zealand, unless we make the finals.

  The play-offs aren’t decided until the ninety-first minute of the last game of the weekend, when the Bulls beat the Sharks 27–26 in Durban. That eliminates the Sharks and means the Chiefs finish second and play the third-placed Hurricanes.

  Somehow, we’ve ‘scrapped and scratched’—as one scribe puts it—our way to the fourth and last semi-final position. We finish with the same points as the Waratahs, but we beat them on points difference, courtesy of the best defensive record of any team. If defence is about attitude, that’s us, but we’re also second last on tries scored, and we have to own that stat too.

  ‘Had anyone wandered through Cathedral Square in mid-March brandishing a wad of cash and daring anyone to bet against the Crusaders making the Super 14 play-offs,’ writes Richard Knowler in The Press, ‘they probably would have been wrapped in a blanket and gently asked just which institution they called home.’

  But we’ve made it, against all odds, and have bugger all time to pack for the semi in South Africa, and go. John Miles, our logistics manager, does it tough when the turnaround is this tight—100 bags of playing kit and luggage has to be packed out of his room at the back of the grandstand. Much easier for me: training kit, change of clothes, two pairs of new or near-new boots in the suitcase and, most important items, two mouthguards in my carry-on so there’s no risk of them being lost in transit. Everything else can be replaced, even boots, but I won’t step on the field without my mouthguard—particularly against the Bulls.

  It’s a pretty similar scenario to the 2007 semi-final, where we got stuffed: Hougaard kicked 27 points and Dan kicked 12, in a dour, bruising confrontation. As we fly across the Indian Ocean once again, we try to keep those terrible Yogi Berra words out of our heads—‘It’s déjà vu all over again!’—because we’re going to Pretoria and we know what we’re going to get.

  Some things against the Bulls never change. It’ll be hot and dry and hard. Your throat will be stinging, your lungs bursting. It’ll be an unrelentingly physical confrontation and you’ve got to be up for that. In my Warwick on game day, I write: Courage on D and at breakdown. Keep coming. Keep getting up.

  You’ve also got to get ahead early and take the 50,000-plus blue horde up in the grandstands out of the game. The ball flies so much further at altitude that you can’t give away penalties in your half or even 10 metres into their half. If you do, no matter if you’re playing well, they’ll keep the scoreboard ticking over and stay in touch, waiting for a chance to get territory, hold possession and start grinding you down. Once they get momentum, they’re so difficult to stop.

  That danger of penalties has been exacerbated this season by the way the tackled ball is being refereed. So once again we develop a game plan that goes against our instincts and is very different from anything we’ve used against them before.

  When we watch the video of the teams that have done well against them, it becomes clear that you get a lot of reward for not playing, particularly in your own half. We figure that it’ll be difficult for them to kick goals or get any front-foot if we kick deep, force them to make play from back there, or kick back to us. We’ll only have a crack if and when they kick poorly. We realise that’s going to take a lot of patience and discipline, because our natural tendency is to have a crack.

  The game doesn’t start well—we’re seven points down after 10 minutes when Habana comes in from the blindside wing to take an inside ball and slice through under the posts.

  But then we knuckle down, stick to the plan and it works—spectacularly. The Bulls kick badly, we force a ruck on their 22, shift it quickly by hand to the left and put Adam Whitelock over in the corner. Planned move.

  Ten minutes later we hoist the perfect up-and-under and Kieran takes it on the full and smashes over close to the posts. Planned move. 20 points to 7.

  There’s an eerie silence in the stadium as we really climb into them, and I know that if we can make it to halftime without coughing up any points, we’ve got them stuffed.

  But within sight of halftime we do exactly what we said we wouldn’t do. Don’t play anywhere near our own half, we agreed, keep putting it back and making them play.

  Instead, a couple of guys try fancy-dan stuff in our own half. From the first, Akona Ndungane is put away on the left for a try in the thirty-second minute: 20–14. In the thirty-sixth minute Thomas Waldrom gets sin-binned. Thirty-seventh minute, Morne Steyn drops a goal: 20–17. Ditto what seems moments later: 20–20. Thirty-ninth minute, Jared Payne tries a chip-and-chase, the ball sits up for Pierre Spies, who runs 50 metres down the middle of the field to score under the posts: 20–27.

  In eight minutes we’ve shipped 20 points and we go into halftime shell-shocked.

  The second half’s a struggle. We defend with huge heart, making twice as many tackles as the Bulls, but we can’t get our game back. Meanwhile, Man of the Match Morne Steyn does what Bulls’ fly-halves learn to do at their mother’s breast—kicks a penalty and two more dropped goals. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Two mistakes, deviations from the game plan, momentum gone, game over.

  ‘A lot of the guys haven’t been through an experience like this, and hopefully they’ll be better next year,’ says Toddy in his measured way after the game. He talks about the attitude of the guys through a season where we’ve had to battle back from a bad start, got to the semis without some of our stars, and, probably, got the best out of what we had.

  Owen Franks—at contact training he doesn’t know 50 per cent.

  Some individuals have really stepped up. If last year was about the rise of Kieran, this year is about Owen Franks. He’s such a strong young bugger and relishes contact. You’d get tired just watching him and his brother Ben in the gym, and sure as hell, if we’re playing gentle 50 per cent contact at training and you get hit hard, it’ll be Owen. He doesn’t know 50 per cent.

  There are in fact a lot of positives to be taken from what we’ve done as a team.

  But not for me. For me, it’s been an unsatisfactory stop-start season, which has just stopped again.

  During the second half against the Bulls, I twist the same knee. I make it through the match, but when I
get home the scan shows I’ve partially detached the lateral ligament on the outside of the knee. I’m told I’m lucky—it’s close to being operation material, which would have meant a six-monther.

  The following week I’m back in a knee brace—same brace, same knee, different ligament—as I watch the Bulls smash the Chiefs 61–17 at Loftus in the final of the Super 14.

  The South Africans seem to have recovered from their World Cup hangover.

  The game seems to have changed.

  I try to keep my head up and commit to another rehab plan.

  Start again.

  When Ted is interviewed before the opening 2009 Tri Nations match against Australia at Eden Park, he talks about his pride in our achievements last year—all the cups, the third Grand Slam in history on the northern tour, no tries scored against us, number-one world ranking, all of that. Then he says: ‘We are likely to get beaten . . . I don’t think that is going to be a bad thing.’

  Whoa. I’m struggling back to match fitness after my knee injury and have been a spectator during the less-than-impressive Iveco series against France and Italy, but I don’t understand why he would say that. It looks a bit like we’re trying to get our excuses in first, and smacks of defeatism and just isn’t the sort of thing an All Black coach says at the start of a season, even if it reflects the reality of the situation.

  Ted’s great at the big picture, but I’m obviously not seeing the same one he’s seeing.

  Two months later, it turns out that, if anything, Ted’s looking through rose-tinted spectacles. By early September, we’re at a nadir, our lowest ebb since Cardiff. The wheels have fallen off the All Black machine and we’re struggling to figure out how to get them back on again.

  It starts badly at Dunedin, where we get beaten 22–27 in the opening Iveco series match by what has been touted as France B.