by Richie McCaw
You can see those players improving with exposure to test-match pressure, and we’ve got to hope that the same will be true of guys like Beaver. And, if in order to advance that, we had to choose a game to lose before the RWC, this would be it. We’ve won six in a row in the Tri Nations, and this is a timely reminder that it won’t just happen: to win a test, you’ve got to turn up and get it right. Every bloody time.
The loss fires us up for the Grand Slam, although in saying that we hardly need firing up to play England in front of 81,000 fans at Twickenham.
It’s Sonny Bill’s debut and there’s a big buzz around that, but Sam Whitelock’s first run-on test is at least as important to us. Sam’s got the size for an international lock, and has earned his shot with a great work ethic. He’s also got an old head on his young shoulders, knows where he needs to be, has the athleticism to get himself there, and enough mongrel to make his presence felt when he does.
Sonny Bill’s trademark offload on show against Scotland.
Sam Whitelock, who got his first run-on test against the English in 2010.
The game is a much better spectacle than last year, and England play their part in making it so, despite their defensive coach Mike Ford saying before the game that tests should be low-scoring grinds. Hosea Gear and Kieran score in the first half and we’re out to 17–3 by halftime. Maybe England are so far behind they’re forced to change tactics, but after a couple of Toby Flood penalties—we’re getting murdered by French ref Romain Poite in the scrums—they start running at us and stretching us wide. Jerome gets sin-binned and we play out the last eight minutes one man down. In the end, 26–16 is probably a fair result.
The same weekend, Australia beat Wales comfortably, and the Springboks keep their own Grand Slam hopes alive by beating Ireland narrowly.
Sonny Bill has a stellar game the following week against the Scots, moving Toby Robson to write that he’s ‘dominated a test in a way not seen since Jonah in his pomp’. The Murrayfield Massacre is a 49–3 thrashing, our biggest win over Scotland in 105 years, and Sonny certainly shows his stuff—six offloads in the first 20 minutes and a big hand in four of the seven tries. But it is only Scotland, who on the evidence of that outing don’t have a hell of a lot of the old Scots rip-shit-and bust about them.
It’s hard to assess whether we’re that good—we’re certainly playing a brand of pace and power rugby that is light years ahead of what we did last year up here in the UK—or whether the opposition is really bad.
The other southern hemisphere teams’ results might be a clue. That weekend, there’s a headline I’ve never seen before: ‘wallabies Fall to Dazzling England’. Can’t say I ever expected to see ‘England’ and ‘dazzling’ in the same sentence, but maybe that’s an indication that it’s more a case of what we’re doing well, not what the opposition is doing badly. That’s confirmed by a narrow 29–25 win by the Boks over Wales, as they edge towards a Grand Slam too.
Back home, a couple of severe aftershocks rock Christchurch, 4.8 and 4.9, but, as far as I can tell, the guys seem pretty blase about it by now. Modelling by GNS Science predicted between five and 17 aftershocks of between 4 and 4.9 magnitude could strike Christchurch this month, so it seems more or less in line with predictions—a pattern of diminishing aftershocks and no more major damage. That makes it easier for the Canterbury boys to focus on Ireland, which ought to be a better test.
And it is. The Irish play well against us in Dublin for all but three minutes of the 80. It could have been an arm-wrestle. On the field it was. On the scoreboard it wasn’t. In three minutes we score two tries and the game changes from a tight 19–13 test match to all over. What’s most encouraging is our ability to punish opposition mistakes or loss of concentration, no matter how fleeting.
‘When the numbers don’t match, the All Blacks pounce,’ writes Toby Robson. ‘When a kick is slightly inaccurate or a chase is weak, they make teams pay . . .’
Some of the kudos we’re getting from the press about our Total Rugby concept is music to our ears, I must admit. ‘The backs clean rucks with the forwards and the forwards can throw passes off either side like backs . . . Unlike the South Africans, the All Blacks often unload in the tackle, and, unlike Australia, the pack are happy to indulge in an arm-wrestle if the weather or pitch conditions dictate.’
A better indication of our prowess might be that the same weekend we destroy Ireland, the dreadful Scots beat South Africa 21–17 and stymie their bid for a Grand Slam.
It’s my record ninety-third test for the All Blacks, Mils too, overtaking Sean Fitzpatrick. Given that, I might have been a bit mean in turning down an opportunity for Dan to kick an easy penalty to set a world record for the number of points in a test. I didn’t know until someone tells me after the game. I look at Dan. ‘Oh, mate. You knew?’ He tries to make out he didn’t, but he did. Ah well, there’s always next week.
Brad’s not as phlegmatic about missing the Irish test due to a tweaked hammy, because it would have been his fiftieth. Bloody incredible, when you consider what else the man has done! He’s pretty dark until the hammy holds up through training and he’s chosen for the test XV against Wales.
Once again, it’s difficult to stay focused on one more game, when the feet are screaming out for Jandals and you start dreaming of sun on the face. Wales seem a bit distracted too. After a dismal draw against Fiji, their coach, warren Gatland, stormed into the welsh dressing room and sacked his captain, Ryan Jones, a big tight-loose forward who’d impressed with the 2005 Lions.
Ninety-three tests apiece. A new record for Mils and me after the test against Ireland.
Two days after the Irish test the news comes through about the Pike River mine tragedy. Twenty-nine missing. New Zealand’s two degrees of separation kicks in: my old flatmate Ben Blair, now living in Cardiff, played club rugby with one of those missing. John Sturgeon, NZRU president, on tour with us, an ex-West Coast coalminer with friends among the families of those lost, fronts the media, tries to stay upbeat. Privately, he’s really shaken and tells me: ‘These sorts of things don’t end good.’
Wales is a country that understands what goes down in mines. After the first explosion, we all bow our heads and say a prayer for the missing, or just hope that they’ll be saved. By Wednesday morning, a second explosion has ripped through the mine and Sturge shakes his head. We watch the internet and television pictures of the Paparoa Range on the wild West Coast, but this time it’s not a tourist promotion. We feel a long way from home.
This year, the coaches have given me more responsibility towards the sharp end of the week, and I take it carefully. It’s our fourteenth test of the year and the last thing anyone needs is any gut-busters or big contact.
At the beginning of the week, it’s 80/20 the coaches driving things at practice, but as we get closer to the game, the ratio reverses because we’re the ones who have to drive it during the game. Thursday training is a bit of a mix: the coaches set out what we’re doing in broad terms, and they run some drills, but instead of them saying I want you to do this move and practise this one, we’re just told, ‘Scrum there, do what you need to do and if it doesn’t work, you figure out why.’ Replicating game day. They’ll step in if there’s a glaringly obvious hole in what we’re doing, or they’ll throw in what they call ‘unpredicted events’, to try and get some problem solving, or even try to upset us and force us into the Red Zone. Sometimes the coaches take that to the extreme. Whereas before we used to go through everything the next opponent was likely to throw at us on video analysis and then prepare for it, the coaches have started holding some of that stuff back from us. They won’t tell us what they’ve picked up, then Smithy, say, will dump the move or situation on us at Thursday training, hoping that it’ll work, that it’ll break us. The theory is that what breaks us on a Thursday will never break us on a Saturday. We’ll work it out and cover it.
White armbands for Pike River . . . prior to kick-off against Wales at the Millennium Stadium,
2010.
This methodology has often made training a bit messier than it used to be, because we only ever get one go. Even if Smithy pulls a stunt like that and we ask if we can have another look at it. Nup. Then he’ll pull something similar out again later, when we’re not expecting it. We’ve learnt not to measure the accuracy of Thursday training so much—the test of accuracy and everything else is on Saturday.
By Friday, captain’s run, the coaches don’t have any say at all, it’s all me and Dan and the senior guys. We’re in charge and we decide what we’re going to do. We’ll do some lineouts and we’ll go through our team patterns. How we’re going to start the game, kick-offs, first lineout and defensive lineout. How we’re going to get ourselves out of there. We’ll go through about eight or nine starter plays from set-piece, then a little bit of broken play too, like kick retrieval, setting up the counter. Thursday is opposed and unpredicted, so you’ve got guys under pressure who maybe made a few mistakes. From a live scrum, maybe the pass was meant to go wide but it broke down in the middle, but we only got one crack at it. So on Friday we get a chance to go back and work out what the problem was, make sure that we’ve got it right. And guys can look at what they’re doing and say, ‘Shit, let’s go through that again, we’d better just make sure.’
Dan kicks a penalty goal against Wales to break the world points scoring record.
In Cardiff, on the Friday, just as well we’re at the end of the tour and there’s not a lot to be done: it’s bloody snowing. We haven’t always welcomed the roof at Millennium Stadium and the effect it seems to have on the grass surface, but we’re grateful this time around.
We start well in front of 70,000 at the Millennium. Dan doesn’t kick particularly well in this test, but early on slots the penalty he needs to take him to 1188 test points, a new world record. We get 12 points up and then start leaking penalties and points to a willing, resilient Welsh team, until midway through the second half after Stephen Jones has kicked six penalties, we’re pegged back to 23–18, and in a dogfight we don’t need.
Once again, our scrum’s being punished, seemingly for being dominant. Things aren’t going well for us, we’ve lost momentum, but there are no wrong pictures in my head, even though we’re in the same stadium as 2007. I keep the emotion at bay, stay on task, think about which parts of our game are serving us well, what I have to do to get our game going, how to stop giving away penalties or at least get down their end of the field. Jerome’s giving us go-forward and from a Mils chip we get the ball back, and in the seventy-third minute Brad holds a beautiful ball to put Anthony Boric into a hole and Ice scores. We go straight back down there, and Jimmy back-flips a pass to Mils who puts big John Afoa in the clear with 30 metres to the line. It’s no race, and neither is the game on the scoreboard at 37–25. We know different.
With my cousin Alex McCaw after the 1000-kilometre challenge. Alex made it.
My third Grand Slam in six years, 2005, 2008 and 2010. Before that, you have to go back to 1978. Ted makes the point that they shouldn’t be taken for granted, that there’ve been 24 Grand Slam opportunities and only eight have been successful. South Africa last achieved it in 1961 and Australia won their one and only in 1984.
It’s just as well there’s no stone under the seat of the Discus, because Gavin suggests that a 1000-kilometre flight is the next challenge. I’m up for it, and so is my 17-year-old cousin, Alex, a glider prodigy. We get the tow out of Omarama and start just to the south of Glentanner, heading south to Waiparu, near Lumsden, then back up to Mount D’Archiac, then south again to Waikaia, near Mossburn, down past Riversdale. Coming back to the Lindis, I need to get over into the Maniototo, to fly down the eastern side of the Dunstan Range, but I get a bit low and I fall below the wave set up by the nor’-wester.
The wind has changed at low level but is still blowing up high. I try, but can’t get a thermal to climb back into the wave. Alex is half a kilometre to the east and stays in the wave and is gone. I struggle for a long time. It’s late evening by now and if I go any further south but don’t get any lift, I might have to put down a long way from home with darkness closing in. I’ve been in the Discus for nine hours already. I decide to bail and then have to battle at low level from Cromwell to get home to Omarama. It takes over an hour. I’m shagged. I miss the 1000-kilometre mark by 100. Alex, the little bugger, completes the course in magnificent style and lands just before nightfall.
What the hell. It’s been a great year in other respects. We’ve survived an earthquake, and the trophy cupboard at NZRU is full, apart from the one that really matters. On reflection, it’s not the win/loss record that gives satisfaction and faith for next year’s RWC, it’s the tests we won that we could have lost. We were in the hole against South Africa at Soweto, against Australia in Sydney, and against Wales in Cardiff. Not once did we slip into Ceri Evans’ Red Zone.
But there’s a niggling question that won’t go away. The only match we lost that we could and should have won was against Australia in Hong Kong. We didn’t lose it through panicking. We were in a position of strength, but couldn’t last 20 minutes without Dan. Can we do it without Dan? We did it in Sydney without him—just—by going back to the pick-and-gos and beating up their pack. If we had to, could we do that against the Boks? Against France?
I’m a man who likes a plan, but as gliding keeps demonstrating, you can’t plan for everything. Rugby’s maybe the most demanding mix of anaerobic stress and collision trauma there is. There are always injuries. Shit happens, says Bert, it’s how you deal with it. Which is helpful and true, to a point. I’m not naive, though: some stuff you can’t get over or around. If I was religious, I’d be praying for a smooth glide home in 2011.
On 31 December, some old mates from school and uni help me celebrate my thirtieth birthday at my just-finished home at wanaka. As the clock ticks over to 1 January 2011, amid the hugs and kisses and tooting of horns around the town, there’s a moment where I remember doing much the same thing with a group of mates at Omarama in 2007. I’d just turned 26. Four years. It’s here. I get another crack at it.
In early January, the New Zealand Gliding Championships come to Omarama. I’m not competing but try to do some of the same tasks. On one occasion I’m in the Hunter at the northern end of Lake Hawea, and get caught down low in the valley. The airstrip I’m counting on is overgrown, and the wind is coming from the wrong direction and I think, Shit, I’m going to have to commit to that real soon. But I find a wee spur that’s giving me a little bit of lift. I can’t do a full turn in it, so I pick up 50 feet and then lose 40. I work away at it for half an hour, and finally pick up 500 feet, enough to get over into the Dingle Valley, where there’s another strip where some of the other guys have landed. But I work for another hour to get myself on top of Dingle Ridge, and from there I can make a final glide for home. That’s so-o-o-o satisfying. I get out of the glider exhausted but exhilarated.
For what seems like a long time in 2011, that’s about as good as it gets.
On 9 February, training with the Crusaders, no contact, just turning during a yo-yo, f’godsake, I feel a bit of a clunk on the outside of my right foot, and suddenly I can’t run or put much weight on it. I’d been feeling the foot towards the end of last year, a bit of a niggle, achy at times, but it never let go like this.
A scan shows a stress fracture of the fifth metatarsal of my right foot. My first thought is that I’m bloody lucky it’s now. You start counting down to October. A knee reconstruction is nine months—that’d be me out. Imagine if you busted your knee and it’s just bang, goodbye RWC, I tell myself. A stress fracture can’t be that big a deal.
Celebrating my birthday at Wanaka, 31 December 2010: ‘I remember doing much the same thing with a group of mates at Omarama in 2007.’
I sit down with orthopaedic surgeon Rhett Mason and All Black doctor Deb Robinson, who tell me that normally they’d rest it for six weeks and see if it came right. Trouble is, if that doesn’t work, if it doesn�
�t come right, I’d be up for an operation and a screw and then I’d be out for a further six to 12 weeks. Bugger that. We decide to go for the screw now, to make sure.
On 15 February, I spend the night in hospital and a screw is inserted under general anaesthetic, then home to Mum and Dad’s in plaster on crutches. I’m looking at a rehab plan of two weeks to get the wound healed, then four weeks progressing back to walking, then running by six weeks, and playing when I can after that.
Given that I was going to sit out the first three rounds of the new Super 15 anyway, that’s effectively only another month to six weeks of rugby I’ll be missing. I can wear that; it’s a huge year. The new Super 15 format extends the Super rugby season through three conferences, 18 rounds, then play-offs, semis and finals. In RWC year, we probably could have done without that, but now that I’m going to be missing until about Round 8, I’m happy there are going to be plenty of games left for me.
Ted’s been careful not to mention any ‘r’ words, like recovery or rotation, this time around. Instead the key word has been ‘manage’—Ted has met with the Super coaches, who’ve agreed to rest—manage, sorry—their All Blacks at various points during the season, and Toddy agreed to give me a late start.
On Friday, 18 February, my sister Jo marries Sam Spencer-Bower and I’m there playing the bagpipes on my crutches. It’s a welcome, happy diversion, because I’m already bored stiff with rehab.
