by Richie McCaw
The Stormers match is one of our best wins, only their second defeat of the season. Crocky is deserved Man of the Match, bulldozing them in the scrums, big hits in defence and two tries. But it’s brutally hard on us. We lose Israel after just four minutes, then Kahn Fotuali’i, then Adam Whitelock, who’d come on to replace Izzy, then Sean Maitland—by halftime we’d lost four backs, while Dan, with a hamstring strain, and I hadn’t even got to the starting line.
The 20–14 scoreline means no bonus point. we’re third on the points table, but in reality we’re fourth in the standings, because under the new rules the top teams from each conference have preference. So the Stormers, who are one point below us, would go through before us because they top the South African conference.
I get back on the field against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein, along with Dan and SBW, and last 80 minutes, but that’s where the satisfaction ends. we get done 33–20. we lost the last time we played here in 2009 too. I don’t know what it is about these guys, but they grow an extra leg when we arrive. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating. And I have the feeling it might cost us.
Dan basically kicks us to a win over the Chiefs when we get ‘home’—this time Napier. It’s a short turnaround after the flight back from Africa to Christchurch, and Sonny Bill, Izzy, Andy Ellis and Sean are all out injured. But Dan’s there and boots over 20 of our 25 points—five penalties, one dropped goal and a conversion. No bonus point, so we’re still two points behind the Blues, who top the New Zealand conference.
The defining event of the Crusaders’ season comes in the next match, against the Reds at Suncorp, in front of an Australian record crowd of over 48,000, and unfortunately it stars me and my favourite referee, Stu Dickinson. We’re up by two points in the last seconds, after a bad start and a lot of penalties from Dickinson, when a Reds attack breaks down right in front of our posts. They have one guy parked over the ball, who is bowled out of the way by Franksy as I come through the gate. The ball’s just sitting there with no one over it, so I pick it up just before Dickinson says, ‘Hands off, it’s a ruck.’ I drop the ball and look at him, still basically on my own, as he raises his arm for a penalty. I’m bewildered. A ruck has to have some participants, some people over the ball, doesn’t it? Quade’s kicked badly all game, but he’s not going to miss one right in front. That’s the game, 16–14.
And it’s kind of our season too, because we know it’s likely to condemn us to the long route to the finals, if we make it, via South Africa. we need another long flight from home like a hole in the head.
Meantime, I’ve got other worries. The foot’s come back to haunt me. Before the Chiefs game I’d started to feel the outside of my foot a little bit. I didn’t think too much of it, but before the Reds game it was quite sore. I got through the game, but a scan shows a stress riser down the end of the same bone. Bloody hell, what else!
But I’m still able to tell myself that I’m lucky, when Deb Robinson says that this new stress seems to be healing itself and won’t need a moon boot. She reckons the new stress probably came about because of the screw in the bone, but that the screw was the right thing because that original stress fracture hasn’t healed and the screw is holding it together. Right.
So it’s three weeks off—we’ve got a bye, so that means missing only two games. I’m starting to make deals with myself. From thinking about the perfect build-up to the RWC, now just weeks away, I’m gradually trading down to, Okay, if I can get four tests before the Cup, that’s going to have to do. Or even: If I get no tests before the Cup, but get to play in the Cup, I’ll just deal with that too. Deb is positive, reassures me that I’ve still got time up my sleeve, that we’ll get the foot right. That’s what I need to hear, as I sit and watch the last two conference games, wins against the Blues in Timaru and Hurricanes in Wellington.
What’s a bloody ash cloud? The Crusaders on the tarmac in Christchurch with the chartered DC-3 before taking off for Wellington.
For the trip to Wellington to play the Hurricanes, an ash cloud from an erupting Chilean volcano forces the Crusaders on to a DC-3, which flies below the altitude of the dust particles. By this time, the guys have coped with fallout from earthquakes, exploding mines, floods, and have been living out of suitcases and gear bags for months—what’s a bloody ash cloud? On the Monday, there’s another magnitude 6, causing further damage to Kieran’s place.
In the DC-3, the guys get to fly over the CBD Red Zone, and for most of them it’s the first time they’ve seen it. The scale of the devastation is a shock, despite all the pictures they’ve seen.
The win against the Canes gets us into the quarter-final play-offs against the Sharks in Nelson, while the top two, the Reds and the Stormers—and me—have the luxury of a week off.
I watch the guys deal to the Sharks 36–8, lost in admiration for the guts and application of the buggers after what they’ve been through, then pack my mouthguard and boots—gratefully this time—to join them for the trek to the semi in Africa, where our guys get themselves up once again to blow the Stormers off Newlands 29–10 in one of the best Crusaders performances I’ve been part of. Crocky is huge again, and our scrum gives us go-forward and penalties. We’re 23–10 up at halftime after a Sean intercept and a Sonny Bill offload for Robbie. Habana gets one back from a tap penalty, but the second half is hard, attrition rugby where we don’t give an inch and keep the buffer, courtesy of huge defence and Dan’s kicking.
I’m rejoicing at the win and at having got through 80 minutes on my twice-broken foot, but the trip back to Brisbane for the final proves to be an air-bridge too far.
After everything they’ve been through, the guys are knackered, but hugely determined to try to make a fairytale ending to a traumatic season. It’s a great opportunity to sort out the Reds—we owe them one for the Stu Dickinson moment.
We need a structured game where we can exert pressure on their scrum and marshal our energies. Instead we get Bryce Lawrence who, in front of a new record 50,000-plus Australian Super rugby crowd at Suncorp, either does a Wayne Barnes freeze or is trialling a new, non-interventionist, minimalist refereeing style. Lawrence lets everything go. There’s no gate at the back of the ruck, just a big welcome mat right around the tackled ball. Anyone can pile in from any angle. On your feet, off your feet, hands wherever you feel like putting them. Come back Stu Dickinson, all is forgiven! After five minutes of this helter-skelter headless chicken stuff, I ask Bryce what the hell’s going on. ‘There are players coming from everywhere at the breakdown and getting away with it.’
‘It’s the same for both teams,’ he says.
‘I don’t give a damn which side you penalise,’ I tell him, unused to pleading with a ref to actually blow his whistle. ‘Just give us a line in the sand, f’chrissakes!’
But Bryce either can’t see anything wrong with the free-for-all or he doesn’t know how to get control back.
Despite Bryce’s no-show, we stay in the game for a long time. After an energy-absorbing, scoreless first half-hour, Quade and Dan swap penalties, then Dan finally breaks their staunch line with a genius grubber kick, regathers and scores, and converts from wide out. Cooper cuts the margin again with a penalty in the thirty-eighth minute after Brad foot-trips him—Bryce at least saw that—and we go into halftime one point up.
But the writing’s kind of on the dressing-room wall. We’ve managed to shut the Reds down for 40 minutes, pressured Genia and Cooper into mistakes, but it feels like we’ve already done 80 minutes’ worth of running and the guys are close to being played out.
The tipping point comes in the forty-seventh minute when Brad crashes over in the tackle of Radike Samo. Logic says it has to be a try, the way Brad fell, where the ball was. We go back to halfway in anticipation. But instead of asking the TMO, ‘Any reason I can’t award the try?’ Bryce asks, ‘Try or no try?’ When the replays can’t show definitively whether or not the ball was grounded, the TMO has no choice and calls us back for the five-metre scrum.
> Crocky looks unimpressed as Bryce Lawrence finally blows his whistle in the Super 15 final against the Reds in Brisbane.
Dan goals after a Reds infringement at a rare scrum, to make it 10–6 in the forty-ninth minute. But we’re starting to make a lot of unforced errors, crooked lineout throws, ball spills, and give the Reds the ball back.
Digby Ioane finally breaks our line after 50 minutes, and when Cooper converts, the Reds are up 13–10. Dan brings us level with a long-range penalty in the fifty-sixth, but it’s pretty clear that the longer the game stays in the balance, the less likely we are to win it. We’re on our last legs, feeling every kilometre of the one hundred thousand we’ve travelled.
As both defences tire, the game opens up, but the Reds are the team with the energy—and the play-maker in Will Genia—to take advantage of it. From a turnover in broken play, he shapes to kick, then runs and runs and runs to score a brilliant solo try that is worthy of the first Super 15 championship.
The Crusaders’ fairytale is over.
A lot of our guys are shattered after the game. Brad is as down as I’ve seen him. He was so determined to win his last tilt at Super rugby. The boys have travelled so far this season, sacrificed so much in terms of time with families who were often doing it tough in the Christchurch aftershocks, got to the final against all the odds, but couldn’t top it off. To come so far and trip over at the last. It’s a real bugger.
The way my season’s been going, I’m pleased to have got through another 80 minutes, but I’m not pleased with how I played the final, nor with how I led the team in it. We were points up after 50 minutes in a final and I didn’t grab it by the scruff of the neck. And, equally worryingly, the way the match was played, it’s hard to figure out even in retrospect what I might have done, apart from nobble the ref.
For all the effort we’ve put in, the distance we’ve travelled, the sacrifices we’ve made . . . Sam Whitelock and me after the final whistle in Brisbane.
For all the effort we’ve put in, the distance we’ve travelled, the sacrifices we’ve made, the horrors we’ve lived through, we’ve lost at the final hurdle. John Smit’s words come back to me from last year, after he’d cost his team in the final minutes of his 100th test: ‘It’s a cruel game.’
The game doesn’t know the stats, or whether one team usually wins at this venue, it doesn’t have a clue what’s riding on the result or who the favourite might be or who might deserve what, and it doesn’t care who wins and who loses.
It’s a reminder, as I finally head into camp with the All Blacks for the 2011 RWC, that the game doesn’t have a memory or sentiment, and that fairytales are highly improbable. You have to make it happen.
There’s an inspirational sequence on high rotation on New Zealand television as the RWC gets close. Captain Kirk is holding the Webb Ellis Cup aloft in the old main stand at Eden Park back in 1987, with the cheering crowd down on the field in front of him.
I like that image. I see myself doing that. The 2011 All Backs have decided we’re not going to be aw-shucks modest about our aims: we’re here to win the RWC. And we’re not going to be intimidated or overwhelmed by the pressure of history.
Quite a few of us were burned in Cardiff in 2007. Dan, Mils, Brad, Ma’a, Kevvy, Ali and I were also scorched in Sydney in 2003, but the whole squad and virtually the whole nation is aware of our RWC record, a record of stumbling and missing since 1987. It could be regarded as a history of failure. Our take on it is that it demonstrates just how tough and unique a challenge the RWC is, that it’s like nothing else we’ve ever done or will do. It’s different. We reckon if we acknowledge that and embrace it, rather than downplay it like we did last time, we’ll be better prepared to succeed this time.
We’re also going to try to enjoy every moment of what’s being touted as the last time our little corner of the world gets to host the RWC. That fits with me too. The penultimate word I write down in the Warwick every game day is always: Enjoy.
But when I watch that footage from 1987, there’s a bit of unintended consequence for me. When David Kirk holds the Cup aloft, there’s a moment when he turns to the forgotten man, the original captain Andy Dalton, to come and hold it. Dalton’s sort of reluctant, because he did a hammy before the tournament and couldn’t play one minute of one game.
It’s an image that sits in the back of my head, ready on playback every time my foot flares. Don’t let that be me.
When the RWC circus starts rolling into town, there’s a rising buzz of anticipation as the teams arrive and the civic welcomes are extended across the country and the overseas media begins to make their presence felt and cars and buildings and lampposts sprout flags.
Down south, they’re doing things their own way. Mum and Dad tell me that a local farmer has upended three of those big plastic hay bales at the Kurow side of the old wooden bridge across the waitaki leading to the Haka Valley. The hay bales are festooned with the flags of all the countries in the Cup, and on top there’s a sign with a big 7 on it, and the words ‘This is McCaw Country’.
It’s a relief that it’s finally under way—and not just for me, I reckon.
So much has happened globally and locally since 2005, when Jock Hobbs and Prime Minister Helen Clark and Tana Umaga and Pinetree and BJ went to Dublin and won the Cup for New Zealand. A lot of what’s happened hasn’t exactly been helpful to the prospective success of the tournament. The global financial crisis struck in 2008, and most people have been staggering into and out of recession ever since. we’re so far away from the rest of the world, so expensive to get to, that there must have been the odd dark day when Martin Snedden and his administration feared we might be throwing a party that no one would be able to come to. And then this year, the February earthquake in Christchurch, which might have precipitated a crisis of confidence when it forced a huge reshuffle of venues and schedules. It must be gratifying for Martin to watch it all fire up. And for Jock, who said to me once, ‘Gee, I promised everyone so much.’
For me, there’s a moment when the RWC 2011 really comes alive. when the Tongan team arrives at Auckland airport and is welcomed by a huge contingent of mostly Auckland-based Tongans, and we see pictures on our screens of all those red-and-white flags and the band and the dancing, it confirms to me—and a lot of other Kiwis, I suspect—that this is going to be something special, this is going to be fantastic.
A big part of Jock’s pitch in Dublin was the concept of New Zealand as ‘a stadium of four million’. And Tana told them in Dublin that if we held the world Cup here, it wouldn’t just be home for New Zealand, but also for the Pacific Island nations. The Tongans prove that that wasn’t just PR hype, and ought to allay the fears—mainly from the English media—that New Zealanders will be one-eyed supporters of one team, and that the only celebration will be around All Black wins. That criticism betrays an ignorance of New Zealand’s demographics: the various ethnic and ‘expat’ communities who live here were always going to ensure that the Tongan, Samoan, Fijian, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Springbok and even English teams wouldn’t lack for local support.
That airport welcome also guarantees that there’ll be a vibrant atmosphere at the opening match of the tournament, that the ‘away’ team won’t lack for passionate support. It’s Tonga. They’re playing the All Blacks. When I watch those pictures, I’m thinking, Shit, it’s on. We’d better be ready.
Six weeks ago, when the All Blacks first came together, things didn’t look that flash.
Ted and Smithy and Shag had been keeping close tabs on us during the Super 15, trying to be supportive, and at the same time trying to keep their distance and not betray their anxieties. It can’t have been easy watching.
There’s a moment when the RWC really comes alive. Tongan fans at the welcome ceremony at Papakura Marae.
Some of the Crusaders were pretty much spent. They and their families had been in coping mode for four or five months during the Super 15, focused on the need to get up for the next game. When the campa
ign finished with that loss in Brisbane, a kind of emotional payback set in. One of Ted’s first decisions after we got together was to send Brad and Kieran and Owen home to their families for a couple of weeks.
The Hurricanes also had an awful Super 15, more of their own doing. New coach Mark Hammett’s attempts to change the culture there resulted in a bit of a meltdown. Core All Blacks like Horey, Ma’a and Cory lost form and confidence. Piri badly broke his leg in 2010 and struggled to get back to full fitness. Conrad lost most of the season to a badly smashed nose.
The Dan Carter Understudy auditions hadn’t exactly progressed either. Aaron Cruden was dropped from the Canes after one game and took a while to regain his spot, while Colin Slade had the incredible misfortune to break his jaw twice, in different places, and was only just ready to play again.
The upside was that a lot of those guys were delighted to be back in the All Black environment. Me too: the resources; Ted and Smithy and Shag; the detailing; the sense of mission, particularly this time, when we’re finally on the brink of being able to deliver on four years’ preparation.
However, before we were able to get into World Cup mode, we had to survive a friendly against Fiji, and an abbreviated Tri Nations—home and away matches against Australia and South Africa.
In action in the ‘friendly’ against Fiji, Carisbrook, 2011.
That might have been okay for me and a couple of the others coming back from injury or needing to show some form, but it was hardly ideal preparation to have the top three ranked teams in the world bashing seven bells out of one another so close to the RWC. Except maybe for the top northern hemisphere teams, who were working their way through six uninterrupted weeks of comprehensive, concentrated preparation with the sun on their backs. In 2007 we were criticised—perhaps correctly—for not having enough tough rugby before the tournament. That’s one criticism at least that won’t fly this time.
