When Rugby Dreams Come Through

I had the pleasure the other week of attending two days of an IRANZ coaching series in Palmerston North.  The International Rugby Academy of New Zealand is the dream and brainchild of Murray Mexted and is most impressive in its organisation and presentation.  Basically about 30 young players from New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland, of about senior club level or slightly higher, were in camp at the academy for a fortnight.  There they absorbed many teachings about playing the game and living the rugby lifestyle, and bettering themselves for their future involvement.  Mex can point to dozens of top rep or Super 14 players who have gone through his “rugby school” in its 10 year history on their way to a significant life in the rugby world of today

Also there were seven or eight coaches who were trying to learn coaching and playing techniques:  those new coaches included men like Mark Donaldson, Karl Te Nana and Craig de Goldi who all played significant roles in the New Zealand game in their playing years.

The case of Donaldson was intriguing.  Years ago he was the sparky coach of Manawatu in division one of the New Zealand NPC.  Now after a time away from the game he was at the academy to upskill himself before taking on a club coaching position again.  Impressive.

Everybody was learning at the feet of an impressive line-up of recent top former All Black players and significant coaching figures.  The names roll of the tongue:  Buck Shelford, Anton Oliver, Christian Cullen, Grant Fox, Ian Jones, Craig Dowd, ex-All Black selector Tony Gilbert and the NZ U20 World Cup winning coach Dave Rennie.

Mexted is a much maligned character in some circles in New Zealand.  He knows that some people admire him but some don’t.  But hey – what’s new, it’s been that way for Mex all of his public life.  What I can say is that IRANZ is a brilliant concept and he is doing marvelous work with it.  He deserves the highest praise for his commitment and the professionalism of his programmes.

I was invited to play a part one night at a sit-down dinner at the academy and what fun we had.  A selection of the old Abs were invited on stage to reminisce for the youngsters.  It was a learning experience for everyone; many were the quotes and stories worth jotting down:

Anton Oliver: 

“After about six games for Toulon in 2008 I realized that professional rugby was not for me.  So I did only one year and then went to Oxford University where I played in the game against Cambridge University.  That was an interesting experience – I played in a team where we were all white men.”

“Sure I made a lot of money in my one season at Toulon, so much it would have taken my mother, who is a qualified nurse, 16 years to match.”

Wayne Shelford:

“Look, I love the haka, but I’m suggesting the All Blacks not do one before their tests this year.  Or next year too.  Leave it right out until the rugby world cup competition arrives here.  The reinvent it again in all its glory onto the World Stage.”

Christian Cullen:

[When asked about whether during his playing time in Munster the locals ever talked to him about their famous win over the All Blacks in 1978] “They sure did, mate, every bloody day.  Every bloody day.”

Mark Donaldson:

[To the question ‘when in your time were you most proud to be an All Black?’]  “I was most proud when we lost that game 0-12 to Munster in 1978.  In those days All Black teams didn’t get much practice at losing so we were shocked afterwards.  For a few minutes in the dressing room we didn’t know what to do or how to react.  We just looked at each other and said ‘heck we got nil … but the way Munster played we knew we were lucky to get nil’.  We realized we’d played Munster again that day the way we just had, they would have beaten us again.  But we put it behind us.  We went out that night to their great dinner and had a fantastic night celebrating with them.  Then we re-grouped the next day, had some serious talks, and we then went on to not lose again on that 18 match tour.  We hardly even had our line crossed and we would up getting the first ever New Zealand Grand Slam.  It all came back to reacting well after the loss.  Gee, I was proud of us that day.”

Grant Fox:

[To the question ‘how are we going to win the World Cup next year?’] “It’s easy – just win.  It doesn’t matter how – it doesn’t matter what each game looks like.  They don’t have to be pretty.  Just win seven games in a row.  Just bloody win.”