The year’s best rugby books
Yes, very well done, you have already done all your Christmas shopping. The presents are wrapped under the tinselled tree and the Christmas pudding overfloweth with brandy. But just in case your heart is bursting with good cheer and you want to give Fred an extra bauble, here a couple of book recommendations.
The pair of pearlers are The Jersey by Peter Bills and Sevens Heaven by Ben Ryan. They are packed with learnings if such a hideous words actually exists. But as it doesn’t, all I can say is that they are crammed full of the good stuff.
Even as a toddler Bills was fed powdered journalism. His father was an agency man and Peter has become one of the most hard-working men in the business. That diligence radiates in the pages of The Jersey which is bursting with quotes from many of New Zealand’s best and brightest. If an All Black was wandering the streets of Ulaanbaatar, Bills would have been waiting for him just round the corner.
Richie McCaw, Steve Tew, Steve Hansen, Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Wayne Smith, Jerome Kaino, Damian McKenzie, Ryan Crotty. Malakai Fekitoa, Waisake Naholo, Scott Robertson, Graham Mourie, they are all quoted here, along with many more. You virtually need a separate volume for the index.
And these are not vainglorious quotes. They are all relevant. It is just a shame that not enough New Zealanders came to see Bills when he was in the country on a book tour a few months ago – never mind that this book is worth a thousand ghosted autobiographies.
The Jersey is not a hagiography. It has many, many good things to say about New Zealand rugby. It has many fascinating things to say about the evolution of the game in this country and the type of men who formed it.
A survivor of Gallipoli is quoted as saying, ‘‘Your mates were going out there into the fire. You couldn’t leave them alone. You went together. You wouldn’t let down your mates.’’
McCaw wonders if he would have done the same thing if he had lived in the period and concludes; ‘‘I hope I would, absolutely.’’ Even in the current team it is not hard to imagine the likes of Franks, Coles, Retallick, Whitelock, Read, Cane, SBW, Ioane, Lienert-Brown and the Smiths serving their country in a time of need.
But the book is also prepared to look at the dark side of the All Blacks, the violence, the urge to win at any costs. Rugby means so much. And it starts at a young age. We have read much about schools in recent weeks, but a lot of it was already sitting there in Bills’s book.
He is fascinated at how rugby is almost part of a religious education – in that sense RE becomes an ambiguous abbreviation in New Zealand schools.
Kaino says, ‘‘For me the success of our All Blacks starts even earlier than the under-12s.’’
Rugby is such a powerful force in the country’s education system. Bills went to visit St Kentigern, where he was given a tour by Steve Cole, the former headmaster. A vast building was being erected. It was to be the school’s sports centre, with an indoor training field, a physio section, a gymnasium, nutrition centre, a coaching facility.
‘‘How much is this all actually costing?’’ I asked, incredulous.
‘‘About $12.5 million,’’ was Cole’s matter-offact response.
Bills discovered that the school recruited vigorously, and would fly out officials to the Polynesian islands to look for talent. Kaino was at St Kents with John Afoa and Joe Rokocoko. He accepted a scholarship to change schools and says, ‘‘I am very glad that happened. Who knows where I would have been in life if I haven’t made that change.’’
Bills wondered if the school had any regret or remorse about picking boys from the islands. ‘‘Steve Cole admitted he often lay awake at night, pondering the merits of the scheme and wondering if it was too professional.’’
Flying across to Fiji for coach Ben Ryan’s book about the Olympics sevens triumph, is to enter another world. Ryan is a teacher like so many of the great rugby coaches. And the first job of a teacher is to learn about your pupils. Fiji was like no other class that Ryan had ever taught.
Ryan put a stop watch on the top players and timed them over a session of sprints. He was aghast at how slow these shimmering athletes actually were. Then the physio came over. ‘‘Get them to chase each other.
‘‘Why?
‘‘Just try it.’’
Suddenly the pitch was alive with explosions of speed. Ryan says, ‘‘Sports science had taken me a long way, but I was a man up a creek trying to use a laptop as a paddle. Running 40 metres for no reason made no sense to a Fijian.’’
But make it a contest and suddenly everything changed. Ryan changed. He was told by the Fijian Rugby Union that he could not pick Osea Kolinisau as his captain because he was a troublemaker. Ryan visited Osea’s father, a pastor, and found out that Osea was troubled rather than trouble, stricken by being dropped from the team. Ryan made him his captain.
Fiji’s journey to gold is almost the antithesis of the All Blacks. It is an intensely moving and human story, about coming together despite a lack of resources. It is about people. It is about a people who went through Cyclone Winston and won the next tournament they played in.
After Winston devastated the islands many of the squad were suffering from the Zika virus and conjunctivitis. Three were not allowed to board the plane to Vegas for the tournament because of their symptoms. Vatemo Ravouvou was only able to eat a tube of Pringles over the three days of the tournament. The ravaged team fell asleep on the bus to their first match and lost.
And then Fiji started winning and kept on winning. All the way to the final. Hashtag ‘‘stronger than Winston’’ was the bond that made them stronger together. In the final they went 15-0 down to Australia. The wind howled across the Vegas desert, a spooky reminder of Winston. And Fiji came again. They won. They came from nowhere. They did it to help the people back home, to put a smile on their faces.
Sevens Heaven will make you feel good this Christmas, unless you are Gordon Tietjens who does not come out of the book well, highlighted by one bizarre rant about cupcakes. Sevens Heaven will make you consider other people and wonder if you really need all that stuff. The Jersey takes you deep into New Zealand’s culture. Together they will make you think. You may even change the way you live.
So if you haven’t time to get them for someone else, pop out after Christmas and exchange that dreadful second-rate thriller from the in-laws for a couple of books worth a read. And then hand them on to someone else. Because . . .
All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.
Merry Christmas.
Iwasa man up a creek trying to use a laptop as a paddle.