Stephen Donald book extract
Stephen Donald’s biography Beaver is on sale today. Written in collaboration with Sky TV’s Scotty Stevenson, this extract is from a chapter called The Long Road to Redemption.
As I punched in Ted’s number my heart was pounding out of my chest.
It hit me hard while standing outside the Whitianga Pub that New Year’s Eve [2010], waiting for a taxi back to Matarangi. A group of blokes across the road spotted me, and all of a sudden launched into some fairly tasty verbal abuse that, I must admit, rocked me a little. The next day, I was set to flick the switch and get myself back into training ahead of the Chiefs season. I knew right then and there that I was going to have a hell of a time living down that night in Hong Kong.
After everything I had experienced in the last year, I still hit training on New Year’s Day believing that my World Cup dream was still alive. I rationalised it by thinking that it would be hard for them to leave out the man of the match in the Super Rugby final. I mean, what a thing to be thinking after being told how shit I was by complete strangers on the street the night before.
It was probably the complete opposite of what the likes of noted head men David Galbraith or Gilbert Enoka would have advised, but I never sought their guidance.
I had listened to someone else’s advice, though. Steve Hansen had told me to dance.
We had been sitting in a spa pool in Dublin (I’ll let that image wash over you for a second) in the penultimate week of that last All Blacks tour when he said to me, “Beaver, you’re heavy on your feet. Have you ever done any dancing?”
Now, the closest I had come to a dance floor was walking past one on the way to the bar, so the short answer to that was: no.
“You should do some dancing, it’ll make your feet lighter.”
Now, if you’re the kind of guy who still has hopes of making a World Cup, and one of the coaches has just told you to dance, I’m afraid you have little choice but to dance. Hell, if he had told me to wash myself with garlic salt for the next six months, I probably would have, such was my fragile mental state. There was just one problem: if I was going to dance, it was going to have to be a secret. My reputation wasn’t exactly the greatest as it was, so I could ill afford this to be public knowledge.
There were only two people I confided in: Kaks [Richard Kahui], because I had to tell someone and I knew he would get a kick out of it, and our trainer Phil Healey, whose job it was to find me a dance studio and arrange for me to be in and out of there without anyone seeing me. And so it was that once a week, for the entire season, I worked on my dance moves in a Hamilton studio, trying not to look like a drunk camel.
I wasn’t sure it worked because the season started with a first-up loss to the Brumbies in Canberra. The next week, Fozzy [Ian Foster] broke the news to me that Mike Delany would start the next game against the Highlanders in Dunedin. I took it badly. I could now do the Paso Doble, but I couldn’t even get a start for the Chiefs. How could I possibly make the All Blacks if this was my level? In between packing a sad and throwing my toys, never did I stop for a second to think Fozzy may have been trying to protect me.
It should have dawned on me that he was doing just that when I arrived at Carisbrook and took the field for the warm-up. It was university orientation week, and the terraces were packed with scarfies. Pretty much all of them simultaneously started feeding it to me. They had damn well organised actual chants, just to insult me. I knew right then that this was what 2011 was going to be like. All season long.
I missed a sitter of a kick late in the game, which denied us a bonus point in defeat, and did not enhance my mood in the slightest. Fozzy, who I hadn’t spoken to since he named the team, called me in on the Monday. It was time to have a chat.
“What are you doing?” he asked me, incredulously. “What do you mean?” I replied. “You’re sulking.” “Yeah.” “You didn’t contribute a thing to our team attack last week.” “Well, I wasn’t the 10.” I was angry, I was sad, and I was in no position to be seeing it the way he saw it. He was right, I should have put on my big boy face and got on with being a team man. I couldn’t.
After my experience in the All Blacks I did believe that the No 10 had to be the one who was making the decisions, but that was no excuse for me to be throwing a hissy fit and withdrawing from my responsibility for the greater good of the boys.
We continued in a similar vein for what felt like an eternity before I was left with a very clear message.
“Tomorrow, Beaver, you walk into that environment with a very different attitude.”
What Fozzy didn’t know at the time, what nobody in the team knew, was that on the night he had selected Mike ahead of me for that team, I had received a call from Simon Porter to tell me English Premiership club Bath may be an option. In my anger and frustration, and with my World Cup aspirations as good as dead, I had told him I was keen as mustard. It would be a decision I would regret a few months down the track.
I got myself together the following day, and was again picked to start at 10 the next week. I wasn’t setting the house on fire by any stretch, but it seemed to me that none of the other 10s around the country were either.
That thought would have given me some comfort had it not been for the presence in Hamilton of Gilbert Enoka the following week. Gilbert, a key member of the All Blacks management team, had been sent down to meet with the boys who were likely to be part of the World Cup. I only knew this because both Kaks and Siti asked me what time my meeting was. I had to break it to them that I hadn’t received that particular text.
I still refused to give up all hope, and the next week I ran out to start again against the Sharks in Hamilton. That’s when the great John Smit, sensing I still had further to fall, drove one of his big clumsy legs into my spine, and kindly fractured one of my vertebrae, forcing me out for the next three weeks.
Although I made a speedy recovery, that Super season had by now turned into one of the great disasters of my life. There was the constant abuse to contend with, but that just became part of the background noise of everyday life after a while; there was a changing of the guard at the Chiefs, with Dave Rennie appointed to take over from Fozzy the following year — an appointment that left some of the current coaches feeling embittered; and there was the not-so-small matter of the contract with Bath that was starting to firm up, even to the point that Ian McGeechan flew to Pretoria for a secret meeting with me during our tour to South Africa.
I honestly had no desire to leave New Zealand. I especially didn’t want to leave if I had any chance of making the All Blacks again. I sat with Simon and asked him if signing the contract with Bath was as good a way as any to guarantee I was not going to be in the World Cup.
“Beaver, they think it’s a good opportunity for you,” he told me, referring to the All Blacks coaches. “And if you sign it now, you sign it as a current All Black.” The implication was clear: I was not going to be in the mix for the World Cup. Confirmation soon followed as our Chiefs season petered out once again. I picked up a call from Ted. There were going to be two 10s outside Dan Carter at the next All Blacks training camp ahead of the Tri-Nations. I wasn’t going to be one of them.
“Beaver, you’ve always been a good man for us, but we won’t be picking from outside this squad for the World Cup.”
I had to face the harsh reality that my All Blacks career was over, and that I would forever be defined by that night in Hong Kong. I would, in essence, be remembered for one lousy kick.
If there was one consolation it was that I could return to the Waikato side and focus on getting a job done for the Mooloos. If it was going to be my last year in the team, I was going to damn well enjoy it. Coach Chris Gibbes ran a great environment, one that included pot-luck dinners and pool nights and all the fun of the fair. We had a sensational crew, and played some great footy along the way. In the final round, we needed to beat Auckland at home to make the final. That week, Liam Messam turned up at training.
At least I had been told I was unwanted before the start of the All Blacks season. Liam was one of just three boys — Wyatt Crockett and Hosea Gear were the others — who were cast aside in the final cull. My heart went out to the man, but it says everything you need to know about him that on the Tuesday he was back at training and that weekend he was the star of the show as we scored at the death to win the game.
The next week Siti, who had also missed out on the All Blacks, turned up at training. None of us actually knew where he had been.
The closest I had come to a dance floor was walking past one on the way to the bar.
We lost to Canterbury in the final. I sat there in the shed after the match and thought to myself, this is the last time I’ll ever be in here. Needless to say, I made sure I sat there for as long as I could. I also made sure the endof-season festivities ran for as long as possible.
For the next six weeks, I just tried to fit in as much socialising as I could. The Bath deal was done, and I was scheduled to leave at the conclusion of the World Cup. I still wasn’t ready to face up to the fact that this thing was happening in my own backyard and I wasn’t part of it. I also wasn’t ready to accept the fact I had just signed a three-year deal to play professional rugby abroad, and as such I should probably keep myself in some sort of shape.
Training had never been a problem for me. Whether it had been on the tennis court as a kid, or on the field at Waiuku kicking balls while we waited for Dad, the tough gym sessions at Wesley, or the daily grind of the Chiefs. Now, well, what was there, exactly?
Since I had got serious about rugby I had always employed the same visualisation technique when I went for a run. I would picture an All Blacks jersey about three feet in front of me, always just out of reach. It had always worked in the past, but now that jersey was never going to be mine again, I just couldn’t get motivated thinking about it. I would try to rouse myself for a session when I was at the bach in Matarangi, but I would get about 15 minutes in and head back to the deck for a beer. There would be another beer or two on the boat, and always a beer or three in Waiuku with the crew.
My partner, Alex, had been with me for plenty of tough moments in the past, but I don’t think she could even fathom how strongly I felt about avoiding anything to do with the World Cup. I didn’t want to watch, or listen, or read about it at all. It was tough on her. She had been through a lot with me over the last year — over the last few years — and while I understood she wanted to feel part of the excitement the rest of the country felt about the event, I just couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t watch the All Blacks games, but I did allow myself a night out in Hamilton with Liam watching the Samoa–Wales test at Waikato Stadium. We made the most of the day and night and I managed to catch up with a bunch of old Wesley mates at the same time. I wore an old Samoa jersey that I had swapped with Loki Crichton after a Junior All Blacks game. Needless to say, that was taxed by the Wesley boys and never seen again. There was a moment that night when I thought to myself, “I may not be part of this, and that still hurts like hell, but one day this will all be of no importance to me.”
In the meantime, there was no escape from the hype, or from the reminders of what I was missing out on. I went out to dinner in Taupo one evening with Isaac Boss, who was playing for Ireland and who had been my halfback at Waikato when I first joined the team. No sooner had we sat down than half the Springbok side walked in. Jean de Villiers walked straight over and introduced me to a very staunch man by the name of Francois Louw. It turned out we were about to be teammates at Bath. He certainly didn’t say much that night, but it would be the start of a beautiful friendship.
It is perhaps understating things to say that after a few weeks of trying to fit in as much decompressing as possible before leaving, I was in a rather sloppy state. I couldn’t have cared less. In my mind, if my mates and my fishing came before my running, then so be it. It may not have been very professional, but it was a physical manifestation of my emotional state. After years of busting my ass, what did I care?
Then, out of the blue, came a text from Kaks. “Pack your bags, boy.”
It would pay to say here that although my first impression of Richard Kahui may not have been a positive one, the intervening years had done an awful lot to bring us close together. I trusted him with my life and, while he talked an awful lot of rubbish, when I had been jettisoned from the World Cup plans he had said to me, “You’ll be playing the World Cup final.” “What’s going on?” I replied. “DC has done his groin. Pack your bags.”
The next day, the world knew Dan Carter was out of the World Cup. But I knew that meant nothing as far as I was concerned. It had been made very clear to me at the end of the Super Rugby season that Aaron was their standby, and they duly brought him into the team. As much as Kaks may have wanted his prophecy to come true, I told him he would need to be far more accurate on his intel if he wanted to get my hopes up again, and that meant he would need to hear my name mentioned by a coach.
A week later, Colin Slade was injured in the quarter-final against Argentina. That night, Kaks sent me another message.
“Pack your bags, boy. Shag just asked me what you are up to.”
To hell with that, I thought. He’s the boy who cried “Beaver”. Besides,
I must have been in the one place on the river with no cellphone reception because I had missed a year’s supply of calls.
my mate Dougie had already called, and the whitebait were running. We were to be on the water at 4.30am. If the whitebait were running, it would be a shame not to get into them.
The next morning I was parked up at the stand on the bank of the Waikato River. Dougie had disappeared a bit further round the bend with his transistor, just in case there was a chance I got the call-up. Periodically he would motor down to me in the boat to say they were reporting that the All Blacks had already found their replacement, and to check if I had heard anything. I would shake my head, and then he would tootle off back downstream, trailing a wake of disappointment on my behalf. By midday we had a full load and he had somewhere else to be. When we got back to the car, I finally looked at my phone. I must have been in the one place on the river with no cellphone reception because I had missed a year’s supply of calls.
It struck me as odd that a couple of those were from Mils. The poor bloke had enough to worry about with his own tournament-ending injury, and I wondered why he would be calling me. I quickly dialled his number to see if everything was all right.
“Have you heard from Ted?” he said before I had even had a chance to say hello. “Nope.” “I think you’d better call Ted, mate.” I knew what was coming. How could I not.
As I punched in Ted’s number my heart was pounding out of my chest. Of all the ridiculous scenarios I could have ever imagined in my life, this would have been the most farfetched. Here I was, standing beside the Waikato River in gumboots and a Swanndri, calling the coach of the All Blacks to hear the news I never thought I would hear.
Was this really happening, or did the universe have one last cruel prank to play on me?
“Beaver, what are you up to?” he asked as he answered the phone.
“Just a bit of whitebaiting, Ted,” I responded. “How much you got?” “About eight kilos.” “Well, if you bring that to the Heritage Hotel, you’ll play in a world cup semifinal. You might not start, mind you, but you’ll certainly be involved.”
And that was that. Dougie and I loaded up our cars, he headed off to wherever he had to be and I headed back to Mum and Dad’s. Dad was waiting in the driveway when I arrived. “How’d you get on?” he asked. “About eight kilos,” I replied, for the second time that afternoon. “That’s not bad.” “Oh, and I’m back in the All Blacks.” “Thought you might be.”
Typical Dad. The man has the emotional range of a footpath.
Sure enough, Kaks was soon on the phone. He was off the charts happy for me, and I appreciated that. He proposed we meet in Hamilton that night and drive back up to Auckland to the team hotel the next day. It seemed a good idea to me, and the next morning we headed up the motorway, stopping in Huntly to fill his car with diesel. Ever the clown, he filled it with petrol instead.
Of all the batshit crazy things to happen after everything that had gone on before, we were late to the hotel after waiting for the petrol to be sucked back out of his car.