Whitelock gets his spring back

Souped-up model: Super Sam fights off fatigue to storm back

It’s true New Zealand rugby has lost a few high quality locks this year but it has also gained one. Amid all the fretting about Brodie Retallick’s long stint in Japan, Scott Barrett’s damaged foot and the lack of emerging talent, it has not been lost that Sam Whitelock has reinvented himself in 2020 as a souped-up version of his 2019 self.

He’s gone the full hog since he returned from Japan to play in Super Rugby Aotearoa, arriving back in Crusaders colours with the metaphoric racing spoiler, fuel-injected engine, lowered suspension and mag wheels.

Whitelock in 2020 has looked nothing like Whitelock in 2019, and if anyone doubts the magical healing properties of extended time off, they just need to cast their mind back 12 months and dredge up one of the many images of the big lock hauling himself through tests as if every ground he encountered was thick with treacle.

Whitelock, as can be clearly seen now, didn’t fall victim to his age in the last World Cup cycle. He fell victim to the tyranny of professional rugby’s scheduling and enormous carbon footprint, which over the four years blunted his sharpest edges.

Too much rugby, too many impacts, too much time on planes — they all combined to stiffen him up and sell him short.

In the wake of the All Blacks’ loss to England in the World Cup semifinals, the career obituaries flowed. But Whitelock’s test career should never have been pronounced dead.

He was tired, not finished. Whitelock has rediscovered his spring. He has been moving more easily and more rapidly and tapped into the athleticism that shot him into the All Blacks as a little-known 21-year-old.

What’s critical now is that Whitelock isn’t pummelled back into a state of disrepair to slowly regress as happened in the last World Cup cycle

He and Retallick began 2016 as the two best locks in the world and the combination everyone feared.

Whitelock didn’t fall victim to his age in the last World Cup cycle. He fell to the tyranny of professional rugby’s scheduling which blunted his edges.

The scariest part for those wanting to knock the

All Blacks off their perch was that Whitelock and Retallick were still young and destined to be these two colossal pillars of ferocity and rugby excellence by the time 2019 rolled around.

They were the rocks on whom the 2015 World Cup triumph was built and it was difficult to comprehend what their individual and combined value would be by 2019.

But the projected career trajectory of both didn’t materialise, and instead of seeing these two imperious creatures take their respective games and the All Blacks to new levels, the four years between 2016 and 2019 saw them beaten, battered, bruised and broken into inferior versions of their true selves.

Retallick was mostly broken but it was probably a better outcome than the fate endured by Whitelock.

Retallick’s inconsistency between 2017 and 2019 was understandable. It was explainable. He was in this constant cycle of returning from major injuries and long lay-offs, so when he was brilliant at Twickenham in 2018 in just his second game back after a near-two-month lay-off and then a passenger the following week in Dublin, we all knew it was because backing up at that level with so little game time is next to impossible.

Fatigue was the invisible enemy for Whitelock. It meant his form decline was almost imperceptible.

He’s such a good player, such a good professional and athlete that he could hide, to some degree, that he spent most of 2018 playing with an injury that meant he couldn’t run at full speed pain-free.He was getting by rather than playing at his best. It was only, really, in the World Cup semifinals that the erosion of his dynamism was exposed.

England’s Maro Itoje was the dominant force in Yokohama and he stole the role Whitelock and Retallick felt three years earlier they were destined to play.

A blip, an aberration, an anomaly . . . call that last World Cup cycle what you will in regard to Whitelock’s form and impact, but it certainly wasn’t terminal.

One long rest has returned one phenomenal player.