On the edge of his front-row seat
An abridged extract from the autobiography of one of NZ rugby’s most durable campaigners, Wyatt Crockett.
Making the 2015 World Cup team had become such a massive deal for me that I couldn’t stop thinking about it over summer. Moods [Joe Moody] was coming on in leaps and bounds and Woody [Tony Woodcock] was still there, and the obvious number one. I didn’t think I could handle another experience like the one in 2011. I truly believed that would have broken me for good. I was playing good footy and thought I had taken my starting opportunities when they were offered, but I was not going to get ahead of myself. I had been there before.
The Super Rugby season was a blowout that year for the Crusaders, and the first time we had missed the playoffs under Todd’s watch. I couldn’t help but think too many of us had our eyes on another tournament entirely. I was still selected for the All Blacks and Gilly [Nic Gill] had devised a regime of intense speed work and incredibly heavy weights that we were all put through during the Rugby Championship. I was the strongest I had ever been, but there was one exercise that just kept giving me grief. Every time I tried to lunge I would get a tweak in my groin, and not in a pleasant way.
It didn’t bug me in any other exercise or in any other movement, so I just went with it and did my best to avoid the lunges. When the squad for the Rugby World Cup was announced, Wyatt Crockett was in it. I cannot tell you how relieved I was.
Oh, there was just one thing: Jenna needed a kidney transplant.
Jenna had been born with a renal condition that had gone undiagnosed until she was in her teens. As a result, she had developed reflux nephropathy. Put simply, her kidneys were damaged to the point where failure was most definitely an option.
The fact that she had been able to have children at all is probably a testament to her stubbornness. She had been warned that pregnancy would be very difficult for her, but she was adamant that she wanted to try. Sonny was born five weeks premature not because of luck but because of necessity. Jenna’s body was turning toxic at the time and going to full term could have killed her. Emmett, too, was jettisoned early to protect Jenna from any further damage.
Jenna was a fulltime preschool teacher and always had professional aspirations of her own, but she put everything on hold for me and the two boys. Without her running the household and taking the lion’s share of responsibility for the care of Sonny and Emmett, I would never have been able to play for as long as I had or climb as high as I did. The illness meant she was always tired — even more so than every other mum out there — and could fall sick at the drop of a hat. Things had got to the point where she was either going to have to start dialysis or find a kidney donor.
She had certainly tried to find a match. Pretty much everyone in the family had been tested to see if the tissues were compatible but to no avail. Seven of us went through the process, but there was an eighth person we didn’t know about. Jenna’s great friend Cat Brown had decided to get herself tested to see if she was a match. She hadn’t said a word to Jenna about it, so you can imagine our surprise when the doctors called to say they had a donor and a match. When we found out that a friend had volunteered such a life-saving gift for us, we both broke down. It was going to change Jenna’s life and it was now or never.
I had talked to Bert Enoka about Jenna’s situation earlier in the year, just in case we were able to find a donor. The transplant was scheduled for the last week of July, right in the middle of the Rugby Championship. Needless to say, I took the week off work.
I was absolutely beside myself before Jenna’s operation. The procedure has a 90 per cent success rate these days, but if it didn’t work Jenna’s life would forever revolve around dialysis, which didn’t seem to either of us to be much of a way to spend the rest of one’s days. I have never been happier than when the surgeons told me the operation had been a success.
It was a torture to contemplate leaving Jenna after such a major operation, even if it would mean the fulfilment of so many of my career dreams to play in the World Cup. In the few weeks we had together before I left with the team I could tell that the recovery was going to be exhausting for her. We were fortunate to have family around to pick up the slack, but I hated the thought of not being there to help.
I had always hoped Jenna could join me in the UK for the World Cup final, which was contingent on a couple of small things: Jenna recovering faster than expected and us making the final in the first place. I never doubted the latter and to be honest, knowing Jenna like I did, I never doubted her either.
Iwas on the bench for the All Blacks’ second World Cup pool match against Namibia, during which Jacques Botha, the Namibian captain, played himself to an absolute standstill. Even though I was on the other team, I still marvelled at what that man put his body through that day. And we had a lot of respect for the Georgian scrum the next week, too.
I started the game and was marking Toulon tighthead Levan Chilachava, a man born in the Black Sea town of Sokhumi, right before the Abkhazian uprising. I don’t know what he was fed as a baby, but good Lord he was about the strongest tighthead I had ever come across. It was like trying to oil wrestle a hairy tractor. If scrummaging was a sport of its own, Georgia would be champions forever.
After the game I suddenly noticed that the pain in my groin that I had first experienced during the Rugby Championship had returned. So began a battle against my body that would consume me for the next three weeks. By the following day the pain had disappeared, but on Monday I gave it a little tweak and it flared up again, only to subside once more the next day.
I finally bit the bullet and sought out the medical team for some advice. I was pleased to discover that they weren’t overly concerned and diagnosed it as a minor tear that required little more than close monitoring and a range of low-level treatments. The medieval treatments would come later — the most frightening of them a slimmeddown knitting needle that was jabbed repeatedly into the groin muscle to stimulate bleeding. I am not making that up.
With a little care and attention, I was back on the bench for the Tongan game, which came as a relief. Unfortunately, Woody blew his hamstring a minute into the second half. He hobbled off and I was put on, only to play a terrible game. As much as I wanted to believe I was fine, the truth was once I was out there I just couldn’t get up and sprint the way I wanted to.
On the Monday before the quarter-final I was called into Wayne Smith’s office and he absolutely gave it to me. ‘‘You’re f ...... slow off the line, Crocky,’ he growled. ‘‘When are we going to see your intensity? Are we going to see it this weekend? Because if we don’t we’re going home!’’
I didn’t want to use the groin as an excuse, ostensibly because Joe Moody had been flown in as cover for Woody, and I didn’t want to give the coaches any reason to bypass me and pick Moods instead. Nothing against Moods, of course. I just wanted to play. I kept on reminding myself that the medical team thought it would be okay, and that there were other guys carrying niggles too. I just had to get on the field and guts it out.
With France looming in the quarter-final we were on the edge of the edge all week. I hadn’t been the only one summoned to a one-on-one with Smithy on that Monday, and the emotional vice was tightened around us in every session and in every team meeting. We knew we hadn’t played well, but we also knew we had been holding back. When we ran out onto the Cardiff pitch for the French match, with all the history of World Cups past there to taunt and to haunt us, we were wired to explode. Explode we did. Everything we had held back in the pool stages was released at once and the flood lasted 80 minutes.
I lasted just 27 of those minutes. My leg was caught in a regulation tackle on a simple carry and as my body weight went forward, my groin tore apart like it was a Velcro strap. I knew it was major and I stayed down. I thought my Cup was over then and there, but the medical team weren’t prepared to give up on me just yet. I really appreciated that. Weirdly, I could scrum well and still get through my weights sessions but the running, well, that was another story. That’s when the knitting needle came out. And in. And out. The idea behind it was to stun the muscle into a repair job that would also sort the tear, but I was not, and never will be, okay with someone stabbing something like that into my groin. It was horrific.
I was given the weekend of the semi-final off to see if I could come right in time for the final, if we made it that far. Sitting in the stands with Woody watching that South African game, we both wondered for a time if there would be a next week for any of us! The boys eventually ground out the win and sure enough we were into the final, to play Australia. I knew in the back of my mind that I was an absolute long shot to play, but the amount of encouragement I received was almost overwhelming.
I got through the Tuesday training and felt pretty good about where I was at, but I knew deep down that the only reason that was the case was because I had avoided most of the running work. I wouldn’t be able to avoid running if I played in the game. Mulling this quandary over as I walked back to my room, I bumped into Richie McCaw.
‘‘So how is it all going?’’ he asked in his trademark matterof-fact way.
‘‘Yeah, I think it’s going alright,’ I replied. ‘‘I’ll just see how it pulls up over the next couple of days.’’
He nodded slowly. Then, after a rather pregnant pause, he looked straight in my eyes and said, ‘‘I know that you’ll make the right decision when that time comes, because trust me, only you can make that decision, no-one else.’’
Up to that point I had put all my faith in the opinion of the doctors and their confidence had in turn made me feel like it would all come right. Richie’s conversation made me dig a little deeper into my own gut instinct. I had to clear a lot of desire out of the way first, but I needed to find absolute clarity from within, not from without.
On Thursday, on a simple defensive drill, I felt my groin tear again. This time I didn’t wait for Pete or Tony Page, our doctor, or anyone else for that matter. I stopped in my tracks, turned and walked over to Steve Hansen. ‘‘I’m out, mate,’’ I said, as quickly as I could lest I lose it in front of everyone.
‘‘Are you sure, mate? You don’t want to give it another day?’’
I was grateful he would even give me that opportunity so close to the biggest game of his head coaching career. But just as Richie had told me, I knew it was the right decision, and the right time. I couldn’t risk anything in a game this big and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be responsible for potentially costing the All Blacks the World Cup.
Naturally, I was devastated. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I walked back to the room and sat there on my own for a couple of hours just thinking about what had just transpired. Woody eventually wandered in. He stood there for a moment, searching for the right thing to say, and then asked if I thought he should go and get some beers. It was probably the best suggestion anyone could have made right then.
On the day of the final, Woody, Corporal Willie Apiata VC – who was a constant presence in the team during the last few weeks of the tournament – and I got dressed in our number ones and headed to the pub for a promotional visit ahead of the game. We had a cab waiting for us to take us to the ground, but after a couple of pints we decided we would rather walk with the crowd. It was wonderful to be among the fans and in the middle of the festivities.
We enjoyed every second of that night, surrounded by family and friends. I think we put Willie in a cab at about seven in the morning. He was struggling to remember where his hotel was at that point. I looked at the cab driver and said, ‘‘He’s got himself out of stickier situations than this, mate. Just start driving.’’
The next day we sat as a team around the hotel having a few beers and letting it all sink in. It was an unforgettable day of laughs and great banter and quiet satisfaction for a job well done. It was almost my favourite memory of the entire tournament. Almost. My favourite memory was meeting Jenna at the team hotel after she had flown in for the World Cup final. She looked a million dollars, and the fact she was there at all meant the recovery from her transplant had gone better than expected. Now that was a memory to cherish.
For the full extract go to stuff.co.nz. Wyatt Crockett – CROCZILLA,
written with Scotty Stevenson, $39.99 RRP. Published by Mower Books. On sale now. See upstartpress.co.nz for details of Nelson and Christchurch signing sessions.