BEHIND THE SILVER FERN
TWO OF NEW ZEALAND’S MOST RESPECTED RUGBY AUTHORITIES, TONY JOHNSON AND LYNN McCONNELL, COMBINED TO WRITE A BOOK THAT EXPLORED MORE DEEPLY THE MEN AND STORIES THAT HAVE DEFINED THE ALL BLACKS. HERE THEY TELL OF THEIR EXPERIENCES IN WRITING BEHIND THE SILV
TONY JOHNSON
I’ll confess initially I wasn’t sure about taking it on, because I knew it was going to take a lot of time and effort, but my wife convinced me it would be a great challenge, and at the end of it all I’m proud of what we achieved.
There was the odd rough patch. Quite early on in the process I got hit by shingles all down my left arm. Every time I typed it felt like 20,000 volts going up my arm!
But we got there in the end, and to see the book on the shelves and to have it recognised here in New Zealand and overseas after 15 months of fairly intense work has made it all worthwhile.
In truth, we have probably had more accolades in the UK, where the book has had some very good reviews, and was nominated for Sports Book of the Year.
Obviously a big challenge was getting content from the past, and I got some great help from an old friend.
Peter Sellers had been Radio New Zealand Sport historian over a long period, and in his later years I visited him a lot. Peter had interviewed so many legendary sports people, including Jesse Owens and Don Bradman, and dozens of our great rugby players.
He had kept his old tapes but as his health started to fail in his 90s they were packed up and sent to Taonga, the national sound archive in Christchurch.
Sarah Johnstone at Taonga was a great help in allowing me to access many of Pete’s old programmes and we got a lot from them. There was stuff in there from the 1905 Originals, guys like Mark Nicholls and George Nepia from the 1925 Invincibles, and some terrific accounts from players from the great tours of South Africa and visits by the Lions.
One of our best reviews in the UK came from Brendan Gallagher, a noted rugby journalist, who wrote that those accounts of the early All Blacks, from the interviews, tour diaries, letters and so on, that’s what gave our project the biggest point of difference over similar books written about other nations.
Sadly Peter passed away before the book was released, but I’m glad his work found a new showcase in Behind the Silver Fern, and as for Taonga…well, as the name suggests, it really is a national treasure.
For me the most enjoyable part was being able to sit down with some great All Blacks and hear their stories.
A lot of them are guys I’ve got to know over the last 30 years and it was great how forthcoming, how eager they were to relive their stories.
An example was the day I spent with Ian Kirkpatrick in Gisborne. Kirky was an unbelievable player, a real hero of mine and we talked for ages. He captained the team through a tough time, and it’s clear some things still rankle with him, especially the Keith Murdoch business. Some of his comments about the NZRFU at the time were unprintable.
It was the same with Tane Norton and Beegee Williams, telling yarns over cups of tea, Tane rushing off to his bookshelves to check a fact.
There was Andy Dalton, Stu Wilson and Frank Bunce over lunch or a coffee, and of course my mates from the SKY commentary team, Kamo, Cully, Marshy and Mehrts gave us some great tales.
I was also able to access a lot of more recent material from the SKY archives, and in particular interviews I’d done for the
Weight of the Nation documentary, a lot of which hadn’t made the final cut because of time constraints. There was some really deep and meaningful comments from the likes of Richie McCaw and Conrad Smith.
When it came to some of the more controversial episodes we tried to get a good cross section of opinion. Several people telling their version of the same story.
Through that approach I believe we’ve come up with as good an account of the Murdoch business as has ever been put together. Kirky still gets upset over how the manager Ernie Todd handled things, Joe Karam, like Todd a Marist man, was a bit more sympathetic, and Tane was kind of in the middle.
Bob Burgess though, came up with the most significant account, the one I’d never heard before about the Welsh prop getting in Murdoch’s face at the after match dinner. I reckon that lit the fuse.
Also from that tour was the IRA letter, the truth behind those ‘Mafia’ hats and a great story Kirky told about the chap from British Telecom who jacked up free phone calls home for the players in 1972-73. The team happily took advantage, because they got a pathetic daily allowance back then and the calls weren’t cheap. It ended up costing a fortune and the guy got the sack.
You end up with a range of views on things like the Springbok tours, the Andy Haden lineout dive against Wales and the Brian O’Driscoll business. Some remain unrepentant, others look back now with a bit of regret. It’s quite fascinating.
One of my favourite stories came from Justin Marshall. He was pretty much straight off the chain at the Mataura freezing works and into the All Blacks and Zinzan Brooke pranked him big time when they were in Sicily at the start of the 1995 tour. You can read the rest in the book.
I think it tells the story of the All Blacks from a unique perspective. There’s more than 150 players quoted in the book, many of them legends, many influential, but some of them whose story was brief, or who made a more modest but still meaningful contribution to the legacy. Like Greg Cooper, the way he fought back from a type of cancer that would have got the better of many people, he fought because he had a great family around him, but he also fought because he wanted to be an All Black and nothing was going to stop him.
KIRKY WAS AN UNBELIEVABLE PLAYER, A REAL HERO OF MINE AND WE TALKED FOR AGES. HE CAPTAINED THE TEAM THROUGH A TOUGH TIME, AND IT’S CLEAR SOME THINGS STILL RANKLE WITH HIM...’
LYNN McCONNELL
While many books have been written about New Zealand rugby, there is still much to be discovered, particularly in a historical and social sense, and Behind the Silver Fern was
no different. An example of that was provided by 1971-73 All Black first five-eighths Bob Burgess. Something of a representative of the youth movement of his era, his long hair made him a little different in the more conformist rugby world.
But during his interview for the book he disclosed that he held a letter he had been sent during the 1972-73 tour of Britain, Ireland and France, from the IRA promising no harm would come to the All Blacks as long as they didn’t deviate from the beaten track.
It must be remembered that at the time Northern Ireland, or Ulster, was deeply involved in what have become known as ‘The Troubles’, which was conflict between Catholic and Protestant interests in the province.
The violence was enough for some of the Home Nations to suspend travelling to Ireland for games, something the All Blacks were not prepared to do.
They took the tour to the heart of the problem in Belfast and while closely guarded by British Army forces, they were accorded a significant welcome from Ulster fans when running onto the ground to play and at the end of the game. Their efforts were appreciated.
Before the side returned, later in the tour, to play Ireland in the test that would decide whether a Grand Slam was achieved, [it wasn’t, the game was drawn 10-10] Burgess received his letter from the IRA.
No other team member had advised previously of receiving such a letter and this was another piece of gold for Behind
the Silver Fern. In the last paragraph of the letter, the writer said that if the details were ever disclosed they would be denied.
So it was no surprise when the book was published it was claimed the letter was a fraud, just as the writer of the original letter had said it would be. However, it was never clear why opponents of the IRA would have bothered to send such a letter to the All Blacks.
IN THE LAST PARAGRAPH OF THE LETTER, THE WRITER SAID THAT IF THE DETAILS WERE EVER DISCLOSED THEY WOULD BE DENIED.
SO IT WAS NO SURPRISE WHEN THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IT WAS CLAIMED THE LETTER WAS A FRAUD...’
Burgess was well known as a player with a political bent who wanted no truck with playing against South Africa and was the obvious person to receive such a note.
Another revealing aspect of the book was the frustration, especially before the Fred Allen era, but even after, felt by some All Blacks, especially backs but also forwards, at the lack of coaching they received during their time in the international game.
Coaches are so much a part of the scene nowadays that it is hard to credit that until the mid-1960s they were little more than tactical support for the captains of the day, if even that.
The backs who toured South Africa in 1960 were frustrated that coach Jack Sullivan, later chairman of the NZRFU and a former back himself, had nothing to do with them during that campaign – all the effort went into the forwards.
But even later Andy Haden would say that on his first tour, as one of the youngest players on the 1972-73 team, coach Bob Duff, a former lock, hardly spoke to him at all during their time away.
All Blacks legend Sir Brian Lochore found himself the last man named for the 1963-64 tour, as a No 8, a position he had never played. No one ever told him why he had been selected there. Not that there was anything wrong with the choice, he was ideal for the position and became one of the true greats of rugby.
One of the myths of All Blacks rugby is that coaching benefits from players in touring teams returning home would spread the acquired techniques among their clubs to the benefit of rugby overall.
But the fact went even deeper, and was more significant in terms of the ability of All Blacks to cope with on-field issues more readily than their opponents.
It was the players themselves who devised the schemes, and it was that application of thinking that was disseminated through the clubs at home.
What coaches have done subsequently is speed up the process by having more involvement in setting a style, making their observations and working not only with their experts and analysts, but the players as well, to take the game to new levels, as the All Blacks have shown.
What our interviews also highlighted was that one of the reasons the All Blacks are so successful is the willingness of the best coaches to seek advice and not to let their egos get in the way.
Haden said he was contacted by Steve Hansen after Haden had made a throwaway comment about Hansen coaching forwards when he had played as a back. They met and had a discussion which bore significant benefits to the All Blacks’ lineout in the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and in South Africa a couple of years later.
There is always something to be learned from those who have been in the thick of the action before. Sir Colin Meads related the story of how the 1967 All Blacks were given a significant boost in their plan to beat France by their manager, former All Black and 1945-46 Kiwis captain Charlie Saxton.
The night before the game at a team meeting Saxton made the point that the French didn’t like dealing with the unexpected and he suggested a ploy that the All Blacks put into significant effect to win the game.
So many All Blacks have their own stories to tell, perhaps they were the only ones affected by decisions made, that there is always something new to be learned about the campaigns of the past and the hope in writing a book like Behind the
Silver Fern is that they may perhaps be of use to planning for the future because there truly is nothing new under the sun.