He has signed oˆ as the third most capped All Black in history and the second most experienced captain, so where do we place Read in history.
THERE WERE TWO DISTINCT PARTS TO KIERAN READ'S CAREER BUT BY THE TIME HE PLAYED HIS LAST GAME, THERE WAS NO DOUBT HE SIGNED OFF AS THE BEST NO 8 NEW Z EALAND HAS EVER PRODUCED.
Any player who enjoys a career that extends beyond a decade tend to have to significantly evolve to survive that long.
It's the nature of the business. Rugby is too physical, too demanding for a player to come in to the test arena in their early 20s and play the same style of football all the way through to their mid-30s.
Dan Carter had two distinct parts to his career. He was a vibrant, running No 10 between 2003 and 2011 and then a tactical controller between 2012 and 2015. Injury took an obvious toll on him in the last four years of his career.
Richie McCaw was a continual work in progress and from being all about the turnovers for much of his career, by the end he was a ball carrier and tackler, almost a second blindside flanker.
Tana Umaga started life as a try-scoring wing and finished it as a bruising secondfive. Michael Jones was a dynamic openside in stage one of his career and a crushing No 6 in the second.
Adaptation is the key to longevity and it shouldn't be seen as something easy to pull off either. Being able to successfully change roles takes enormous dedication and perseverance. Only special players can do it and Kieran Read very much goes into the category of special player.
Like many of the greats before him, he was able to change his game. In fact, he had to make two significant changes as he didn't actually come into professional rugby as a No 8.
Read first came to prominence in 2007, playing for the Crusaders while McCaw and fellow All Black Reuben Thorne were on enforced conditioning breaks.
He was picked mainly at blindside as he was the following year, before making his test debut in the same jersey against Scotland in November 2008.
That was his position back then and after winning a regular slot on the bench by the end of 2008, Read was pulled aside by the All Blacks coaches after that our and asked to switch to No 8.
At 1.96m and 112kg, the coaches felt he was better suited to being the last man in the scrum. He had enormous aerial ability, but the real reason they wanted him to make the shift was because of his mix of speed, agility and endurance.
He had the ability to cover an enormous amount of ground and his handling was so good that he would be able to make telling passes and off-loads in wider parts of the field.
Read was a bit of a throwback to the old days of the corner-flagging No 8 – a rangy, raw-boned athlete with the speed to catch escaping outside backs and the dynamism to make memorable tackles in the middle of the field.
By the last test of 2009, he'd established his phenomenal potential when he started against France in Marseilles and delivered a huge performance at No 8 that had a bit of everything.
That was the moment he proved he and not Rodney So'oialo was the All Blacks' future at No 8 and the moment he first hinted at how good he was going to be.
The picture changed again in the first
Tri Nations tests of the following year when he was man of the match in successive weeks against the Boks. Those two tests were revenge games for the All Blacks as they had lost all three to South Africa the year before. They were desperate to fix that up and Read played with an energy and directness that was astonishing.
He destroyed his vaunted opposite Pierre Spies in those games and more significantly he started to give the first indications about the breadth of his game.
New Zealand had seen quality No 8s in the past. There was Brian Lochore who was an intelligent and muscular footballer.
In the late 1980s Buck Shelford emerged with his abrasive and confrontational style that brought forward momentum.
He was succeeded by Zinzan Brooke, a man with an outrageous set of skills that saw him do things no other No 8 has ever been able to do, such as drop two critical goals in big games.
But Read, to some extent, was an amalgamation of all of them. He had the
muscularity of Lochore – that desire to be close to the ruck and make his presence felt there.
He had an intimidating edge to his defence, an ability cut people in half when he lined them up and that gave him the same sort of edge as Shelford. And like Brooke, Read could manufacture a pass out of nothing or pull off something no one was expecting.
He was a package quite like no other and no one will forget how good he was in 2013. That was the year he nailed everything.
He started the season as captain of the All Blacks while McCaw was on sabbatical and in three tests against France, he found an extra metre of speed.
Being captain also seemed to give him the confidence to back his passing game and that year was dominated by Read doing special things. There was his round the corner pass to Aaron Smith against Argentina.
Against South Africa at Ellis Park he first charged down the tramlines, beating players before sending Ben Smith into the clear with a brilliant one-handed offload. He scored the winning try in that brilliant game when he found a way to support Julian Savea on the touchline and collect the last pass of a lung bursting movement.
Against England he set up Savea for a first minute try when he managed to hurl the ball back in-field when three defenders were driving him over the touchline and it was Read who finished things off late in the second half when he smashed over the line with 10 minutes left.
Read was instrumental in delivering a perfect season for the All Blacks and fully deserved his World Player of the Year title. He was so obviously the best player in the world that year even fellow nominee Will Genia said it would be ridiculous if anyone other than the All Blacks No 8 won it.
In 2013 we saw the perfect version of Read before injury and team needs intervened and forced a change in the way he would play.
Post 2015, the All Blacks needed Read's game to evolve. They made the decision to use their blindside in the wide role that Read had been previously assigned and to bring their skipper closer to the action where he could be more of a distributor closer to the ruck.
They also wanted his iron defence to hurt teams on the gainline and so he evolved and we started to see him make more tackles, win more lineout ball and carry the ball closer to the ruck.
He became a more direct and bruising player and while the public may have yearned to see him roaming wide and judged him for not doing so, his team-mates could see how brilliantly he had adapted to doing an entirely different job.
They also knew that their skipper always fronted. He was a captain who would lead by example and if the team needed a big play when they were under pressure, it would more often than not be Read who would come up with it.
In 2017 he was able to make a stunning return to action after breaking his thumb in Super Rugby. He spent seven weeks on the sidelines and came straight into the first test against the British and Irish Lions.
He gave a huge performance. It was inspirational and proved he was a lot like McCaw in that he could spend a long period not playing and then return straight into a big test and look like he'd never been away.
“I thought [Read] was pretty outstanding, though he's a bit grumpy I didn't take him off earlier, but 75 minutes is probably not a bad night's work for him after seven weeks holiday,” said coach Steve Hansen.
“To be the All Blacks captain you've got to have a lot of character and courage and be a fierce warrior.
“Richie showed that over a number of years, now it's Reado's turn to lead this side. There was no hesitation in asking him to step up and do the role we wanted because that's what an All Blacks captain does, and he did it magnificently.”
In the second test against the Wallabies that year in Dunedin, it was Read who won back the kick-off with three minutes to go and it was Read who ran the smartest of angles to cut through the defence to set up the match-winning try.
The skipper was always where he needed to be and his defence became more and more punishing throughout the cycle and his importance to the team as both captain and player increased.
In times of pressure, Read was the man who took control. He got better at talking to referees.
He wasn't the same wide-ranging force, but he was still a force. He made an enormous number of tackles that hurt opponents and he won more lineout ball than either of the two senior locks.
Read became the All Blacks first forward receiver off ruck ball and became expert at knowing when to drive into contact himself and when to slip a pass to one of the support runners on his shoulder.
His influence within the team was colossal which is why when he damaged his back at the end of 2017 and required major surgery, the coaches were content for him to return to action even though he still had another five per cent or so to rediscover.
In 2019, Read's role changed again and his command of the team increased. The decision to pick Ardie Savea and Sam Cane as twin opensides meant Read's solidity at No 8 became ever more crucial.
He became the glue that stuck everything together for the loose trio. His work rate was huge in those pre-World Cup tests. He was all over the ball, making good decisions at first receiver and tackled everything hard and with a level of intimidation.
It was clear that Read had finally, fully recovered from back surgery and he was ramping things up heading into the
World Cup.
And not only was he playing with more authority, Hansen revealed that Read was leading with more, too.
The veteran skipper, who had battled back from his own dramas, was now demanding more from everyone around him.
He, of course, had announced late in 2018 that he would be signing off in 2019, and it was obvious he wanted to do so as a three-time World Cup winner.
The captain knew that to win, the standards would have to be even higher and the desire even greater. The sacrifices would have to be greater and the hard work had to be done.
He also knew that every team that had won the World Cup had done so with a bold, iconic captain. Leadership mattered at a World Cup more than it normally did because the pressure would be even greater.
The All Blacks needed a McCaw-like figure and in Read they had one.
Different in personality and style but no less effective.
“He leads from the front… and he's starting to get more and more demanding, which I like,” Hansen said of his captain on the eve of the World Cup.
“That's important that he demands, and has expectations. He has recovered from his back [surgery] now, and is starting to play some good footy.
“He's a smart captain.”
Read's performances at the World Cup were among the best he produced in the post 2015 period. His tackle count went through the roof. Against Ireland in the quarter-final he smashed the ball up more times than anyone can remember and mostly managed to off-load.
Even in the semi-final he was one of the few who fronted and if he as the best all-round No 8 we had ever seen between 2008 and 2015 then he became the best defensive and distributive No 8 between 2016 and 2019.
Add both parts of his career together and there is little doubt he is the best No 8 New Zealand has ever produced.
“We identified early he'd be the next leader after Richie [McCaw],” said Hansen after the All Blacks had beaten Wales to win the bronze medal at the 2019
World Cup.
“He's a charismatic leader. The boys love him, the management all love him and we have a huge amount of respect for him.
“To come back from where he was with his back [injury], people won't understand just how hard it was.”