What Hansen told Tuipulotu after a year of setbacks
When the All Blacks’ plane to Argentina pushes back later tonight, Patrick Tuipulotu may take a little moment to reflect on the craziness of the past year; a time that made him wonder if he would ever return to the national team.
His journey from November last year to now has taken the most incredible twists and turns and it is testament to Tuipulotu’s desire and character that he has forced his way back into the All Blacks.
Even he would admit that for large periods of the past eight months, he didn’t look remotely like a test player. He wasn’t a shadow of the player he’d been in 2014, when, in his first Super Rugby season he forced his way into the All Blacks on the back of his impressive ball carrying power, cleanout work and presence.
There he was at just 21, so clearly a phenomenal athletic specimen with the size, explosive power and temperament to be the perfect man to back up Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick from the bench.
But he suffered a nasty groin injury early in 2015 which saw him miss the World Cup and left him with a long and difficult rehabilitation, where he had to get his weight down from 140kg.
By the end of the Mitre 10 Cup he was close to being the player he had been pre-injury and was picked to start at lock against Ireland in Chicago. He didn’t have a great game — nor did the All Blacks — but the real shocker came after, when he failed a drugs test and had to leave the tour a week early.
Between mid-November and early February he was left wondering whether he was going to be banned for two years and his career ruined.
When he was at his lowest ebb during that uncertain period — unable to train with the Blues and unsure if he would be able to play again as a professional — news of his failed test became public.
Against the odds, his B-sample tested negative and he was immediately cleared to play, returning to action in round three of Super Rugby.
He said at the time he felt like the weight of the world had been removed from is shoulders, yet it didn’t look like it the way he played. The intensity wasn’t there. The accuracy was intermittent. Tuipulotu appeared to be unsure about himself — lacking physicality, work rate and aggression.
Too often he was passive: too readily he went to ground and the Blues relegated him to the bench midway through their campaign.
When he failed to inform management that he was running late for training he then suffered the indignity of being dropped from the match day 23 to play the British and Irish Lions and maybe then, because everyone else did, Tuipulotu thought his All Blacks goose was cooked.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen wasn’t of that view, however. No sensible coach is going to easily give up an athlete such as Tuipulotu who at 2.02m and 128kg, and blessed with genuine speed, agility and a natural leap, has everything required to thrive in test football.
Hansen told Tuipulotu not to rush off and sign an overseas contract, but to instead commit himself, as captain of Auckland’s Mitre 10 Cup team, to working harder, being more overtly physical and urgent.
He basically told Tuipulotu to get his hands on the ball more, look to make more, higher-impact tackles, get off the ground quicker and wipe people off their feet at the breakdown.
Auckland have struggled but Tuipulotu hasn’t.
He’s been the one shining light in a gloomy Auckland team and his destructive power has been visible.
That’s why the All Blacks have taken him back. He’s been doing what they wanted and at just 24, he has, potentially a long future. A few months back such a scenario never looked remotely likely.