McCaw’s mental demons
All Blacks legend Richie McCaw suffered from psychological demons during his rugby career, at one stage fearing he was about to be dropped.
Speaking on the A Few Good Men podcast, McCaw said he had periods of anxiety and doubt while playing for the All Blacks.
One was before the 2011 World Cup final, where he feared he would get dumped as captain of the side if they didn’t take out the trophy.
He had been captain for the losing 2007 campaign, when New Zealand went out in the quarterfinals to France.
‘‘It only went through my mind once, but the morning of the final – it was a nine o’clock game so we had a long day to fill – I was lying on the bed and I was like ‘the reality is if we don’t win today, this will be my last game as captain’,’’ he said on the podcast.
‘‘And now people could argue whatever but you think about it, someone who’s been captain at two World Cups and haven’t won it, they’re not going to give you a third go.
‘‘But I was like ‘wow this is unhelpful’ and that was the last time I had even considered it. But you know that was reality.’’
McCaw captained the All Blacks to World Cup wins in 2011 and 2015, and was made a member of the prestigious Order of New Zealand – the country’s highest honour.
But he had to fight through injury and adversity to achieve all that, having suffered from a head knock early in his career.
He told the podcast he ‘‘was in a bit of a hole’’ in 2004 dealing with head-related injury.
‘‘Head knocks unfortunately in contact sport, that happens. And for some people it affects them more than others. So I did get a decent one,’’ he told A Few Good Men.
‘‘I got myself in a hole because people started to question whether I should be playing rugby, I started to question that.
‘‘And I put the head injury aside, I think I recovered from that probably a bit quicker, but I actually got myself in a hole.
‘‘I was looking at ‘I’m never going to be able to play rugby again’, and you get the old negative loop.
‘‘And a lot of people probably understand, when you get into that sort of mindset it’s hard to see how you were going to get yourself back to where you were.’’
McCaw, who retired after leading the All Blacks to victory over Australia in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham in London, said his own upsand-downs helped him rationalise that there was more to rugby than its physical side.
‘‘Once I got back playing and got past all that, it made you really appreciate what you were doing.
‘‘And actually realising that just going and training hard and going and playing, there’s a bit more to making sure everything works.
‘‘And even like performing under pressure, that’s not just a matter of training hard or on the field.
‘‘There’s all sorts of things that you can do to become more resilient, lift your threshold of what you can handle and stuff like that.
‘‘And that’s I guess something that really intrigued me and that I put a lot of work into probably in the last three years.’’
He felt those lessons learned proved useful for life after rugby. Now a helicopter pilot, he married Gemma Flynn in January, 2017. They have one child.
A Few Good Men is a new podcast series with Radio Hauraki and the Movember Foundation.
Movember describes itself as the leading charity changing the face of men’s health. It addresses some of the biggest health issues faced by men: prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health and suicide prevention.