All Black’s return from attempted suicide and alcoholism
I had lost my standing in the community, I had lost respect, I lost all that I had achieved. Neven MacEwan
Former All Black captain Neven MacEwan opens up about his path to captaining the All Blacks and his descent into alcoholism after his rugby career — which culminated in conviction for theft as a servant, and a suicide attempt — in a new memoir. Ahead of its release, he lays his skeletons bare to Neil Reid
Throughout New Zealand treasured match-worn All Blacks jerseys adorn the walls of the living rooms and man-caves of the men who earnt them — and the walls of loved ones who proudly keep their sporting legacies alive.
They each tell stories of triumphs and defeat in the heat of battle at rugby’s greatest arenas, and of the dedication and sacrifice shown by the wearers in gaining entry into one of New Zealand’s most exclusive clubs.
But a framed black jersey hanging on a wall in the suburban Palmerston North home of former All Black captain Neven MacEwan has one of the most epic stories of all to tell.
The number 5 shirt travelled to South Africa with the 1960 All Blacks and was worn by MacEwan in the fourth test loss to the Springboks at Boet Erasmus Stadium, Port Elizabeth. On its return to New Zealand it was meant to be kept and cherished by generations of the MacEwan family to come.
But that all changed after MacEwan descended into a dark battle with alcoholism towards the end of his 52-match All Blacks career, which intensified after several postrugby business failures.
Faced with crippling debts, MacEwan made the painful decision to off-load his collection of rugby jerseys from the All Blacks along with French, Australian, English and Springbok tops he had swapped with opposition players post-match.
MacEwan — who has opened up on his life in a new memoir, When The Crowd Stops Roaring, published on Wednesday, his 85th birthday — even sold parts of his prized collection at a flea market in Palmerston North for $60 each.
“When I hit the wall going at about 160 miles per hour, when everything went crazy, I had to do something about surviving and getting enough money to keep the family together,” MacEwan told the Weekend Herald.
“The last jerseys that I had,including the All Blacks jersey from the last test I played, I sold them at a flea market and my son Angus was very upset. He said, ‘Dad you can’t do this’. And I had to explain to him that we needed to do this because we needed the money to keep the family together.
“I just had to let it go. It was part of the past that I had to leave behind me. As painful as what it was, it was part of the recovery.”
MacEwan did recover — and has since dedicated himself to helping others in a stunning redemption tale — but not before he was charged by police for theft as a servant, and attempted suicide two days before his
scheduled court appearance.
One thing that never changed was the pain felt by Angus over his father’s decision to sell the jerseys.
MacEwan had defied both a late start to his rugby career and being tagged a “gentle giant” by scribes — a label he feared might work against him in making the All Blacks pack during one of test rugby’s most brutal eras.
Angus’ own determination saw him embark on a global search for the whereabouts of some of his father’s rugby treasures, discovering the jersey MacEwan wore in the test against the Springboks in Port Elizabeth — at the Cilfynydd Rugby Club in Wales.
It was regifted to MacEwan about 14 years ago after Angus explained his father’s story to the club — and the family desire to have him reunited with some of his treasures. The pair travelled to Wales to retrieve it.
“The function the night I got the jersey back was just incredible. Words just can’t explain it,” MacEwan says.
“The jersey has pride of place in our home. And it will go to the family. It is a constant reminder of how important family is.”
MACEWAN NEVER thought he would be an All Black while growing up in Nelson. He describes himself as being a “real roly-poly” boy. “I was short and dumpy to say the least.”
He initially played soccer but rugby gradually took over in his early teens after he went through rapid growth. “I just went skyward very quickly,” he says.
He also never thought he would fall into the clutches of alcohol.
The future All Blacks captain saw first-hand the toll alcohol could take on families during the battle his father Ian had with alcoholism. “If you talk to my wife [ Jeannette], my father said to her on one occasion, ‘Of all my children, Nev is the one most susceptible to becoming an alcoholic’.
“She thought that would never happen because I knew all about what it meant and entailed. That is how stupid you get. Alcoholism is cunning, it is baffling, it is powerful.”
MacEwan met Jeannette when they were growing up in Nelson — they would marry in 1958 and have four children. While other teens may have partaken in sly-grogging, MacEwan was concentrating on his rugby — which saw him contact legendary All Black lock Tiny White for advice — and his studies at Nelson College.
He moved to Wellington to train as a teacher in 1953, and three years later made his All Blacks debut in the second test against the Springboks at Athletic Park. Team-mates that day included White.
“When you try to think that he was my idol and now I am packing in at No 8 in my first test [alongside him], it was a dream come true,” MacEwan says. “Playing for the All Blacks was the ultimate.”
His voice breaks when asked to recollect being handed his first test jersey, finally answering: “It was tremendous. It is so hard to put into words but it was very significant.
“It was an incredible honour to play for your country, particularly at that time . . . to be part of that amazing era when we beat the Springboks in a series for the first time.”
MacEwan’s introduction to test rugby saw him exposed to the brutality of the ill-tempered 1956 series and what he described as a “pretty rough” drinking culture within the All Blacks at that time.
Springbok props Jaap Bekker and Chris Koch were the chief protagonists of the brutality directed the All Blacks’ way, injuring prop Mark Irwin in the first test then roughhousing his replacement Frank McAtamney in the second.
After the match, which the All Blacks lost 8-3, MacEwan swapped his debut test jersey with Bok captain Basie Vivier — a player who was later vilified on his return to South Africa after his side lost their first test series against the All Blacks.
“I was honoured that the captain of the Springbok side would ask for my jersey,” he says.
“Ironically Vivier died through alcohol. The pressure on him apparently when he went home after that test series was huge. . . he was virtually pushed aside and it wasn’t good what happened to him.”
There was ill-discipline on the field throughout the rest of the series — including the All Blacks fighting back by recalling veteran prop and former national heavyweight boxing champion Kevin Skinner to “sort out” Bekker and Koch.
Things post-match for the All Blacks during that series were also fairly messy.
“Horrific. It was certainly uncivilised,” MacEwan says of the general rugby drinking culture.
“After an after-match [function] it was back to the hotel or somebody’s place and everyone partied on.”
MACEWAN’S ALCOHOL intake was “virtually nil” before 1960. But that all changed when he travelled to South Africa in May that year to captain the team in two non-test matches.
The Springboks, provincial sides, combined selections and even local referees seemed intent on seeking revenge for New Zealand’s historic test triumph four years earlier.
MacEwan was now a mainstay in the All Blacks and played 12 of the tour’s first 16 matches.
By the time he trudged off Cape Town’s Newlands stadium after the 11-3 second test win he was “almost at breaking point” and collapsed in the changing rooms.
“The doctors came in and said ‘He needs to have a break away’,” MacEwan says.
“The doctor said to me, ‘You need to relax more, you need to be imbibing more from the top shelf ’.
“It was the coolest thing that somebody could say when I was almost at breaking point.”
MacEwan was granted temporary leave from the tour, resting up with Springbok convenor of selectors and former Bok test captain Basil Kenyon.
Alcohol was cheap in South Africa and MacEwan relished taking up his doctor’s orders. “I was already on the road of decline. Initially I never drank at all, I would not go near it. But it just crept in.”
Though MacEwan’s huge presence couldn’t be missed on the field in a black jersey, he became a master at disguising his heavy drinking from his All Black team-mates by going out drinking on his own.
“That is where an alcoholic can be very clever. He thinks he is clever, he thinks he is hiding it, but the thing is you have to live with it yourself.
“While it may take a few years for it to break through, it does eventually happen. [Alcoholism] is cunning, it is baffling, it is powerful,” he says.
He retained his spot in the All Blacks for tests against France in 1961, the 1962 tour of Australia — where he again captained the team at non-test level — and the first two tests against the Wallabies in New Zealand later that year.
But booze ultimately ended his test career when, at a function after the test team to play England in 1963 was named, he gave the All Blacks selectors an alcohol-fuelled tirade. MacEwan was missing from the squad after battling a knee injury.
“In a very brief statement I questioned their pedigree,” MacEwan says. “Selectors in those days did not like to be questioned or told things.
“I blew my stack. I knew I should
have kept quiet, but I had enough alcohol to loosen my inhibitions and let fly.
“I knew from that day that my days playing for New Zealand were over.”
PROFESSIONAL RUGBY is littered with former top players who hit the skids after hanging out their boots; players who concentrated solely on their sporting pursuits without cementing any plans for life after rugby should they fall victim to injury or become surplus to the national selectors of the day.
But MacEwan’s tale highlights how that also happened decades before
the sport turned professional.
He had earlier shelved what appeared to be a promising school teaching career as his rugby career took off. Several months after his All Black debut the “lure of big money and opportunity” saw him take on management of a service station, something he recalls as being a “bad decision”.
“It wasn’t until the adulation and the rugby went into the past, that is when things started to go really haywire,” MacEwan says of his drinking.
“Rugby had become my whole existence and unfortunately I moved away from what I was really good at work wise. I should have stayed as a teacher. I had gifts in that line but I gave that up to go into business initially with an oil company. “That was a dreadful decision.” MacEwan says he was guilty of making a succession of decisions largely “motivated by money”.
“Things started to get really frustrating and I started to hit the bottle,” he says. “I put the family through a lot of unnecessary pain.”
He hit rock bottom when he was charged by police in 1979 for theft of a servant, relating to the taking of funds from the National Travel Association (Manawatu Branch) Inc.
“I confessed I needed the funds at the time to meet personal commitments and the money had been returned at a later date.” MacEwan writes in his book.
“I was subsequently charged . . . and discharged on bail to appear in court the following Monday. When they fingerprinted me, the enormity of it all started to hit home.
“These ink-stained fingers were part of a pair of hands which time and time again had reached high above the opposition to take the ball in the line-outs, accompanied by the cheers of the roaring crowd. Now they were being branded criminal for life.”
MacEwan says he realised he “had lost my standing in the community, I had lost respect, I lost all that I had achieved.
“And the shame and the guilt were the two factors that were really crippling to me.”
He kept the charge secret from those closest to him — including his wife — and two days out from his court appearance he made an attempt on his life.” [Losing respect] was what drove me to think well the best way was to end it all,” he says.
The decisions he made while recovering in Ward 5 of Palmerston
North Hospital are the ones he credits with saving his life.
Staff at the clinic told him he should seek help from Alcoholics Anonymous for his rampant drinking, a suggestion he initially rebuked.
“I was so arrogant, so full of self absorbed and said, ‘Do you know who I am?’,” he says.
THE “PENNIES dropped” for MacEwan when his sponsor told him alcoholism was a disease and he wasn’t at ease with his true self.
“That was me, I was trying all my life to be somebody who I thought I ought to be and I forgot who I was.
“That moment brought relief. I knew I had to go to AA.
“Ward 5 at Palmerston North Hospital was a life-saver for me. Then it was my journey through AA and the incredible people who started visiting me, strangers, who came in a nonjudgemental way and they helped.
“They gave me hope. And that was beginning of my journey and commitment to my Christian faith.”
MacEwan was later fined $500 for his financial crimes; with headlines of his demise featuring in newspapers throughout the country.
The reaction from the tight-knit rugby community to his downfall was as swift as a swarming All Black defence. The majority of mates he had played alongside simply “disappeared”.
“The number of people from the past, my rugby days, who came and spoke to me, I could count on the fingers of one hand,” he says.
MacEwan stresses that he couldn’t blame them — his decline was attributable solely to his own actions. “I had let them down too,” he says. “I was really conscious for the first time what my actions — and they were my actions and rugby can’t be blamed — had created. They were results of my decisions that got me into the mess.”
His initial reaction was to “run” — he considered relocating to Ireland or South Africa.
But his wife told him: “Wherever you go, you will take the problem with you. You have to now deal with it.”
“So began the journey of finding that peace and serenity which I now have an abundance of,” MacEwan says. It took about four years for him to heal. “There were a lot of things that had to be repaired. Pride in me was just like a cancer.
“The Lord had to deal with pride in me and get rid of a lot of stinking thinking that I had toward a lot of people. My judgmental attitude was just terrible.”
Once he healed, he started dedicating himself to helping others, including working for 14 years as a prison chaplain (until 2005) and he is still called on by a Palmerston North company to help staff members battling addiction issues.
“Now not drinking doesn’t bother me at all and I am coming up to 40 years without any alcohol.”
MacEwan has dedicated the past 12 years to writing When the Crowd Stops Roaring, launching an online fundraiser to help pay publishing costs. The idea of a memoir was sparked by his 2005 trip to Wales and Ireland with Angus. He wanted his family to know his true story.
“And not everything that I have experienced has been included . . . if I put everything in there it would have been like a trilogy,” he joked.
MacEwan says despite the contents of the memoir, no one in his family raised concerns about publishing. “They have been very supportive. “There is no use hiding from it. In 1979 it hit the papers anyway . . . and once it has hit the papers it is public knowledge and history.”
Though wearing the black jersey is still a source of immense pride, 63 years on from his test debut, MacEwan says his greatest achievement has been conquering his battle with alcoholism: “healing” himself so he can help others.
“If you did something good for somebody else then you are starting to heal yourself. That is the way we are made; we exist to help each other.”