Doco eyes Landers’ rough ride to success
“I wouldn’t have the guts to do it,” says former Highlander Joe Wheeler. “I would have written it on a bit of paper.”
Wheeler was talking in the brilliant documentary 1 To 39: The Highlanders Story, of how Highlanders No 8 Nasi Manu, with time to brood after a season-ending injury, told Jamie Joseph, the scariest coach in the professional era of New Zealand rugby, face to face what Manu believed had gone so disastrously wrong with the team’s 2013 Super Rugby campaign.
It’s one of many riveting moments in a story that ends in triumph, with the southern men winning the 2015 Super title.
For the man behind 1To39 , Mark Malaki-Williams, the production was a passion project for two years.
A film editor at Sky Television, he was a huge fan of ESPN’s 30 For 30 documentaries.
“I loved how the Americans really celebrate their wins. I thought, ‘Why can’t we do something like that?’ The Highlanders appealed because nobody expected them to come back from a terrible year in 2013 and win in
2015. It was quite a mission. I started to do it during lockdown in 2020. I did some of the editing at home on my kitchen table while the kids were running around.”
What makes 1To39 compulsive viewing is how frank the Highlanders are. Aaron Smith sadly talks about fist fights at the end-of-season party in
2013. Wheeler muses about double standards, and how newly-signed All Blacks, including Ma’a Nonu, Brad Thorn and Tony Woodcock, were treated better by the coaches than local youngsters.
Manu is massively impressive, radiating decency and courage, and Joseph’s strength of character is illustrated by the fact that after their critical meeting, he appointed Manu co-captain with Ben Smith.
Two of my other favourite rugby documentaries came exactly 30 years apart.
In 2009, By The Balls, produced and co-directed by Charlotte Purdy, tracked the fallout from the 1986 rebel Cavaliers tour to apartheid South Africa leading into the first World Cup the following year.
Thirty years earlier, John Kirwan and Ric Salizzo made a light-hearted inside look at the 1989 All Blacks tour to Wales and Ireland, The Good, the Bad and the Rugby.
● On Saturday, June 4, this column erroneously said Sir Peter Blake and his Team New Zealand directors collected $11 million from the America’s Cup defence budget in
2000. The Weekend Herald and Phil Gifford retract this statement. We apologise to Sir Peter and the Team New Zealand directors for the error.