Former team-mates support Oliver's claims about Mains

Anton Oliver has been backed by other players who worked under coach Laurie Mains. Ross Land / Getty Images

Five Highlanders have supported Anton Oliver's version of events during the Highlanders fracas of 2003, with one detailing what he says was pressure to stop the players from acting against coach Laurie Mains. During the week, Mains has maintained that Oliver was a disaffected ringleader. In an interview with broadcaster Martin Devlin on Friday, Mains said Oliver was "acting on his own".

The Herald on Sunday has contacted several players involved with the Highlanders that year who paint a different picture.

In his book, Anton Oliver Inside, the All Black hooker said, in a chapter called 'Highlanders Hullabaloo', that the franchise was in "an acrimonious mess" by the end of the 2003 Super 12. Oliver said the team were upset at being flogged at training; little time given to game plans; snap meetings called before training without warning and latecomers bawled out. Oliver said Mains had an obsesssion with food and a level of pettiness that drove the team to take action.

Kelvin Middleton, an Otago stalwart now winding up his career in Japan, said the "threatening environment" the players were operating in was best exemplified by two incidents.

"When Taine [former All Black captain Taine Randell] found out that we'd had a meeting [to discuss the Mains situation] he was severely disappointed. When he knew we were putting forward a document he came around to my house and had a talk to me for an hour, trying to convince me not to put it forward. I respect Taine immensely but... he was pleading for me to drop it and almost insinuating that it was Anton's point of view. Maybe he was trying to protect himself, maybe he'd had the Mains factor in his ear saying 'let's try to split these guys up and when they're split there'll be nothing to it'.

"It wasn't long from that day until Annemarie Mains [Laurie's wife and the team's media liaison] rang me up and it's a phone call I'll never forget. She said 'Laurie has been so loyal to you, how can you do this to him?' There were plenty of tears and I was telling her, like I've told everyone to this day, that as senior players we must put forward the point of view of the team and this is not limited to one or two or three individuals. There were up to 17 players who were totally unhappy at the situation.

"This call progressed through her crying, to the point where she said 'How would you feel if this had happened to [former Otago coach] Gordon Hunter?' Obviously this hit a raw nerve, considering my partner is Gordon's daughter [Hunter had recently died after a long battle with cancer]. I told her in no uncertain terms what I felt about that and the tears stopped immediately. Then it became, 'Well, what goes around comes around and Laurie is a very powerful man.'

"This was the environment we were in."

Mains said last night that he did not want to comment further. "Anton Oliver's had a say, I have had a very brief response and I think the matter should be left there."

Middleton said it had been hard biting his tongue for the past two years as "Mains' spin doctors" propagated the belief that the issue boiled down to a Oliver-Mains personality clash.

"It was a huge team issue, but all the public has heard for the past two years has been Mains' side of it. For it to be unloaded onto Anton's shoulders is totally wrong."

Middleton recalled that when the Highlanders returned from the South African leg of their 2003 Super 12 season, the tour where several incidents had annoyed players, five players visited him at his house in various states of despair.

"They were younger players, all visiting me on separate occasions, at a loss to where they were at. They were just not enjoying it and didn't know what to do with themselves. They knew the environment wasn't correct so they were coming to us. There was never a point where we promoted discussion on it. The younger members and the mid-members approached us saying: 'Look, there's a problem here, what can you do to help us?"'

The rugged loose forward claims that eight out of 12 forwards he canvassed were going to leave the Highlanders if Mains stayed.

"That's a horrific amount of players to be ripped out of one team. That's saying something for the players. Rugby was their livelihood but they were prepared to put themselves at the mercy of the market."

Sam Harding, who is playing for Northampton in the Guinness Premiership, is one who said he would have thought about moving if Laurie stayed on.

"I certainly would've considered it. Let's just say it was a relief when we heard he was going," he said.

Harding said that Oliver filled a leadership void at the time and his motives were never selfish.

"I read the chapter yesterday and there is nothing I'd dispute in it," he said, relating the stresses of the time.

"You just couldn't sleep. It went way beyond pressure rugby. Nothing should have that sort of effect on your life."

Tony Brown, the former All Black first-five, could never have been accused of being in the Oliver 'camp'. "Actually I got on well with Laurie Mains," said Brown from Japan, where he is in the last year of a two-year contract with Sanyo.

"But I'm a team man. As a senior player I knew we [the Highlanders] couldn't carry on in that manner.

"It's the hardest thing in rugby I've ever had to do."

Carl Hoeft, too, who has recently decamped from Otago to France, was thought by some to be in the Mains camp after praising the coach on his return to test rugby in 2003.

However, he said he was in as deep as anybody in moves to get the Highlanders' concerns on paper.

"The important thing is this stuff is never pleasant," he said from Castres. "No one comes out looking good. It drags rugby through the mud. That indicates how strongly we felt if we were prepared to do it."

In his biography, Oliver catalogued a series of incidents during the 2003 Super 12 campaign that effectively ostracised Mains from a number of his senior players.

"They [several players] felt Laurie was too often petty, needlessly picky... and was manipulative in ways that frequently left them feeling uneasy and insecure," Oliver wrote.

His viewpoint has been disputed by Mains, but Simon Maling said Oliver's account is right on the money.

"During that time the whole environment was unacceptable," the former All Black lock, who is now playing his rugby in Tokyo, said.

"It was the team, it was the training and it was the coaching. It was simmering away in 2002 but in 2003 the boys began to talk about it.

"We then heard Mains was trying to extend his contract and, quite simply, we weren't that happy about the prospect of being coached by Laurie Mains for another couple of years. We wanted a review, so we canvassed a few boys and decided to put it down on paper.

"We found the vast majority were thinking along the same lines. We just wanted to get our feelings across to the board."

Maling said as soon as they committed to paper "we realised we were taking quite heavy measures".

While the issue became very public when Highlanders chief executive John Hornbrook referred to the Dachau-like conditions in the camp after being presented with the players' concerns, all players spoken to by the Herald on Sunday emphasised that it was never their intention to go public.

In fact, according to Players' Association manager Rob Nichol, a second secret meeting was held with the players to let them know how the process was developing and at that meeting it was reiterated that no player should talk to the media.

"Ironically, the players were the only ones that stuck to that side of the bargain," he said.

Brown said the Hornbrook comments made it extremely difficult for the players.

"The only regret I have about the whole thing is the way it ended," he said. "I'd definitely have been happy for Laurie to have left with his pride intact but John Hornbrook blew that out of the water."

What Maling, a long-time flatmate of Oliver, finds difficult to accept is the "dirty mudslinging" now aimed at Oliver.

"All that stuff about him trying to undermine [Taine] Randell... that's just wrong."

While the NZRU is reluctant to talk on the issue, it is understood they have given tacit approval of Oliver's version of events by the fact they are not pursuing a charge of bringing the game into disrepute.

The Herald on Sunday also understands deputy chief executive Steve Tew will be at Oliver's book launch on Tuesday.

Alex McKenzie, referred to in the book, was the professional development manager at the time, an effectively 'neutral' NZRU-funded role.

He said he had just finished Oliver's book and read the Highlanders chapter twice.

"That's my recollection of events, too. I was present at the meeting and Anton did very little talking. One of the only things he said was 'guys, let's remember we've got a game to play this weekend'. Other players were driving that meeting."

All of the players spoken to said that the easy option would have been to say nothing and protect themselves. None has enjoyed the fallout, said Brown, reflecting personally on the breakdown of his relationship with Mains.

"I have spoken to him a couple of times since but I think it's fair to say that our relationship will never be the same again," he said.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY