OPINION
One of the most difficult things for any public figure - like, say, the captain of the All Blacks - is enduring the slings, arrows and barbs from a demanding public and media.
One of the most difficult things for any sportswriter is to criticise that same public figure based on performance, knowing full well that the player involved is, by the very fact of appointment as All Black skipper, a decent man with real leadership qualities.
Sam Cane’s retirement from international rugby brought those two contrasting, but allied, perspectives into sharper focus this week.
Cane’s job: to win. Sportswriter’s job (or part thereof): to comment publicly on the performance of the country’s leading sports team and its leader, either mirroring the feelings of the fans or informing the same.
From what other source does an objective, third-party view arise?
When winning doesn’t happen, criticism inevitably does. Cane’s last coach, Ian Foster, brought that up when hailing Cane’s career:
“There’s times that it hurt him, I think he’s expressed that. There were times he was a bit bewildered by it. There’s times where it’s almost double standards in some ways.
“Not all All Blacks are outstanding in every single Super Rugby game and Super Rugby campaign.”
Fair enough. For all sportswriters - including this column - who’ve taken a crack or two at Cane, there is an inevitable twinge of guilt at such comments.
By any measure, Cane’s career immediately brings to mind the word “brave”. Never was there any comment about lack of courage. Not many would keep playing rugby after a broken neck.
He literally put it all on the line.
Anyone who has played rugby knows instinctively they would follow someone like Cane. Not just in a leadership sense but in an on-the-field sense too.
He’s the kind of player to shadow closely in a side without the ball; you know his heavy hit might dislodge the ball and create havoc for the opposition. He is a player’s player – the sort of teammate who makes the others feel secure and confident, just knowing he is there.
Cane’s problem was not just succeeding two admired All Black captains, Richie McCaw and Kieran Read; it was that a large slice of the rugby world believed he wasn’t the best No 7 in New Zealand – selected as the best captain.
Unfortunately, the nasty jibe by Irish loose forward Peter O’Mahony (“You’re just a s*** Richie McCaw”) as the Irish beat the All Blacks in a series for the first time gained more currency than anyone would have liked.
It’s the media which carries this stuff – but it is exactly what was said.
The media also carried the taunting rejoinder from Brodie Retallick to O’Mahony (“Four more years”, plus some colourful adjectives) as the All Blacks dumped the Irish out of the last World Cup, continuing their woeful record in that tournament and ending O’Mahony’s World Cup career.
Cane’s performance in that match was the height of his career.
If it was green and had legs, it went down. It was a predatory, hunter-killer display that ranks up with the very best performances of any All Blacks No 7.
The only problem was, it was followed by what started to be a similar display in the second – until he got his tackle on Jesse Kriel wrong and was sent off, a first in a World Cup final and the first captain to be so dishonoured.
My bet is that history will look back on this period of rugby’s existence and will conclude there were far too many unfair dismissals as the game sought to protect players - and itself - from head injuries and all the legal ramifications.
Split-second decisions, huge men running at breakneck speed, collisions that happen too fast for adjustment - the deck is stacked, isn’t it?
Cane was expelled for an infraction that would, in past rugby years, not even have cost his team a penalty. This time, it cost them 50 minutes with 14 men against the most formidable foe in world rugby.
Some say it cost them the World Cup and Foster’s glory as a much-criticised coach who might otherwise have achieved ultimate redemption on the biggest stage.
The All Blacks could have, and maybe should have, still won. That it didn’t happen will, as Cane himself says, stay with him (and his All Black brothers) forever.
In terms of captaincy, the only (flawed) metric we have to assess success is the win record – which doesn’t have context like opponents, frequency and other elements.
Cane’s win record is 66 per cent (27 tests), well down on other skippers with more than 20 tests in charge: McCaw (89.1 per cent), Reuben Thorne (87.0 per cent), Tana Umaga (85.7 per cent), Kieran Read (84.6 per cent) and Sean Fitzpatrick (80.43 per cent).
Bottom line: Cane sometimes battled for respect from those outside the team, but won the admiration of his All Blacks coaches and his colleagues.
That’s the only real measurement he needs - the rest, coming from us, is as someone once said, just noise.
Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic and Commonwealth Games and more.
Anna Keogh and her husband Kyle were told they'd never conceive their own children.