Burly lock took long road to Maori side

By CHRIS RATTUE

"Who's that Steve Jackson?" someone muttered this week as a flood of Super 12 stars' names filled the television screen.

It was that time when the nation stops to find out the first All Black squad, which means you also learns who is in the Maori side.

Jackson is hardly an unknown. The 29-year-old has played 50 matches for Southland over the past four seasons, so has locked horns with the best.

But still, names like his are not supposed to pop up like this anymore, not with all those fulltime guys around. Twenty-three of the 26-man Maori squad are Super 12ers, with Jackson and fellow locks Reece Robinson and Bryce Williams the odd ones out.

"Journeyman Makes Good", might be the headline for Jackson, who could be jumping against Justin Harrison and friends when the Maori take on Australia in Perth in a fortnight.

"It's the greatest moment in my rugby career," said Jackson, a lock of burly rather than beanpole proportions.

"I'm pretty overwhelmed at the moment ... trying to come to terms with it."

But journeyman wasn't always his handle. He was a star in the Waitakere College side that were rare as co-ed Auckland champions.

As a No 8, he also played alongside Jeff Wilson, Andrew Mehrtens, Justin Marshall and Taine Randell in New Zealand secondary schools' under-17 and under-19 sides.

Auckland coach Graham Henry put Jackson on a path that led to Southland.

Jackson played a couple of matches for Auckland, including as a replacement when they put more than 100 points on East Coast at Ruatoria in a Ranfurly Shield challenge in 1997.

But Henry took Jackson aside at a training and made it clear the names Brooke, Riechelmann and Lafaiali'i would hit the team sheet before his.

"He was straight with me and I appreciated his honesty. He said if I wanted to go further I had to go elsewhere."

Jackson went quite a bit further, to play rugby for Cork in Ireland. Then his former Auckland Colts coach, Bob Telfer, who had become the Southland coach, made a call.

"Typical Aucklander," recalls Jackson, "I didn't even know where Invercargill was."

Jackson and his wife, Penny, who has represented New Zealand in touch football, moved lock, stock and barrel to Invercargill, rather than returning to Auckland and Jackson playing for Southland as an import.

Jackson quickly found a warm welcome in the Deep South, and the arrival of Leicester Rutledge as Southland's coach a couple of years ago further honed his game.

It has been quite year for Jackson.

He and Penny are expecting their first child about the time the Maori team will be on tour for games against New South Wales, Queensland and Australia.

And last year they moved to Christchurch, where Jackson is the branch manager of a family-owned packaging business and plays for Glenmark, whose most famous rugby son is Alex Wyllie.

While most of the Maori players won selection through deeds at places such as Ellis Park and Jade Stadium, Jackson's final trial came at West Melton, with a couple of Maori scouts watching him play for North Canterbury against Ellesmere in a sub-union shield game. And after four years of battling at Maori trials, and with other top locks unavailable, his name was finally read out on Monday.

"To think I might have given it away when Graham Henry gave me the bad news five or six years ago," he says.

"It still hasn't sunk in."