Aaron Cruden is the kind of guy you want on your team. Always has been. He's the kind of guy who could be dealt an off-suit 7-2 and still somehow make a bet, and make it pay. He's been dealt worse hands than this, too, and he's still sitting at the final table.
On Monday morning he was in the Chiefs gym, a torture chamber of weights and machines made all the more unendurable by Liam Messam's choice in music. Affable Chiefs bagman Donnie Shergold, 77, has to listen to it all day, which is not helping his hearing. On the flipside, he's probably now the most knowledgeable septuagenarian in matters of modern hip hop. The day he drives in to Chiefs HQ in an Escalade, holding a bottle of Crystal, might be the day he has to call it quits.
Cruden sat smiling on a bench as he prepared for an upper body workout. His left leg was heavily bandaged, the white fabric wrapped from thigh to calf, hiding his knee. A few hours later there would be no hiding from the truth. An MRI scan would reveal a rupture in his anterior cruciate ligament. He would require surgery.
There is no doubt that on that Monday morning in the Chiefs gym, a few hours before his date with cold hard facts, Cruden already knew the truth. Professional athletes are as attuned to their bodies as racing drivers are attuned to their cars. They know how things are supposed to feel, and they know full well when things don't feel right. Cruden smiled all the same, made small talk. "It's a bit of a niggle, isn't it?" he said. It would have been quintessentially rhetorical if not for the fact it was the understatement of the year.
Outside, the Chiefs went through their morning skills session: short and sharp - 30 minutes on the grass. Outside, on the dewy turf of Ruakura, Andrew Horrell and the McKenzie brothers went through their paces. No time to dwell on things, it was business as usual for everyone else. The public's reaction to Cruden's prognosis was the same. No time to dwell on things; who's next?
