Head of the world's biggest family

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Selwyn Pearson was once offered some inspirational words by a headmaster. Rugby league, he was told, was "a game played, followed and supported by low-life".

To reinforce this message, a teenage Pearson had it caned into him - six of the best instead of the usual four strokes of the cane for the "terrible sin" of wagging a school game of rugby union to play league. It occurred to him during that caning that freedom of choice was a concept worth standing up for.

The two extra whacks were for being "a smart alec". Summoned for his punishment, Pearson opened his mouth to object: "I can't believe you are going to whip me for playing sport."

The smart alec grew up to become chairman of the NZ Rugby League.

At Takapuna Grammar in the 60s, rugby was, and remains, the national game. To throw a sickie to play league was not only an offence punishable by caning, it was as incomprehensible as an act of treason.

That caning did Pearson a sort of favour. It awoke in him a sense of outrage.

"Those were the biases in the game that I found particularly hurtful. I actually found that quite offensive." And, he says, "the biases are still there today".

If anyone can break down the final barriers to league - and if anyone could sell the pleasures of the game to a newly arrived alien - it is Pearson.

He's on the phone when we arrive at the Rugby League's scungy headquarters in Penrose. He'll be pleased to hear it described thus. He runs a tight ship: "We buy our own drinks."

He has never seen the Warriors play in Australia. He can't afford to pay for himself to go. And you get the distinct impression he'd rather sell his own kidney to pay for new shirts for a struggling team in the regions than take money out of the NZRL's coffers to pay for a nice little trip for himself.

Nobody is more aware than Pearson that, despite the growing glamour and sex appeal of the game - thanks to the profile of the Warriors - league's point of difference is still its working-class roots.

Recognition of those roots is relevant "simply because I wouldn't want the regions that are working so hard saying, 'Those fat cats up in Auckland, rolling around in all this money, don't care about us'."

You could not accuse Pearson of not caring. He is - and there is no other word, despite his bristling moustache and the way he sits, rigidly, with his arms crossed - an absolute darling.

We have followed his voice up the hall where he's been sounding a little bit grumpy with someone on the phone. "I wasn't swearing, was I?" he grins.

He looks as though he might be really quite good at swearing. In an affectionate sort of way. He calls me "petal" and insists, against my protests, on measuring me up for a Kiwis shirt. He's not attempting to buy a nice story.

Look, he says, he hates doing this sort of stuff. "You never see me in the paper." He's not quite sure how he got himselfinto this but he's keen to help. Look, hesays, "not to teach you how to suckeggs", but he's written a few likely questions I might like to ask.

It doesn't really matter whose questions are asked. Pearson might hate doing this sort of stuff, but he loves talking. The crossed arms are more armour against the camera than the tape deck.

And, delightfully, he immediately begins censoring his questions. The one about financial turnaround? "I'm going to cancel that because I think that's gloating."

He won't let me tell you what his salary is (about tuppence ha'penny) "oh because that's for Brownie points and I'm not interested in those". He does get a president's honorarium (about tuppence ha'penny) but he says he usually manages to find a way to give some of it back.

What Pearson really likes to talk about are the kids, the 6-year-olds, who are the future Warriors. He loves the Warriors, don't get him wrong. "I'm very proud of our Warriors."

He wants the kids to be proud of them too. His great dream is "I want to be able to go up to a kid and say, 'Who's the best halfback in New Zealand? Instead of them saying 'Justin Marshall', I want them to say 'Stacey Jones'."

But he is not interested in promoting rivalry between the codes - he learned that lesson early.

Another of his questions: "What is rugby league?" He's decided "that league is a wonderful creche network throughout the country, run basically by volunteers doing a really neat job of looking after our kids".

While league provides another "pathway" for those kids, "they're not all going to get a professional career at Super 12 or the All Blacks. I look at the kids playing now for the Warriors and I've known most of these kids since they were children. It's enormously rewarding for me seeing them blossom, making a good living out of rugby league."

So, "the thing is, they're not my kids. They're not your kids. They're our kids." Union, he says, "is doing the same job as NZ Rugby League: looking after our children".

Pearson was one of those 6-year-olds. He discovered league long before the attempt to whack it out of him.

He turned up at the wrong field one Saturday morning, in search of his union team. He was a tall, skinny kid who played in the lineouts. Then he got his hands on that league ball and "I had the absolute time of my life. I'd never had so many runs with the ball. I was sold".

His mother tells a story about that game which ended with her 6-year-old asking the coach if he could take the ball home for the night. "I said I wanted to sleep with it because I'd never actually held it before for so long."

He stuck with union - all of his mates played - but he'd sneak away occasionally to a league game.

He was "a reasonably lonely little boy", with a "darling mother" - who taught him to knit at the age of 2 - who was very unwell and a workaholic property developer father. He got "farmed around - just a little kid screaming out for a cuddle".

In league Pearson found a big new family. "The game was family, whanau oriented. Maori and league have such amazing synergies. And we were all the same colour because we all had the same football jersey on."

Now he has "the biggest family in the world. I've got more brothers and sisters and mums and dads and grandparents than I ever felt possible".

Pearson has had hurt in his own family: "The rotten, terrible, probably two of the most savage blows in the world in having buried two of my children."

But when he says, "I know I'm going on about the kids quite a lot", he means the future Warriors and past Pearsons.

He has examined his reasons for his ongoing connection with league. "To start getting over my losses and being around children wasn't good enough reason." He worried, "Jesus, I'm substituting these children for my own children, maybe I'm using them".

But he's worked through that and arrived at a simple and honest Pearson reason, one he finds will do him: "I'm doing this for no other reason than I care about kids. And that's got to be the very, very, best reason of all."

Pearson, with his horror of gloating, can be allowed one little preen. Last November, at an awards ceremony, he sat with the Prime Minister - in case you were wondering, "she knows the game all right".

He thought: "I would have loved to ring the headmaster to say, 'By God, I wish you could see me now'."

Look where hanging out with the low-lifes can take a boy.