Lee Stensness: Tour about fun too

COMMENT

On their four-match tour, the All Blacks are visiting some of the most interesting cities in the world - Rome, Cardiff, Paris and London. My hope is that they get to see some of the sights these cities have to offer, for these are some of the best experiences of a player's career. I hope so - but I fear today's tours are higher in intensity than "interest" for the tourists.

When I toured as an All Black in 1993 to England in Scotland on a six-week, 13-match tour, we got to see some of the great sights and had the opportunity to meet some memorable people. We were amateur then so "tiki-tours" were part of the deal. For today's All Blacks, I imagine touring is much more focused, with match preparation more thorough and detailed. There remains, however, a definite need for the players to have a life on tour outside of travelling and training.

When touring, coaches and senior players often talk of the need to get "tour balance", which is an attempt to achieve the correct equilibrium between focusing on the goal and purpose of the tour - to win every match - and enjoying and experiencing the host country and indeed touring itself. It can be a fine line between not enough fun and having too much. Results are the barometer. There's a saying: winners have fun, losers have meetings.

The highlights of a rugby tour or career don't necessarily happen on the field - and I am not referring to Kit Fawcett's infamous quote that in South Africa in 1970 the All Blacks were looking to score more off the field than on it, although some of that can go on. The opportunities that All Black rugby provides to meet truly significant and famous people can be more memorable than any recollections about the actual 80 minutes on the field. These memories are much better for yarns in retirement years anyway. People don't want to hear how great you played but they do like to hear stories involving well-known people and places.

For me, meeting Princess Diana at Buckingham Palace during the 1993 All Black tour to England and Scotland is the most cherished, retold and indeed glamorous, memory of my career. We, the touring All Blacks and the British Lions who had toured New Zealand earlier in the year, were invited to a reception at the palace. Once the formalities were over, everyone broke up in small groups, as per instructions, so that the royals could move around the groups and chat.

When Princess Diana was chatting with our cluster, we found her to be even more beautiful in person as well as very friendly and down to earth. She took it easily in her stride when Marc Ellis asked her what she was doing on the coming Thursday afternoon after we had finished training. Another abiding memory of that occasion was seeing Norm Hewitt, Brian Moore (the Lions and England hooker), and Her Majesty the Queen locked in deep conversation. I remember thinking how similar in stature they all were. Birds of a feather? Perhaps not.

Other players will mention meeting Nelson Mandela as a career highlight, I didn't have that opportunity, which was a shame. The opportunity that I did have, and which I rue missing to this day, was turning down the chance to meet Muhammad Ali in Edinburgh on the same 1993 tour.

The chance to meet Ali came on the day before one of the midweek games I played in, and I decided not to allow myself to be distracted from the match. Tour balance I thought to myself, rugby is the focus.

But I should have gone. I can't remember a single thing about that match but I'd still be talking about Ali, like I still am about Diana.