Justin Marshall and Zinzan Brooke celebrate as the All Blacks win 33-26 over the Springboks at Pretoria, in 1996. Photo / Paul Estcourt.
Justin Marshall and Zinzan Brooke celebrate as the All Blacks win 33-26 over the Springboks at Pretoria, in 1996. Photo / Paul Estcourt.
OPINION:
I first met Stephen Jones, the London Sunday Times rugby writer, in 1987 at the first Rugby World Cup. We’ve both been to every one since and I can report that away from his keyboard he’s remained a likeable, friendly guy.
But once he starts writing, there’s always roomfor a snipe at New Zealand. Go way back to the ’87 Cup and he summed up the All Blacks’ victory like this: “Not a single person in Britain begrudges the All Blacks their win. More than a few have paused to wonder if they had much fun achieving it.”
This week Stephen was unequivocal in the belief that “the greatest No 8 to play rugby” is Welsh international Taulupe Faletau. Faletau’s family moved to Wales from Tonga in 1997 when he was a primary schoolkid, after his father, Kuli, a test lock for Tonga, was scouted by Ebbw Vale.
In Stephen’s eyes almost all the good footy is played in the Northern Hemisphere; in the drawn 2017 All Blacks-Lions series, he claims Faletau “obliterated Kieran Read”. The only back rowers he rates close to Faletau are Welshman Mervyn Davies from the 1970s and English internationals Lawrence Dellaglio and Billy Vunipola.
Given that in 2020 Stephen didn’t place Richie McCaw in his top-10 test captains, I suspect that the man who grew up in Newport, Wales, may have been scarred for life by being in Brisbane in ’87 when the All Blacks humiliated Wales 49-6 in the World Cup semifinal.
Having spent my childhood in Waihi, I’ve got inbuilt prejudices, too. However, I fully agree that Faletau is brilliant.
But the best ever? Please step forward Zinzan Brooke, who in 1996 in South Africa reached a level that to me makes him an immortal.
Faletau is as tough as nails, and, as Stephen notes, has had to overcome some serious injuries to stay at the top level.
How tough was Brooke, who played 58 tests between 1987 and 1997? At 14, he was shearing 300 sheep in a nine-hour working day, alongside his mother, Hine, a professional shearer.
New Zealand All Black Zinzan Brooke is tackled by South Africa's Francois Pienaar. Photo / Ross Setford
I first met him in 1982 when he was 17, the youngest entrant in a gravel-shoveling contest at a Henderson hardware store, sponsored by the radio station I was working for. There were about 100 contestants, many of whom defined “hard bitten”: timber workers, road builders, bushmen from Tokoroa, most with muscles on muscles and tattoos on tattoos, all grimly determined to take home the $1000 prize. We all watched in astonishment as the lanky kid from Puhoi cleaned them up.
Battling through injury?
In 1995, playing in a shadow All Blacks side disguised as the Harlequins in Hamilton, Brooke tore an Achilles tendon and a calf muscle.
The first game of the World Cup was just six weeks away. To help his recovery his future wife, Ali Imm, set an alarm clock to go off every two hours for the first 48 hours after the injury to ice the leg. He spent time in a decompression chamber at the Devonport Naval base. He wasn’t joking when he said in a much-played television promotion during the Cup that if he’d been told putting a fried egg on his leg would help, he would have done it.
A month after the injury, Brooke stepped onto the all-weather track at the East Coast Bays stadium. His task was to run for 10 minutes without stopping. He knew there would be pain. Telling himself to ignore the desperate urge to limp – or even to stop – he got through the test. He went to the World Cup, and played every important game.
Faletau is a big man. But at 1.89m he’s a fraction shorter than Brooke, and at 110kg he’s two kilos lighter. On attack and defence, Faletau is a brick wall in boots. But Brooke wasn’t a prancer and dancer either.
On the triumphant 1996 tour of South Africa, Brooke was a colossus. In the last moments of the crucial series-deciding test in Pretoria, with the All Blacks clinging to a 30-26 lead, Brooke made a scything, game-saving tackle on a charging Ruben Kruger, a steely flanker they called The Silent Assassin.
Then there’s the X Factor, which in Brooke’s case was having the nerve, and skill, to kick long-range drop kicks.
With five minutes of play to go on that heart-stopping afternoon in Pretoria in ’96 the All Blacks were ahead by just one point. Brooke screamed for the ball from halfback Justin Marshall, and calmly dropped a 40-metre goal. A risk? Nah, Brooke would laugh afterwards. He’d been working at dropped goals since he was a kid trying to hit totara trees on the family farm.
With all due respect to Faletau, I’ll rate him ahead of Brooke the day I see him drop a goal at a key moment in a major test.
