Reuben Thorne - the player who came in from the cold

Reuben Thorne leads the All Blacks against Canada during their Rugby World Cup match in Melbourne in 2003. Picture / Brett Phibbs.

For the self-styled world's most ordinary man, Reuben Thorne has, in an indecently short period of time, managed two extraordinary feats.

First, he's proved All Black coach Graham Henry wrong, earning a recall to the All Blacks at an age when most are planning retirement on the back of a lucrative contract abroad. Second, and more remarkably, he's managed to change the public perception of him by not changing at all; by sticking resolutely to the ideals and standards he's always lived his life by.

New Zealand's hyper-critical rugby public is slowly realising that the values Thorne brought to the national sport are not as unattractive as they may have first appeared. Where once words like invisible, ineffectual and, yes, boring were used to describe the utility forward, they're now being replaced by workmanlike, loyal and even admirable.

It's not a love affair, let's call it a respect affair.

For all Thorne cares, you can call him what you like. Anyone who has ever witnessed one of his teeth-pulling press conferences during his ill-fated tenure as All Blacks captain will know that words have never been an important tool of communication for the 31-year-old. When Henry rang to tell him the good news last Monday, Thorne and his wife, Kate, were so "dumbfounded" they just hugged. In fact the only words that matter to him now are these: he's back in black. Still basking in the afterglowof an unexpected recall, Thorne is talking. It's worth listening.

While it's tempting to say he speaks passionately, Thorne's is a voice that rarely shifts an octave or a decibel. It's also tempting to indulge in amateur psychoanalysis, and label it a typical defence mechanism of the New Zealand male, particularly the New Zealand rugby-playing male - never betray your feelings.

But, Thorne insists, there's a much simpler, more mundane explanation for his lack of vocal animation.

"It's my personality more than anything," he says. "I've always been very quiet. I've never been one to seek the limelight."

When you're the All Black captain though, the limelight seeks you.

"Even at school we used to call him the ghost. He would just pop up from nowhere. You'd ask who made that tackle? It would always be Reuben." - Jed Rowlands, Reuben Thorne's1st XV coach

When looking for clues as to what shaped that unwavering, unquavering personality, one thing looms large - boarding school. Thorne was Christchurch born but his father's work saw the family move off the mainland when Reuben was young and settle first in small-town Wairarapa and then to a hill country Taranaki beef and sheep farm - somewhere near where the atlas reads Hurleyville and Alton, although they're just names rather than places.

The second of four children, he has three sisters, Thorne was sent to boarding school at traditional, conservative, 1st XV-driven New Plymouth Boys' High School. Jed Rowlands, who endured a short stint as coach of the Auckland Blues before becoming the first high-profile victim of player power, said Thorne's mana in the hostel was evident from his early days at the school though, typically, it was through deeds not words that he became noticed.

"It was obvious to the staff there that he had an uncommon desire to succeed at everything he did from sport to schoolwork," Rowlands said. "Others followed him."

The hostel was very much a sink-or-swim type of environment. Thorne swam.

"Some people hated it, there's no doubt," Thorne says. "It was a bit of an adventure for me. You know, growing up with three sisters I didn't have any brothers so it was a chance to get away and into the city life... if you can call New Plymouth that," he laughs.

"I was off the farm and enjoying a new sort of life.

"You do a lot of growing up in that environment. I'm sure it shaped me in a lot of ways."

When it was time to leave the dorms "99 per cent" of his mates were heading to either Massey or Waikato. Never one to follow the flock, Thorne headed south to resource management at Lincoln.

But while he was making the less than earth-shattering decision to relocate his life to the South Island, rugby was undergoing a seismic revolution. Post-1995 Rugby World Cup there was a new mandate: the fragile plate tectonics that held this 'shamateur' sport in place were shifting. Now, if you were good enough, you could become rich enough - that's enough to divert any aspiring lock-cum-flanker from the charms of the Resource Management Act.

"The rugby side of things took off and all that was put on the back-burner," Thorne says without any hint of regret.

"Nothing you ever do seems good enough. People always want more, no matter what you achieve." - Reuben Thorne 2003

Since his crude demotion from the All Blacks following the 2003 World Cup, where he lost not only the captaincy but his place in the team, Thorne has, publicly anyway, never raged against the slings and arrows.

The 2003 quote, taken in the aftermath of the bloodletting that followed New Zealand's 'premature' exit from the tournament was the closest you'll come to a lament.

At the time he was right, too.

The qualities that made him an attractive choice of captain to then-coach John Mitchell - steadfast, even-keeled, bland - were not the qualities New Zealanders wanted from the man with the second highest-profile job in the country.

The granite-hard but cerebral hooker Anton Oliver or talismanic centre Tana Umaga seemed more natural choices, but Mitchell was swayed both by personal ambivalence towards Oliver, and Thorne's outstanding record at the Crusaders and his no-frills performances for the All Blacks since John Hart called him up in 1999.

The bizarre 2003 campaign is worth close inspection because it was the first time criticism about Thorne seemed to move beyond professional to personal.

"Apart from Reuben Thorne, the pack were magnificent and carried the day in Melbourne." - John Drake following the All Blacks' quarter-final victory over South Africa in 2003

Thorne, was hurt by the failure "but for me '99 was tougher, even though I wasn't the captain or anything. At least in 2003 I was a few years older, a bit more mature and able to handle it a bit better," he recalls. In an earlier interview Thorne told the story of how he was minding his own business in a Christchurch bar when an irate fan got in his face and, to paraphrase politely, said "you let us down".

"In '99 I got home back to Christchurch I just didn't want to go out into the public.

"I didn't want to go into town, I didn't want to go and see anybody or do anything. It was constantly on my mind. I couldn't shake it.

"By 2003 I went into it more aware of what could happen if things didn't work out. That's the risk you take, but I'd rather go into something, try and fail, than to not bother trying at all."

While his coaches went to great lengths to defend Thorne, calling him "the glue" in the pack, the public and media preferred to label him 'The invisible man'.

One newspaper columnist even suggested Thorne should take up tennis because the Davis Cup was the place for non-playing captains.

Rugby players are great ones for trotting out the line that they never read the papers or listen to the radio, but Thorne is not so disingenuous. "In my position you couldn't really help but pick it up," he says.

There were times, Thorne admits now in what seems an unprecedented admission, that he wished he wasn't captain.

"But, you know, you get asked to do a job that's a huge honour and while the coaches were showing faith in me to do it, I thought I had better try to do it as best as I could.

"[But] it's just not in my nature to seek that much attention. I didn't enjoy that side of it at all. I just had to try to deal with it the best I could."

"Thorne, though a genuinely decent human being and a fine player, was unremarkable as a leader and, when it came down to it, so were his side." - Paul Ackford

When the All Blacks lost 22-10 to Australia in that semifinal, Thorne received a typical amount of odium.

The people he felt for were those closest to him, his family. "When it starts to affect them, that's when I get annoyed. But personally I moved on."

But surely there must have been regrets about how the campaign was run? How the All Blacks' bunker mentality managed to alienate everyone but their most loyal fans?

"It's funny, looking back you can probably see a few things that we could have done differently but at the time the amount of planning and preparation that had gone into it - we thought we had things set up to do well.

"In the end the whole perception [of that campaign] hinged on that one result," says Thorne. "But for an intercept try, but for any number of things that happened on that one night it could have all been different. People would have said it was a fantastic [campaign].

"That's the fine line you tread when you're in those situations... ultimately we didn't get it right. We can always say we should have done things differently, but it's a bit pointless really."

Unlike 1999, Thorne had a wife (Kate, the sister of former All Black Andrew Mehrtens) to lean on and, soon after, she would fall pregnant with Angus, now 18 months.

Thorne had heeded the lesson that eluded him four years earlier, and the lesson vast swathes of the New Zealand rugby public have never understood. "I learnt there's things that are more important in life."

It's hard not to slip into cliche here, especially given that you've lived your life in a sporting environment where it is lingua franca, but for Thorne fatherhood really has been a life-changing experience.

"I used to hear guys talking about it all the time when they had kids - that it gave them a different focus when they came home from training or a bad day. It's all true. I now find it a lot harder to be away from home. I miss seeing him."

"He needs to now be a front-runner rather than the glue. He needs to change his style to some extent." - Graham Henry 2004

Thorne was no longer an All Black when Angus was born. Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen, the man who brought him up through the High School Old Boys seniors, Canterbury and Crusaders, put paid to that.

Thorne knew he wasn't going to have the (c) next to his name, but it still hit like a one-two combination when his name wasn't there at all.

Weeks of telling himself that it could happen still provided inadequate padding.

"At that stage I'd been in the team for four years and the longer you're in a team the more connected you become to it and the more meaning it has to you. To finally be told you're no longer part of it. It was hard... it was really tough."

Thorne's (in)famous equanimity was put to the test. "I wasn't angry. If there'd been a clear-cut case that I deserved to be in there, hands down above anyone else, then perhaps I could allow myself to get angry.

"But I always knew there were plenty of other good players. It comes down to a selection choice. Those guys had to make that call.

"I was bitterly disappointed, but I wasn't angry. I was sad. It was bloody hard to take."

When that curtain closed there were few who thought Thorne would wear black again unless it was accompanied by an equal splash of red. Everyone knew what he could do, but also what he couldn't do. He was an old-fashioned forward in a new-fashioned game.

He wasn't required in 2004, or 2005. Why, many wondered, was he still slogging it out in physically demanding but comparatively poorly-paid Super rugby, when he could be coining it in the Northern Hemisphere where the rugby seemed tailormade for him?

Loyal? Dave Dobbyn could have penned his paean to love for Thorne and his relationship with Canterbury.

"It's probably unprecedented what he gives to the game in New Zealand. He brings an obvious effectiveness, and he has a composure, serenity and calmness which rubs off on people around him." - Robbie Deans 2006

It's hard at times for outsiders to understand Canterbury and its citizens. Its relationship with the rest of the country rarely seems symbiotic.

Anybody cursed enough to listen to the strains of talkback radio for any length of time soon realises that for many Cantabrians, the province comes first, the country second. (Auckland rugby great Carlos Spencer and cricketer Adam Parore who have endured the boos at Lancaster Park while playing for their country, would testify to that).

There's a homage to old-school-tie conservatism that runs strongthrough the city and its nicelymanicured surrounds.

For some, that's akin to paradise.

Thorne has cornered his little slice of paradise on a lifestyle block just north of Christchurch.

Canterbury has treated him well and Thorne has treated Canterbury very, very well.

"Playing overseas didn't interest me. Playing here for Canterbury and the Crusaders is still very important to me. I'm just very happy here.

"I've been overseas and been to these places so going for the 'experience' wasn't something that motivated me. As a financial option, yes, it would have been better to go and I've had some very good offers, but that's not what drives me. It doesn't motivate me at all.

"I sat down and thought about it but it was simple - I couldn't picture myself going and playing for a club or another team that had no meaning for me. I couldn't picture myself wanting to jump out of bed every day to go and train with a group of guys, a coach, or a province that didn't inspire me.

"That's why I stayed. Why would I go somewhere where's there less than what I already have?"

"Asking him to go into the Juniors, even as captain, means he wasn't just dropped, he was dropped from a great height." - Richard Loe

The drums began beating for Thorne during this year's Super 14, though they were somewhat muffled outside Canterbury.

But when he was named captain of the ironically 'branded' Junior All Blacks, an assignment he snubbed, nobody would have predicted the ending. (Particularly when Kate rang talkback radio with a rather cryptically coded call that suggested Henry's communication wasn't all it should have been.)

His loyalty has been rewarded and no matter how nonplused you were about his merits as a player, or even his merits as a man, it was hard not to get the feeling that when the words "Reuben Thorne, Canterbury" were read out in the All Black lineup on Tuesday, there a few wrongs being righted.

Thorne was being recognised for the talents he possessed rather than vilified for the talents genetics never gifted him. A triumph of perspiration over inspiration.

The man who had two years earlier told him his services were no longer required had finally brought himback into the fold and back in from the cold.

"He played to a very high standard. We haven't found anybody who played better than him in the three international fixtures we've had." - Graham Henry