Jerome Kaino has finally approached the promise the All Black selectors first saw in him.
Expectation detached itself from Jerome Kaino some years ago. He's been quite thankful for that.
He toured Europe with the 2004 All Blacks on the back of one Super 12 campaign for the Blues where he had hardly played.
The All Black coaches had picked him in 2004 as a
raw-boned 21-year-old whose potential was obvious.
They made it clear he was there for the experience, to give him some insight into a future that could be his if he progressed the way they felt he could.
It made life hard for him when he walked back into the Blues' changing room in 2005.
"It was hard for me to gain acceptance," says Kaino. "I had played a few Super Rugby games but I hadn't even played in the NPC and I was an All Black. I didn't even know myself whether I was good enough.
"It was always in the back of my mind that I hadn't done anything. I hadn't proven myself.
"I felt the weight of expectation in 2005 and I really struggled with that pressure and we saw what happened that year ..."
He's possibly being unduly harsh - Kaino played eight Super 12 games, two for the Junior All Blacks and eight for Auckland that year. But he never looked All Black material.
There was his obvious athleticism and skills on the ball, but it was never put together in a total package.
While he might have felt that he had the eyes of the nation upon him, public expectation was not as intense as he perceived. The selectors had been careful not to over-promise.
There was intrigue about Kaino but much of it died when he didn't fire in 2005 and then missed much of the 2006 Super 14 through shoulder surgery.
He was out in the cold when he was surprisingly picked to make his test debut against Ireland in June 2006 and failed to make an impression.
At that stage, he was all but written off. The prevailing view was that the selectors had taken a risk in 2004 and maybe seen something that wasn't there.
That seemed to be the view from within the camp as well. Kaino didn't retain his All Black place for the Tri Nations.
There was no special treatment, or dedication to selecting him to save face for taking a punt in 2004.
As hard as it was for Kaino to take, being left out of the All Blacks for the remainder of 2006 and then for all of 2007 was a huge blessing.
He played every minute of Super 14 in 2007 and, with no one expecting much from him, he started to look more like a test-class loose forward.
His form improved. Some of the looseness came out of his game and he found a harder edge.
He earned his All Black recall in 2008. In the absence of Jerry Collins, Kaino was the only player who had shown the same sort of physical presence and intensity.
He fired into the South Africans in the opening game of the Tri Nations and, for the first time in four years, looked the real deal.
His only fault was his tendency to play a big game one week and then drift the next.
At Super 14 level at least, he's fixed that. This season he's been the standout. There has been no dip from one week to the next and Kaino is in the best form of his career.
"I'm really enjoying it," he says. "I have been a lot more consistent than I have been in the past.
"We had a chat at the start of the season and the coaches and I decided that it would be best if I concentrated on being a leader on the field in terms of my actions - to lead by example."
