All Blacks' new leader

EUGENE BINGHAM discovers there is more to new All Black captain Anton Oliver than meets the eye.

He's a southern man to the core yet he owns apartments on Auckland's waterfront.

He's struggling to learn to play guitar with sausage fingers more used to gripping a rugby ball at the head of a lineout.

And he has nearly finished his second degree at Otago University, as well as having led the infamous scarfie life.

But there's a sensitive side to the man, shown in the way he has befriended three seriously ill children.

This man, Anton Oliver, is about to lead the All Blacks into battle in what is likely to be a strenuous season.

As the new captain, it will be his responsibility to stoke up enough All Black power to overcome seven nations. Somehow, Oliver has to rally up a side going through a bad cycle. He must engineer a better than 50-50 record in the all-important confrontations with Australia and South Africa.

In rugby circles, confidence in Oliver is unanimous. Described as the solitary world-class forward in the All Black pack, he has a reputation for toughness. Old television film screened on Sunday night showed him battering an Auckland opponent with a bone-crushing punch in a Super 12 game several years ago. While it's been some years since he used his fists like that, these days he is no less up-front or formidable.

Oliver is no thug, however.

Southland sharemilkers Gaylene and Justin Pigou know the 25-year-old not just as a rugby player but as the caring man who has become friends with their 10-year-old son, Ryan.

"Anton was a real God-send," says Gaylene. "He's pulled Ryan through some really tough times."

Ryan was diagnosed with leukaemia in October 1999. He met Oliver when the burly hooker bowled into the oncology ward at Dunedin Hospital to see if he could cheer up some kids.

"When Ryan was really, really sick, Anton was there for him even if it was just popping into the hospital to say hello," says Gaylene. Over the summer, Oliver stayed at the Pigou's farm for the weekend. "Ryan just loved it - they raced around on the four-wheeled bike. Ryan wouldn't let Anton drive - he wanted to show him around."

Last month, Oliver appeared alongside Ryan in the Otago Daily Times newspaper. He had reluctantly agreed to make their friendship public, only because it was an opportunity to raise awareness for the Child Cancer Foundation appeal day. It's something he finds hard to talk about, as if fearful that people might judge him as trying to make himself out a saint.

In truth, Oliver's commitment to the cause, and several other child sickness charities, was much deeper than just making himself available for a picture opportunity. He has similar bonds with another young boy with cancer, and a girl with cystic fibrosis.

"I had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago and I suddenly realised that I'm only going to have a profile for so long, and once I'm dropped or finished or gone, no one's going to give a stuff about me," says Oliver.

"So while I've got this profile, I might as well do something positive with it."

He hopes his influence has made a difference to the trio. He knows they have made a difference to his life.

"It's amazing the strength these little guys have. You think you've got it bad and then you go and see these kids - the things they have to overcome ... you draw strength from that."

Listening to him, it becomes obvious that Oliver is an ardent observer of people. Just as he has with his three little friends, Oliver picks out the best traits of the people who surround him and uses them to strengthen himself.

Throughout our conversation, as in the countless other interviews he has given since last Sunday's All Black announcement, Oliver would dwell on the fine points of the people he admires.

Of out-going captain Todd Blackadder, he says: "He is a bloody good human being and he's got so many good qualities. I've learnt so much, nothing to do with rugby, seeing how he operates and deals with things."

And what about his mum, Marilyn?

"Yeah, mum" he smiles as he thinks of how best to express the depth of feeling welled up by the question. "She's a classic mum. She cares about her boys. Her whole life has been devoted to the three of us. It was such an unselfish act."

Oliver was born in Invercargill on September 9, 1975. At the time, Marilyn and her husband, Frank, had been married for six years and already had two boys, Mark, now aged 30, and Brent, 27.

The family moved to Tuatapere for a while then shifted to the riverside Otago town of Milton.

By this stage, all three boys had begun their love affair with rugby. With a dad who was an All Black forward, how could they not?

Frank Oliver, lately the coach of the Blues Super 12 side, was one of the 1970s most daunting figures in international rugby with a hard-nut reputation. In 1978, he captained New Zealand for three tests.

Not long after that, though, Marilyn and the boys moved away, leaving Frank behind. Anton was aged about six when his parents divorced and his mum won custody of the boys. The four shifted to Blenheim where Marilyn's parents lived. This way, she could work as a nurse and know that the boys would have someone to care for them after school.

Oliver says his mum was always very careful to shower the boys with equal amounts of love and kindness. She still resists singling any of them out. "She's one of those mums who, say if she spent $10 on me at Christmas, she'd spend $10 on the other two," says Oliver.

Anton drives to Blenheim to spend Christmas with his mum each year. She's still a nurse, at Wairau Hospital's accident and emergency ward.

Brent has also become a professional rugby player - this year he's spending his second season playing in Japan. Mark's rugby career never recovered from a knee injury when he was young.

Oliver's rise to rugby prominence began while he was head boy of Marlborough Boys College in 1993. He made his first-class debut as a schoolboy, turning out for the Marlborough side in a game against local rivals Nelson Bays. Marlborough lost, but young Oliver scored a try that day.

It was his only match for Marlborough. Oliver missed the following NPC season because of commitments to schoolboy sides and the New Zealand Under 19s team coached by his dad. It was the beginning of increasing rugby contact between the pair.

"Dad has been more of an influence in these latter years. Now that we've both been involved in professional rugby, we've both been undergoing the same sort of pressures. We throw a lot of ideas at each other and chew the fat, more or less."

Oliver jun doesn't dwell much on the historical significance of the fact he and Frank are the first father and son to be All Black captains. "I don't think it really means much to either of us. It's something for guys with glasses stuck away in a library with dusty books."

Father and son do have plenty in common - they fish and dive together and, for a while, co-owned a promotions company.

Like many of his Marlborough school mates, Oliver headed off to Otago University, though he was not sure what he would do.

The first year, he started a health science course, then switched track to study for a chemistry major. He didn't last long.

"The time commitments started getting heavier, plus the content was getting full on.

"Also, I had this moment of clarity there where I was sitting in a lecture theatre when I looked around and everyone was looking very studious and not quite like me so I thought, 'What am I doing here?"'

Is this sort of anecdote just Oliver's way of making himself sound not as smart as he is? Oliver always tries to talk himself down - not in a negative sense but just that he doesn't want to make himself sound particularly special. As far as his intelligence goes, he's perhaps mindful that front row forwards are not traditionally seen as, well, scholarly.

Whatever he says, Oliver's way with words and his academic record are evidence there's plenty going on behind his battle-scarred, deep-set eyes.

As well as his physical education degree, Oliver is one paper off a second degree, finance.

He has business nous too. Company Office records show he owns three businesses which have invested in apartments in swish complexes right on Auckland's Viaduct Harbour.

Not that he sees himself moving north - ever. Oliver lives alone in a house overlooking the sea in north Dunedin. He loves his adopted home city and is adapting to life as a respectable resident rather than a rowdy student.

As far as scarfie life goes, Oliver has been there, done that. Lived in flats with countless others. Partied hard. They gave him the nickname "Hatchet', apparently because of the shape of his head. For whatever reason, the name has stuck.

Former Otago captain and hooker David Latta, who took Oliver in as an understudy, met the new All Black captain in his wilder days when Oliver was among a core of students in the Otago squad.

"They were living out of each other's pockets, flatting together with six or seven people in one house," says Latta. "The students didn't have the money to drive everywhere so they used to arrive [at practice] together, about eight in a car." More often than not, Oliver could be seen squeezing out of the back of mad-cap team mate Mark Ellis' big, old Chev with the others.

For all his fun, though, Latta believes that Oliver has always had incredible drive.

"Anton has always wanted to achieve, both on the field and off it," says Latta. "He's got a good head on him ... he's loyal and he's dedicated to the cause whether that's on or off the field."

While there have been questions about the consistency of his line-out throws, there is no doubt Oliver has the respect of his teammates and coach Wayne Smith.

"The first thing is he's clearly a player in form," says Smith. "He's a player others will follow, he's an intelligent thinker about the game and I know he's the right choice."

Oliver was first called into the All Blacks in 1995 when he was flown to Australia for what would become one of the most infamous moments in rugby history. He sat on the bench for the Bledisloe Cup match, but was in among it when the players were whisked away afterwards and offered lucrative contracts by the rebel World Rugby Corporation. That evening set off a chain of events which culminated in rugby turning professional.

His first test cap came when he ran on as a bloodbin replacement for All Black great Sean Fitzpatrick during the June 1997 test against Fiji. He was picked in the starting line-up for the first time a year later against England at his home ground of Carisbrook. Unwittingly, he played a key role in that test, when England lock Danny Grewcock stomped on Oliver's head and was sent off in the 30th minute, leaving the All Blacks an easy run to victory.

He has since won 29 caps and played in the 1999 World Cup, when he suffered the most embarrassing moment of his career. Soon after his arrival in Britain, Oliver took one too many tablets for a sinus and ear infection. The dosage put him over the allowable limit and he failed a drugs test, risking a ban from the tournament. Luckily for him, a World Cup judicial tribunal accepted his explanation and he was cleared to play.

It was a humbling and humiliating experience that has probably contributed to the self-deprecating behaviour he displays even now.

Gaylene Pigou remembers the way Oliver began apologising to the kids when he walked into Dunedin hospital.

"He kept saying, 'I'm sorry I'm not one of the famous ones [All Blacks,]"' says Gaylene. "Ryan looked at him and says, 'I know who you are,' but Anton kept saying, 'Oh, I'm not one of the fab five or anything."'

Now, he's poised to become the foremost All Black of this season's crop.