Devine moves from a sleepy town to stardom

Australian Colt Steve Devine was feeling pretty good about his rugby future. It was early 1998, he had just celebrated his 22nd birthday and, as halfback for the Australia under-21 team, he was clearly seen as a Wallaby prospect.

He had turned up to watch a Waratahs Super 12 home game and seen the team's second-string halfback, Sam Payne, sidelined with what was obviously a severe knee injury.

After the match, Devine chatted to a physiotherapist and was told that Payne had damaged his cruciate ligaments and could be out of action for up to a year. Perhaps Devine would get the nod as Payne's replacement.

His opportunity came later in the season when the Waratahs' regular halfback, Chris Whitaker, was on tour in Scotland with the Wallabies and Devine was brought into the squad to cover the halfback position.

Devine trained with the squad for a month and got only about five minutes on the field, but that was long enough to make up his mind. Rugby would be his career.

"I absolutely loved the whole atmosphere of professional rugby and I decided I was going to do everything I could to be right up there," recalls Devine.

He signed a contract with the Waratahs for the rest of 1998 but then, just two weeks later, an offer came from New Zealand.

Would he play first-division rugby for Auckland in the NPC competition, replacing Ofisa (Junior) Tonu'u, who was on tour with the All Blacks?

Ten years before he received that offer, Devine admits, he would have struggled to identify who the All Blacks were or, for that matter, anything much at all about the game of rugby.

His home was Boggabri, a sleepy inland New South Wales country town of 800 people, with a ribbon main street (blink and you're through it) six hours north-west of Sydney.

Devine's father and uncles had all been fairly useful league players in their time and that was young Steve's game, along with the odd soccer match which he played at primary school.

At 13, Devine was sent to Sydney as a boarder at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill.

St Joseph's is Australia's most famous rugby breeding-ground, boasting 49 Wallabies from its ranks to date, including Matt Burke, who was three years Devine's senior at school.

St Joseph's and boarding-school life were overwhelming experiences for the shy, skinny little country boy. As a traditional GPS (Great Public School), St Joseph's didn't countenance league and so Devine put his name down to play soccer.

He switched to rugby under pressure from his peers and had, as his first coach, Matt Williams, who would later coach him in the Waratahs squad.

But rugby as a game was a mystery to him and he lacked the build to play it well, he feared.

"I didn't take to it straight away. I was a small, timid winger trying to understand what was going on and it wasn't until I was 15 and playing at inside centre for the under-16 C team that I really started to enjoy it."

Two years on, in 1994 and his final year at school, Devine played for St Joseph's first XV throughout its centenary year of rugby. It was a magnificent send-off for the boy from Boggabri.

St Joseph's, affectionately known as Joey's, went through the season undefeated, with crowds of up to 20,000 at major matches.

Devine won selection for New South Wales Schoolboys; Joey's, he acknowledged to himself, had pretty much changed his life.

He didn't want to return to Boggabri - five years at school in Sydney had seen to that. But although he had enjoyed the first XV experience, Devine did not seriously consider taking his career much further in that direction.

He would become an electrician, like his father, and find a club where he could play Saturday-afternoon rugby and enjoy the company of friends.

Devine joined the long-established Gordon club, but opted for Wests the following season, where from the comparative obscurity of club play he was selected for Australia under-21, under the coaching of Ian Kennedy.

It was a leap in his rugby fortunes that he attributes to the influence of his New Zealand coach at Wests, Kelvin Farrington.

"My rugby really took off under Kelvin. He pushed hard for my rugby career, which was good because at that stage it wasn't the most important thing for me," says Devine.

"Kelvin was a good friend of Joe Stanley and that's how the offer came to play NPC rugby in Auckland.

"I was keen because I thought it would be a good experience to play in New Zealand, especially under Graham Henry, who was the Auckland coach then.

"However, the day I actually made the Auckland NPC team, Graham announced he was going to coach in Wales, so I wasn't sure where I was going to end up!"

The intention was that Devine would return to Sydney and his contract with the Waratahs halfway through the NPC competition, when Tonu'u came back from tour.

However, Devine impressed the Auckland coaching panel with his fiercely competitive attitude and ability on the break, and was named ahead of Tonu'u, with the proviso that he would remain with Auckland for the rest of the season.

"I rang home and said, 'Listen, I'm starting over here and I want to stay on,' and they said, 'That's fine'," recalls Devine. "Travis Hall was still playing and I would just have been sitting on the bench, so I got released from my contract with the Waratahs."

But not from Australia. Devine was selected for the Australian Sevens team at the end of 1998 to play in the Dubai tournament, where he came up against his new NZ mates in the semifinal.

It was an interesting experience for the Australian-Auckland halfback. There was what Devine calls a bit of a scuffle during the game and punches were traded. His heart, at that stage, still belonged in Australia.

Devine returned home to Boggabri for Christmas and a period of reflection on his future.

Australia's three Super 12 teams, the Queensland Reds, New South Wales Waratahs and ACT Brumbies, had strong halfback representation, and in the Brumbies, George Gregan, a certain Wallaby first choice.

He believed he stood a better chance of playing in the Super 12 competition by going to live in New Zealand.

Auckland appealed as a city and he had successfully negotiated his way into the close-knit Auckland NPC unit, despite those loyal to Tonu'u and Ben Willis, Auckland's incumbent halfbacks, who regarded him initially as a pushy young Aussie muscling in on their territory.

So when a two-year contract came through for him to play for the Super 12 Blues in the 1999 and 2000 seasons, Devine leaped at it. In 2001 he signed his second two-year contract for the Blues and, halfway through the season, became eligible to represent New Zealand.

And that almost happened in 2001 when Justin Marshall was ruled out of the All Black tour of Scotland and Ireland. The day after Devine had come out of surgery, he received a call from the New Zealand selectors, inquiring about his availability.

His dream was to play for the All Blacks. To have it offered and then to have to turn it down because of an ankle injury was a crushing blow.

From the start, Devine says he relished the coaching he received at the Blues, describing the franchise as a very professional outfit under its current coaches Wayne Pivac and Grant Fox. He also singles out John Kirwan, the former Blues manager, for special praise: "JK was brilliant."

Bob Howitt and Dianne Haworth: Rugby Nomads

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