By CHRIS RATTUE
Lock
Age: 24
Height: 2.02m
Weight: 112kg
NPC team: Canterbury
Super 12: Crusaders
Super 12 games: 46
Test debut: 2001
Test caps: 20
Gets some punters' vote as the All Black MVP, a nose ahead of Richie McCaw.
There's decent back-up for brilliant loosie McCaw - after all Marty Holah was the star of last year's northern hemisphere
tour and Daniel Braid is about as good as it gets in the continuity game.
But if you ain't got Jack in the Blacks, then you ain't got a world-class lock. It's as simple as that, for now.
Jack can already be regarded among the finest of locks to have worn the black jersey. This World Cup could shove the long-limbed Cantabrian right through the front door of the hall of fame.
Jack has rugby in the veins. His father was a Taranaki lock and his brother Graham a Canterbury and Crusaders lock.
Jack seems to have it all, and there's even a little sidestep in his game, well that is little to him. When you're built like a giraffe, the merest shuffle can leave defenders metres away, and Jack has got a hell of a shuffle.
There have been comparisons made with the great John Eales, although it probably pays to only whisper such accolades for the moment, especially as Mr Eales has two World Cup winner's medals in the drawer.
So this is the moment for Chris Jack to take command, rule the lineouts, and do his stuff around the field.
Call it last-minute jitters, but the words All Blacks, lineout and big occasion still lead to associations such as disaster, agony, defeat.
Something in the bones suggests that when the pressure goes on, all those soaring and secure takes will suddenly turn into mad-scramble basketball tip-offs.
Jack is a master of all lock trades, but in this World Cup, the lineout is his key one.
