Jerome Kaino: My Story, published by Penguin NZ, is available nationwide. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Jerome Kaino: My Story, published by Penguin NZ, is available nationwide. Photo / Jason Oxenham
All Black enforcer Jerome Kaino wasn't always such a powerful presence on and off the field. As a self-confessed skinny Samoan kid brought up in South Auckland, he had to fight hard to get to where he is today, and although he was an All Black at 21, some dark years followed. In the first of three exclusive extracts from his new autobiography My Story, written with Herald sports reporter Patrick McKendry, and on sale from tomorrow, Kaino talks about his humble origins in Papakura.
When I think back, there were probably a few barriers to my eventual success as a professional rugby player. At primary school we weren't allowed to play contact sports. Physical contact was completely banned. I think they brought the rule in as a reaction to an incident where some kidswere playing bullrush and someone's jaw got broken.
Bullrush is a game in which many Kiwi kids have honed their rugby skills. It basically involves trying to get from one side of the field to the other without being tackled by the kids in the middle. You sure learn how to sidestep when a bigger and older kid is there in front of you; and the other side of the equation is you get used to physical contact, and learn how to tackle, if not correctly then certainly the idea of it. But our principal just cut everything - rugby and bullrush. I thought it was weird that we couldn't play rugby when other schools were allowed to, but that was the way it was. The main sports we played were touch rugby, soccer and cricket.
I loved cricket. Maurice Street is a cul-de-sac, so in summer all the kids in the neighbourhood would come and play. The road surface was smooth at our end of the street - not the usual rough chip there is on most New Zealand roads - so it was a good place to play. I always pretended to be South African fast bowler "Fanie" de Villiers - I'm not sure why, but I used to love watching him in the one-dayers - or Curtly Ambrose, the big West Indian quick bowler. He was my other favourite. Perhaps it was because they were tall.
Sometimes Mum would have to force us to come inside for tea. You'd definitely hear her yell. We'd let her yell two or even three times before we'd go, four if we were feeling brave or the game was particularly delicately poised. Once we got older - 12 or 13 - dinner became optional for us. We'd say: "You guys have dinner, we'll be in later." When my family say I was a skinny kid, that's probably why: a constant mix of physical activity and treating dinner like an optional extra will have that effect on you, I guess.
Jerome Kaino with childhood friends Seira and Padilla. Photo / Supplied
I had mates who lived across the road and I could always hear them yelling if it was time to come out and play cricket or touch. They were good kids, even if their parents were a bit dodgy. Sometimes I would go into their backyard to play and would catch a whiff of marijuana from inside. So they smoked. No big deal, right? But I think people in our area, perhaps even my parents' mates, were selling it on a fairly large scale. As we got older, we learned what a tinny house was - a house where you could buy drugs. In Papakura, it was widely known that if there were shoes hanging from the power lines, there was a tinny house nearby. It's not just an urban myth. Let's just say there were quite a few shoes hanging from various power lines around our neighbourhood, and some of the houses had different cars pulling in and out of their driveways at all hours. I think my mates were oblivious to what their parents were up to. Or they knew what it was but they didn't know it was bad. They were good kids. And their parents seemed okay too. They were always friendly to my family and helped out when they could.
Our house got burgled all the time. I couldn't count how many times we got robbed: growing up, it was just a constant. They used to jemmy the door or just bust the windows. We had French doors in the front of the house and they were quite easy to prise open. We couldn't really do much - we could lock the house but people would still find a way in. Dad repeatedly asked the landlord to put in an alarm but ... I guess it never happened.
Jerome Kaino at Papakura Intermediate in 1996. Photo / Supplied
The burglars usually took the TV and VHS and, more often than not, whatever food they could find, which wasn't usually very much. One time they broke in and they didn't raid the pantry or take meat from the freezer: they just took a packet of Squiggles biscuits. A packet of Squiggles? It had to be kids, but who?
It pissed me off. Dad would always try to stay calm about it, but you knew he was pretty annoyed too. When you're a young kid you don't know what to do about it - you want to find out who did it and exact some kind of retribution. But you're kind of helpless, because in the end it could have been anyone. I remember the police in our home and fingerprinting the place often but it didn't come to anything. You'd hear a lot of stories about other people in the neighbourhood being robbed as well. It was a normal thing for all of us. Taoa even remembers one day when we were coming home from an evening service at church at Christmas time. We passed a couple of young guys carrying barrels on their shoulders, who nodded to us. Of course, when we got home, the house had been burgled again, and it just had to be those guys taking our stuff away in barrels. Dad called the police, but I don't think they got them. We never got the stuff back, anyway.
Jerome Kaino's parents Sa and Velonika. Photo / Supplied
I've been back to the neighbourhood recently. I looked at our old place - the weatherboards, the corrugated-iron roof, those bloody doors in front which were apparently so inviting to thieves. Not much has changed, although the house seems smaller, of course. I saw a couple of young kids burst through the gate and run up the road; two Island kids who could have been me and one of my mates 25 years ago. It's still the place I remember, although I saw there was a big dog sitting and watching from an armchair on the front porch. All I could think of was how much more secure the dog made the house look. I hope they have better luck than we did. I see the corner shops have electric wires preventing people from climbing onto their flat roofs now. That also brought back memories. People used to break in through the roof in my day. Electric wires and big dogs. It's not a bad neighbourhood, but many of the people there don't have a lot. I suppose those security measures help take away the temptation.
Back when I was a kid, Mum and Dad always seemed to have just enough, but I remember what must have been tough times when the Mercy Mission would come around with food parcels once a month. They would bring a tray of eggs, heaps of yoghurts, meat and bread. We weren't poor, but sometimes I suppose we just needed a little help.
My Story: An event. Jerome Kaino in discussion with Scotty Stevenson, in association with the New Zealand Herald and Paper Plus. Saint Kentigern College, Auckland, August 17. Tickets at eventfinder.co.nz.
