Colin Meads playing with 3 year old Wayne Cooke taken on 13 March 1972 while Colin was recovering from a broken back sustained in a motor vehicle accident. Photo / photosport.nz
Colin Meads playing with 3 year old Wayne Cooke taken on 13 March 1972 while Colin was recovering from a broken back sustained in a motor vehicle accident. Photo / photosport.nz
What Sir Colin 'Pinetree' Meads has done as a player, administrator, coach and manager is one of the greatest contributions that anyone will give the All Blacks.
I was very fortunate to come on to the All Black scene on the tour of France and Italy in 1995 when hewas managing the team with Laurie Mains as coach - their last tour in connection with the All Blacks.
Pinetree made me very aware of what it meant to be an All Black and I recall clearly early on in that tour, as a young kid from Mataura, almost being too scared to look at him.
One night I was in a bar and he saw me and said, "boy, come and sit down for a pint", at which point my face went ashen white.
He had a formidable reputation as a player but also as a man who liked a beer.
I thought I was going quite well on my pint - I was about halfway through mine and he hadn't really touched his, but all of a sudden he had a "sip" and was level with me.
I decided then that I would be having only the one with him, but to be able to sit down one-on-one with him, a youngster at the start of his career in the presence of a legend of the game, was one of the highlights of my career.
Pinetree will be terribly missed and the game won't be the same without him. He was one of a kind.
