Mitch better as strong silent type

By MICHELE HEWITSON

In the beginning, there was silence. The jokes went like this: "Hey, let's get an interview with John Mitchell. Ha, ha, ha."

Sometimes we would ring up Mitchell's media minder. Sometimes he would laugh, too. Playing "getting an interview with Mitchell" was like playing "getting an interview with the Queen."

Now, you couldn't shut Mitchell up if you tried. And, really, you can't help but think that someone should have tried. Because Mitchell was really far more interesting when he was that brooding, enigmatic strong but silent guy.

It is not rude to say so because Mitchell - although he has been fronting up here, there and everywhere for two weeks now - would like nothing better than for it to be known that he is "actually boring and narrow really, in my life, when you look at it."

He loved the cartoon the Herald ran last week depicting him with horns and a rugby ball for a head (copies are in the mail, Mitch). He thinks that this is a pretty accurate portrayal. "I suppose my mind's full of rugby and ... the horns ... I do get things going."

It is not everyone who would have regarded such a portrait in such a light, but you have to hand it to Mitchell, he has an interesting take on most things - particularly himself. He appears to be, for example, genuinely perplexed that anyone would think he is running a campaign to save his job.

He says that he would have been out there doing this talkfest anyway, if the All Blacks had brought home the World Cup, and that he is not campaigning but "clarifying".

He does concede that he previously probably "underestimated the level of communication that's required".

Then, "maybe we need to control the messages a little bit more". Oh, dear. The man accused of being a control freak certainly needs to work on that one.

A very strange thing happened after about an hour of Mitchell. You sit there listening to the man who wouldn't talk, and who you really wanted to talk to, and all you can think is: It's probably too late but, here's some advice: stop talking. And, by the way, you should never have started in the first place.

You don't think this to be rude, or unkind - I am not going to be either of these, so stop reading now if you want to read more rude or unkind things about Mitchell.

You just find yourself really wanting to believe that he is not running any sort of campaign because if he is, he's making a right hash of it. You suspect that, in a way, he already knows this and also knows that it's too late. Ask him if at any point in this non-campaign he thought he would have been better off not saying anything, and he says, "Yeah and I don't think it was a bad strategy when I first started. You can't win. You just can't win."

And he just can't stop now. He has set out on this path, he keeps his word, and the one thing you cannot accuse Mitchell of is lacking focus. For the past two weeks he's been focused on talking.

So here we are sitting in the lounge of his resolutely not flash house on the pink chairs in the blue room. There is a Christmas tree in the corner, ornately decorated by "the girls", wife Kay and daughter Ciara. Mitchell was not allowed to help, which is just as well, because he would no doubt have decked the thing out in miniature rugby balls.

This year Mitchell spent 292 days away from home. And while he maintains that he is finding the process of granting extended interviews "really comfortable" because he is in his "own setting" at home, he looks, oddly, out of place. That instantly recognisable bald head and pointy ears are in incongruous contrast framed as they are by collections of gilt and china cherubs on the shelves. The man of the house looks too blokey and, at 193cm, slightly too big for his own home.

There are many who have long muttered that Mitch is too big for his own boots.

He has - and, again, he appears genuinely perplexed by this - been hard to like. Let alone understand.

He speaks almost exclusively in gobbledegook. Can he unlearn it and start talking like a normal human being again? "Have I been speaking normally today?" he asks, hopefully.

I point out that he is very fond of using "destiny" and "vision" and of talking about "clarifying". Which was a mistake. Because "I think that way very quickly", he says, and goes on to provide an explanation which is as clear as Waikato mud. Something to do with dealing "with the now" apparently. And "wavelengths" and "you kind of people" wanting to take him backwards, or into the future or something. I couldn't understand a word of it, but other than that sticky patch he managed quite well.

Mitchell is happy to be seen at home because "you always see me in work clothes. I suppose the perception of me is just that I'm a hard-nosed rugby coach. I suppose while there's aspects of that that are part of me, I'm not always like that".

He is, by his own admission, fiercely independent and has been since the age of 12 when he was sent to board at Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth. He says he is by no means a loner - he likes nothing better than to go down the pub with his mates - but he does need a lot of time alone. "Even in my family life I do a lot of things on my own."

He is trying to take off his work face and he is good at putting on a brave face. He says he is good at learning from disappointment (and he knows he might well have to get even better).

"I don't feel deflated. In actual fact I feel really energetic at the moment and that's the kind of person I am."

The kind of person he most definitely is not, at least on past evidence, is someone who would really enjoy sitting on his couch in his home talking about how he really is "I'd say, a caring and sensitive person".

He feels he has to make the point. People see "this hard-nosed bloke who drops all their favourite players."

He says he can change. He can learn to communicate better. He can learn to smile. But, he says, slightly plaintively, he is just not "an out-there, in-your-face type of person. You don't see me celebrate very often. That's the way God made me."

If he has been rude in the past, he apologises, and he is certainly being very nice and friendly the day I see him. He says "if you want anything clarified, just give us a call". I do. And he in turn calls back to leave the requested information and to clarify that he is not "desperate" to keep the job, just "committed to rugby".

Then he leaves a perfectly sweet little message about how he enjoyed the interview, and I think I would really like to have interviewed that silent brooding bastard.