A lot will be missing from the Zoom conferences that will start the 2022 rugby season. Photos / Photosport
A lot will be missing from the Zoom conferences that will start the 2022 rugby season. Photos / Photosport
OPINION:
As Super Rugby returns not with a bang – and Moana Pasifika making history – but a pandemic cancellation whimper, I find myself also missing a chilly, windswept loading dock in Christchurch.
It's at Orangetheory Stadium, where you walk up raw concrete steps to dimly lit press conferences afterthe Crusaders have played their home games.
What often makes them a highlight of the night is Scott Robertson, a coach whose unfiltered honesty makes him unlike any other this country has ever seen.
What's missing from the Zoom conferences that will start the 2022 season is the ability when you're standing just an arm length's away to see the spark in Robertson's eye, as, for example, when he was quizzed after last year's Super Rugby Aotearoa final 24-13 victory over the Chiefs.
How did he think the rest of the country would react to another Crusaders win? Without a hint of malice he smiled and said, "Let's say what you're really wanting to ask. I know we're disliked immensely".
Post-match conferences are usually as safe as milk, but a handful of moments, like that one, stick in the mind. Here's my list of the most memorable.
Coach Brian Lochore, after the All Blacks had beaten England 42-15, tried to talk with reporters outside the steps that led down to a dank changing shed.
But we were blocking the corridor that led to the free drinks for rugby officials, so Lochore, a perennially good natured man, moved across the aisle to the men's toilets.
The rest of the questioning took place in an acrid haze of dichlorobenzene gas from the euphemistically named toilet cakes at the bottom of the aged urinals.
Former All Blacks coach Brian Lochore (right). Photo / Photosport
Gold medal for a weird venue
Under a temporary stand at Ballymore in Brisbane, 1992.
The All Blacks had just lost 19-17 to the Wallabies, but most of the buzz after the test was about what happened to Australian wing Paul Carozza after he scored his second try. All Blacks prop Richard Loe slammed his elbow into Carozza's face. In the days before TMOs, French referee Patrick Robin took no action against Loe.
All Blacks coach Laurie Mains quickly realised there would be an outcry in Australia, so he shoulder tapped every New Zealand journalist he could see, and we were herded under an open stand.
A crafty Aussie journo tried to lurk at the back, but Mains spotted him. "Are you a Kiwi?" "Err, no." "Well bugger off then."
Mains gave a quick lecture about loyalty, patriotism, and making sure the dirty Aussie media didn't exploit what he suggested was an unfortunate accident. Many of us were grateful it wasn't a long conference, given that the underside of the stand was festooned with spider webs, and some of us were starting to seriously wonder what a deadly Queensland funnel-web spider's habitat looked like.
French coach Marc Lièvremont is so effortlessly cool he makes George Clooney look like a homeless man. But Lièvremont is also fiery, and at the '11 Cup is basically at war with the French press corps.
So after the All Blacks have beaten France 37-17 in a pool game, the mood at the conference is bitter. A French journalist asks, "Can you win the World Cup playing like this"? Lievremont spits out an answer. French journalists explode with laughter.
Their response is so big the earnest young translator's version of Lièvremont's answer feels suspiciously tame. "He says that is a terrible question." A bilingual writer from L'Equipe whispers to me, "He actually said, 'Your question is shit'".
Former France coach Marc Lievremont. Photo / Photosport
Most historic
Trophy room, Ellis Park, Johannesburg, 1995.
The day before the World Cup final in '95, the world's rugby journalists are called to a "special announcement" at Ellis Park. Some will later say they knew what was coming. I didn't hear anyone mention that at the time.
When South African board head Louis Luyt, sitting beside NZRU chairman Richie Guy and Australian Rugby Union chairman Leo Williams, announces the signing of a $US555 million, 10-year deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to televise southern hemisphere rugby, some of the media people can't surpress snorts of laughter.
They think Luyt has misread the statement. That he meant to say $55 million over 10 years, not $555 million. Nobody can believe a game will go from an amateur sport, to a multi-million dollar operation overnight. We now know Big Louis got it right.
Most melancholy
Board room, Lancaster Park, 2000.
In September 2000, incumbent All Blacks coach Wayne Smith faced a panel of four former All Black captains, Brian Lochore, Tane Norton, John Graham, and Andy Dalton, plus former All Black Richie Guy, former All Blacks selector Lane Penn, and NZRU chief executive David Rutherford, in the Brentwood Hotel in Wellington and told them he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue. Some time later he'd ruefully tell me, "I thought they wanted me to be honest".
Just two days later, when a report from the panel was presented to the NZRU board, Smith's remark had become "he doesn't want the job".
A week later Canterbury Rugby Union staff are cramming chairs into a packed board room at Jade Stadium. A media conference has been called by Smith. He arrives casually dressed, in a black polo shirt and jeans, but his demeanour is anxious. He repeats that he said he "wasn't sure" he wanted the job on that fateful Tuesday in Wellington, not that he definitely didn't want it. He was then still wrestling in his mind with the issue.
Careful to not offend the men who hold his coaching future in their hands, he says he can, however, fully understand how the review panel might have thought he didn't want it. But now he has no doubts. He's keen to continue.
Less than two weeks later he's replaced by John Mitchell. The happy ending is that Smith, after a stint coaching in England, would return to New Zealand, and be a key man with first Graham Henry and then Steve Hansen in the All Black World Cup victories in 2011 and 2015.
Best zen moment
Former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen during a press conference during the 2015 Rugby World Cup in London. Photo / Photosport
Pennyhill Park Hotel, Bagshot, England 2015.
Two days before the World Cup final, in a crowded conference room at the luxury spa hotel just vacated by the England squad, TVNZ's Andrew Saville asked All Blacks coach Steve Hansen whether he would take any wisdom from his late father Des into the big game at Twickenham. (Hansen and Saville were old friends from the days when Saville was a young radio reporter in Christchurch and Hansen was a club coach.)
Hansen smiled. "Yeah ... you get all your options from the opposition." With perfect comic timing Hansen paused. "I see you look puzzled Sav. Just find a nice quiet place, spend a bit of time, and it'll come to you."
