Rugby: Cancer claims All Black hard man

By D.J. Cameron

Alister Hopkinson died at the weekend aged 57, sad proof that even the granite men who have been the base of the All Black pack for generations must crumble before the dreaded cancer.

But the hard, four-square men of rugby, the Wyllies and McCormicks and the Meads, will sit down, raise a glass to "Hoppy," and inevitably tell one of the many yarns that made Hopkinson a fabled character.

Nothing to do with the mayhem he wreaked among the British Lions pack of 1971.

Nor the many times a frail young back at the bottom of a stud-thrashing ruck would suddenly feel covered by this large thick blanket possessing a kindly voice saying "I'll take care of you, lad."

But the favourite tale will be about the look on the face of Fred the Needle, the celebrated Fred Allen, All Black coach, after one training run.

Fred used to despair about Hoppy. The big, shaggy prop was always at the wrong end of the training sprints. He affected a slow-on-the-uptake attitude when team plans and tactics were discussed.

He seemed to live alone at the bottom of that sweaty, heaving valley formed by two front rows.

After training one day the lads were still a little frisky. There was skiting about who was the fastest. Tom Lister, a highly mobile prop, was the self-elected sprint star.

From the bent-over, apparently exhausted Hopkinson came a long mutter. The rough translation was: "I can beat you over the length of the field."

The odds were struck, the rules laid, the stewards in place. The race began. Hopkinson won by several yards.

Hoppy resumed his recumbent posture, the great honour of the noble front row secure. And Freddy Allen, perhaps for the first time as All Black coach, realised he had been outwitted. By a prop.

Only now has the truth come forth, or in Hopkinson's case, first.