Former All Blacks hooker Dennis Young has died. Photo /Mike Scott
Former All Blacks hooker Dennis Young has died. Photo /Mike Scott
COMMENT:
Only one question was ever raised about Dennis Young, who died in Christchurch, aged 90, on Sunday.
How did a man, who was just 1.73m tall and whose playing weight was 87kg (in other words, shorter and lighter than Crusaders' first-five Richie Mo'unga), not just survive, but thrive asa hooker during an All Black career that began in 1956 and didn't end until 1964, when he was 34 years old?
What the statistics didn't show was how much strength he packed into that frame, and how big the heart was inside the chest.
Winning their own scrum ball was the paramount requirement for hookers then, and Young, calm under pressure and with lightning fast size-seven feet, was a master of his craft.
He'd been a champion tap dancer as a kid, as well as a very good field athlete. But rugby was where he'd make his mark, first as an 18-year-old playing for a Canterbury XV, and then as a key man in a great Canterbury Ranfurly Shield side in the 1950s.
"In those times we really were the players of the people," Young told me in 2003. "We all had jobs. I was working as a cabinet maker. It wasn't a manufactured relationship between the players and the public. I'm not being critical, but with professional rugby now you have to manufacture times and situations for the public to have some contact with the players.
"This was the real thing. You were out there, listening to everything that people had to say about you. I'd go to play in a club game and my boss at work would be on the bank yelling out, 'rattle your dags'. On the Monday he'd ask if I'd heard him. I certainly did.
"For a shield game we'd go straight from home to the ground. At no stage did we go to a hotel the night before."
There were two strands of people outside Lancaster Park, Young said. One group in overcoats and hats headed towards the bank, or the stands. The other group, with kitbags, containing boots, a towel and a jockstrap, were the players.
"We'd emerge out of the crowd, where there were people saying, 'how do you think you'll go?' and 'good luck' as you headed into the park."
Wilson Whineray delivers his halftime team talk at Eden Park during the first test of the 1961 series between the All Blacks and France. Dennis Young is next to Whineray. Photo / Photosport
During his career, Young played 22 tests and his durability was extraordinary, in an era where the front row could be a dark, brutal area which many referees just left to police itself.
Young played in the bizarre "hurricane test" against France in Wellington in 1961, won 5-3 by the All Blacks in gale force winds. By then he was teaching woodwork at Shirley Boys' High.
"The scrum battles were fairly furious in terms of flying feet," he told me in 1998. "On the Monday I took along my All Black sock, which had the black and white bands at the top, and then just tatters hanging off it, connected to the foot. It was like one of those curtains they put up to keep the flies out. They had characters like (French prop Amédée) Domenech who had been around." Thirty-seven years later he laughed with delight at the memory.
As good natured as he was courageous Young, affectionately known as "Dad" by his All Black teammates, would be a key figure in the foundation of the Canterbury Rugby Supporters' Club, and a highly popular tour leader for the travel agency he'd form with a friend, Rod Lee, in 1977.
When players die there's a natural tendency to be generous spirited, and paint even the most surly as a likeable, engaging man.
