Stu Wilson: All Blacks great remembered for tries, humour and unique style - Phil Gifford

There’s never been another All Black like Stu Wilson.

As a player on the wing or at centre he was one of the greats, scoring 50 tries in 85 matches for the All Blacks between 1978 and 1983 including 19 in his 34 tests.

Wilson has died, aged 70.

But what made him special wasn’t just his speed and astuteness on the field, but a sense of humour that was never muted by the big occasion.

His sharp wit off the field matched his speed and lightning reflexes on it.

To this day, he is the only All Black to blow air kisses at an opponent, as he did to Wallaby David Campese at Lancaster Park as the teams lined up before the first test of the 1982 series.

Wilson and his great friend and teammate for both Wellington and New Zealand, Bernie Fraser, even took their comedy on stage when the Sir Michael Fowler Centre was opened in Wellington in 1983, joining Sir Howard Morrison for several slapstick sketches.

All Blacks (from left) Allan Hewson, Murray Mexted, Stu Wilson and Bernie Fraser celebrating a win over the Wallabies. Photo / Peter Bush

As you may have expected, Wilson’s path to the All Blacks was unorthodox. Growing up in Masterton, his sport of choice was golf, where he took after his father, a former provincial Freyberg Rose Bowl player.

Rugby gradually took a hold and it’s typical that he’d later swear that his success in club rugby in Wellington, where he moved after leaving school, was predicated on a decision to stop smoking.

“Until then,” he’d later say, “I was flatting and living on beer and cigarettes.”

In serious moments, Wilson could not speak highly enough of his first All Blacks coach, Jack Gleeson, and his captain Graham “Goss” Mourie.

They led the All Blacks to Argentina in 1976 and from that time Wilson was in thrall to them. “Goss doesn’t talk a lot,” Wilson once told me, “but when he does every word is gold.”

It was a daring plan by Gleeson and Mourie that led to victory in Wilson’s favourite test, in which he scored his best try.

In 1977, the All Blacks toured France and in the first test in Toulouse were battered, eye-gouged and well-beaten, 18-13.

In the week before the second test in Paris the coach and captain came up with a brave plan. They would run the ball at every opportunity, and avoid physical confrontation with French neanderthals like prop Gerard Cholley.

Years later, Wilson was still amused at the idea of the team leaders persuading hard men like lock Frank Oliver that going mano a mano with the French tight five should be avoided.

Former All Blacks captain Stu Wilson, in 2021, while working as a hospital orderly at Tauranga Hospital. Photo / NZME

How right Gleeson and Mourie were would be hammered home by Wilson two minutes into the second half. Thirty metres from the French line, All Blacks centre Bruce Robertson broke free and passed to Wilson.

One of Wilson’s many attributes was an ability to see the field the way a grandmaster sees a chess board. He cut back on the pass and flew on an angle to score near the posts. The All Blacks went on to win 15-3.

In the stand of the Parc de Princes, where local fans, no doubt expecting another triumphant Toulouse thumping from the French team, had set off skyrockets before the game started, the applause for Wilson’s brilliance was universal, not just from the handful of us Kiwis lucky enough to be there.

There would be bumps in the road ahead in Wilson’s All Blacks career, as well as triumphs. He played every test on the great 1978 Grand Slam tour of Britain and Ireland.

In 1981, he was in the side that won the home series against South Africa. Two decades later, he’d tell me he had mixed feelings about playing a team from apartheid-era South Africa.

“If I had to make that decision again, perhaps I wouldn’t have played, having seen what it did to the country, and how divisive it was.”

He deserved a much better farewell than the 1983 tour to Scotland and England. He was appointed captain (the only wing in All Blacks history to lead the team) of a squad missing eight first-line players. The Scotland test was drawn 25-25, and the England test lost 15-9.

He retired in 1984, and forged a career as a radio and television commentator and a sought-after guest speaker. More recently, he was helping out as an orderly at Tauranga hospital. There wouldn’t be any other former rugby player who could have offered patients a sunnier presence.

Phil Gifford is a Contributing Sports Writer for NZME. He is one of the most-respected voices in New Zealand sports journalism.