ANALYSIS
Over a lifetime of covering rugby, Phil Gifford has seen many of the greatest players to don the black jersey – and the biggest change in that time has been the arrival of professionalism in 1996. Today, in a series rating the best All Blacks of the professional era, he looks at midfielders and first five-eighths.
Midfield
Pita Alatini
(1999-2001, 17 tests)
A change of coaches, from Wayne Smith to John Mitchell, late in 2001, basically snuffed out Pita Alatini’s test career. But for two seasons under Smith he was a star, showing the quick thinking and mercurial running that had led to him being offered a scholarship to King’s College when he was still at Ferguson Intermediate School in Ōtara.
Aaron Mauger
(2001-2007, 45 tests)
Aaron Mauger was marked as a player of unusual maturity from the time he was selected, as an 18-year-old straight out of Christchurch Boys’ High, to fill in for Andrew Mehrtens at first five in the 1999 Canterbury team. Two years later, he was in the eye of the storm when coach Robbie Deans dropped Mehrtens from the Crusaders, for Mauger. “He [Mauger] is a very mature kid, in life and on the rugby field,” Deans would say.
Mauger’s reputation would potentially have been hugely enhanced if he’d been selected for the losing 2007 World Cup quarter-final with France. He would have been the perfect person to drop a late goal to win the match. His All Blacks captain, Richie McCaw, had seen Mauger coolly snap a crucial 35m dropped goal when the Crusaders won the 2005 Super Rugby final against the Waratahs.
Sonny Bill Williams
(2010-2019, 58 tests)
As he is to this day, Sonny Bill Williams was a lightning rod for controversy. Yet in 2010, at the first, unfashionable, club he went to in New Zealand rugby, Belfast in north Christchurch, there wasn’t a person who didn’t speak well of him.
The league convert was rushed into the All Blacks in 2010, and he went on to feature in two World Cup-winning teams, in 2011 and 2015.
His fan base was huge. When he had to change a ripped jersey in the opening game of the ‘11 Cup at Eden Park, online viewing of a topless Sonny Bill attracted more hits on YouTube than any playing action from the game. The purist would rather note that as a player he made his trademark offloading a part of rugby culture. “It’s such a vital part of the game,” Williams would correctly say. “Big plays can change the course of a match.”
Walter Little
(1989 to 1997, 50 tests)
Off the track Walter Little liked a smoke, a few quiet drinks, and a laugh. In a game, he could slip a tackle so easily he’d make Houdini look all fingers and thumbs. How he did it for North Harbour and the All Blacks for so many years was a mystery even to teammates.
Buck Shelford, his captain at Harbour, reckoned that it was all to do with balance. “It could look as if Walter was covered by his marker. But he had this little trick of sticking out a fend, then using the leverage he got from the guy trying to tackle him to push himself a wee bit away. Suddenly the tackler was grasping at air.”
Jordie Barrett
(2017-2023, 57 tests)
Jordie Barrett has only played 12 tests at second five-eighths, compared with 25 at fullback. While he’s a very good test fullback, he’s surely finally proved that he’s even better in the No 12 jersey. Until 2022, the All Blacks selectors worried that he was too upright a runner in the midfield. It’s still early days in his new position, but so far we know that – even at World Cup level – he can carry the impact he makes at second five-eighths for the Hurricanes into the international arena.
Frank Bunce
(1992-1997, 55 tests)
It took six years playing for Auckland B, deciding against signing to a Sydney league club, building up his fitness by working on a rubbish truck, and playing for Western Samoa at the 1991 World Cup (when eligibility rules were way more flexible), for Frank Bunce to finally, as a 30-year-old, be selected for the All Blacks. He was quickly recognised as a world-class centre, with the ability, as his midfield partner Walter Little would note, to make tackles so devastating “they gave the whole team a lift”.
Conrad Smith
(2004-2015, 94 tests)
Conrad Smith, a qualified lawyer, has a razor-sharp mind and a quick wit. Once asked live on radio for a clean lawyer joke, he didn’t pause. “A senior partner in a law firm is asked what a fair hourly rate would be for a lawyer who had actually been playing a round of golf. He replied, ‘Was the player a partner or a junior brief?’”
On the field, you saw not only his intelligence but the grit of his Taranaki rugby lineage, which included an uncle, Alan Smith, who was an All Blacks lock in the 1960s.
Tana Umaga
(1997-2005, 74 tests)
On the field, Tana Umaga always showed limitless bravery. His courage didn’t stop there. As Graham Henry’s All Blacks captain from 2003, it was Umaga who ended fire-eating pre-match team talks.
Henry recalls a one-on-one meeting when Umaga told him he thought the talks were “largely a waste of time and inappropriate”. It’s a measure of how much Umaga’s talent and leadership meant to the team that when Umaga told Henry in 2005 he was retiring, the coach unsuccessfully offered him everything from a lighter workload to a year off if Umaga would stay to lead the All Blacks at the 2007 World Cup.
Ma’a Nonu
(2003-2015, 103 tests)
As a person, Ma’a Nonu was never without a sharp, self-depreciating humour. In 2004 he started wearing eyeliner in games, and kept a straight face when telling journalists: “I started putting colour in my dreadlocks, and then other guys did too, so I decided to make a new fashion statement.”
It wasn’t until 2008, in his sixth season as an All Black, that he became a test fixture at second five. He was never dropped until he retired from international rugby in 2015. His commitment can be measured in the fact that after every All Blacks training from ′08 he’d go through an extra five or six minutes with Wayne Smith. “He’d pass the ball to me,” Smith would say in his autobiography, “then double round. He’d let me tackle him, place the ball, chase a kick, bring the ball back, all at a frantic pace, with no breaks. It brought out what was inside Ma’a. He has to be [in] any discussion for our greatest midfielder in history, along with Conrad Smith.”
First Five-Eighths
Richie Mo’unga
(2017-2023, 56 tests)
Born and raised in Christchurch, Richie Mo’unga was a star for three years in the St Andrew’s College First XV. When he was just a teenager, he was picked by Scott Robertson for the 2013 Canterbury team ahead of two All Blacks, Colin Slade and Tom Taylor. The stone in Mo’unga’s passway to wear the 10 jersey at international level was Beauden Barrett, and it was 2023 before the All Blacks settled on the idea of Mo’unga at first five and Barrett at fullback. How good a general is Mo’unga? Could anyone doubt that if he was now living in Burnside, not Tokyo, the Crusaders would not have been stranded near the bottom of the Super Rugby Pacific table?
Carlos Spencer
(1995-2004, 35 tests)
In 1993, Graham Henry spotted Carlos Spencer, then a 17-year-old schoolboy already in his second year of provincial rugby, scoring a brilliant try for Horowhenua against Henry’s powerful Auckland team. “The rugby world’s there for him if he puts the time in,” Henry predicted. When he left school at the end of 1993, Spencer headed to Auckland, and from 1994 was a fixture in blue and white. His mercurial style had detractors even in Auckland. When Spencer opened a downtown coffee shop, Metro magazine mused: “Will the coffee be like his rugby? Brilliant one day and crap the next?” But at his best Spencer was extraordinary, able to beat the best tacklers with an almost laughable ease.
Andrew Mehrtens
(1995-2004, 70 tests)
Andrew Mehrtens was almost two players rolled into one. If the game called for kicking for position, and then accurate goal-kicking, he had the 50-metre punt and the 50-metre place kick. If the game called for some incisive running, he could do that too. He had energy, and terrific natural ball skills. (He was a good enough tennis player to hold his own in a charity doubles match involving Steffi Graf). And there was always sharp intelligence, often expressed with humour. With a straight face, he told journalists in 2001 he could “never be dropped from this All Black team”. Nothing to do with his playing form, he quickly explained. “I’m the head of the laundry committee and the only one who understands how the system works. If they drop me, nobody will ever see their Y-fronts again.”
Beauden Barrett
(2012-2023, 123 tests)
Although he’s started 27 tests at fullback and has been a magnificent impact player from the bench, Beauden Barrett has begun 56 of his tests at first five. Personable and articulate off the field, there’s steel in his play, which probably dates back to childhood days. He grew up on the family farm in Pungarehu, on the Surf Highway between Okato and Ōpunakē. His mother Robyn, herself an outstanding basketball player and all-round sportswoman, would meet a 10-year-old Beauden and his brothers at the primary school gate, put their bags in the car, and then watch them run the 3.5km home in bare feet. There has often been two schools about whether fullback or first five is Barrett’s best position. Asked his opinion in 2019, Sir Graham Henry had no doubts. “At first five he stands so flat to the line, he’s so quick, he’s always a danger. I think he’s the best first five in the world.”
Dan Carter
(2003-2015, 112 tests)
The 1987 World Cup-winning first five-eighths Warwick Taylor was once asked if he could see any weak areas in Dan Carter’s rugby. Taylor paused, laughed, and said, “I do worry that he might be too brave. He’s not a big guy, but he tackles like a loose forward.”
The great undefeated All Blacks coach, Sir Fred Allen, said simply that Carter was the best first five he had ever seen. The wonderful thing is that, as Carter’s career has taken him around the world, and opened up a host of successful business opportunities, he’s never lost a touch of the humble kid from rural Southbridge, in Canterbury, where his rugby journey began. A young man with tickets on himself might have just smiled and nodded when a television crew joined him and three other All Blacks on a slightly bizarre visit in 2014 to a group of Dunedin women knitting jerseys for charity. But Carter sat down, expertly cast on, and casually noted: “I used to knit when I was at school. I made a scarf, some socks and some slippers.”
Greatest All Blacks of the professional era series
Part 1: The best fullbacks and wingers of the professional era
Phil Gifford has twice been judged New Zealand sportswriter of the year, has won nine New Zealand and two Australasian radio awards, and been judged New Zealand Sports Columnist of the year three times. In 2010 he was honoured with the SPARC lifetime achievement award for services to sports journalism.