Rugby World Cup: Mealamu sets the highest standard

The end of Mealamu's career is nigh, but he knows the standards he has set will continue. Photo / Hagen Hopkins

When Keven Mealamu's penultimate battle with the All Blacks finished with a narrow semifinal win over South Africa at Twickenham, the old warrior made his way back to the dressing room.

After the celebratory hugs and handshakes were over, he sat and checked his phone for messages from home and what he found made him doubly determined to finish his professional rugby career on the highest note possible, and it doesn't get any higher than a successful defence of the William Webb Ellis Trophy.

It was a video sent by his wife Latai and featuring his two children Samuel and Maia which did it. Gathered in their Auckland home with extended family and friends in the early hours of last Sunday, their pride and excitement at Mealamu and his teammates holding off the Boks 20-18 and making the final was palpable, something which days later at the team's Pennyhill Park Hotel base on the outskirts of London is still affecting the 36-year-old.

"It was a really proud moment for me to see them really enjoy that moment as well. For all of us here, we want to make sure we see all our families do that again," Mealamu says.

Mealamu is a man of contradictions. He is the nicest and politest man you could hope to meet off the pitch, a fearsome and competitive creature on it. He appears shy and yet is the All Blacks' disciplinarian, making sure the highest standards are met. Players who fall foul are sent to see Mealamu. It is a tough trip because none want to disappoint him, a man who has bled time and again for the All Black cause.

What flicks the switch for the former Blues veteran is a determination to reach those standards, for himself, his team and his family.

"When you cross the line and take the field, I'm thinking that I have a job to do - not only for myself but for my teammates as well. I just try to make sure I do as good a job as I can. I'm proud of what I do - whether I'm wearing the No 2 or the No 16. I want to do a good job.

"It's changed heaps over the years," he says of how he gets in the zone for the war of a test match. "I'm a real proud Christian and family man. My family have always been an inspiration for me. But as you get older, you know the game is the same but what changes is your mentality. You have to go from really excited to really focused. You have to do one job at a time, one job at a time. The way you prepare changes, but those things that really drive me have never changed."

He will miss his mates, the laughter, the highs and (to a lesser extent) lows, the opportunity to represent his country. It is a job but the best job possible, he says, and while his family, and his faith, are an enduring inspiration, retirement from the game will allow him to spend more time at home.

With 131 tests to his name over 13 years plus an equally incredible 175 Super Rugby appearances (375 first-class games in total) - many of which were away from home - it is what he and his family deserve.

"It's something I'm looking forward to," he says. "I think it's the biggest sacrifice you make as a family man - that time away. One thing that is different is that it feels like you're on honeymoon all the time you're at home with your wife.

"You try to make every moment special when you're with your kids because you spend so much time away. I think we all as a family understand why we're doing this. It's great that they're supportive as well."

Earlier, Mealamu responded to a press conference question about whether, at the end of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, he thought he would be playing at the next one.

"Oh yeah, [although] it wasn't until a year later I thought, for a personal goal, wouldn't it be amazing to have the opportunity to go to another, and to be here with the opportunity to play in another final. I'm close to that goal.

"I'm just really blessed to be in this position and to get the opportunity to do this."

The All Blacks were in shutdown mode this week. They weren't willing to provide any ammunition for the Wallabies so their answers featured more generalities and cliches than usual - understandable given the circumstances. But there is no getting away from the respect they have for Mealamu.

"He seems like a quiet guy ... no, he has his own way, he has a stare which puts you back in line, it's nothing more than that," prop Charlie Faumuina says of his front-row mate.

"It will be awesome to play alongside Kevvy in his last game. He's had an awesome career, he's played a big part in my career at Auckland and the Blues."

The end of Mealamu's career is nigh, but he knows the standards he has set will continue. It might just be his legacy. Given the way Tokoroa's finest has helped mould apprentice Dane Coles into the player he is today - one of the best hookers in the world - and Mealamu's humble nature, it's probably not such a stretch to suggest every All Blacks supporter is nearly as proud of him as his family.

"I know it will carry on," he says of the All Blacks culture in his absence. "It will keep getting better and better. I don't think it will matter whose voice it is, as long as we're constantly trying to reach the highest standard we can - really enjoying ourselves and as always playing rugby that we're all really proud of."