All Blacks captain Richie McCaw holds aloft the Webb Ellis Cup, after their win against France during the Rugby World Cup 2011. Photo / Brett Phibbs
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw holds aloft the Webb Ellis Cup, after their win against France during the Rugby World Cup 2011. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Do you remember where you were when the All Blacks lost in Cardiff eight years ago? On the eve of the quarter final against France, Greg Bruce reflects on how life can be defined by a tournament that comes round every four years.
1987
In 1987, I was 10 and I can't remember ever having been as excited about anything as I was about the Rugby World Cup. I had just made my own breakthrough as a thoughtful midfielder in the Pakuranga Heights Primary School team.
I really felt I had a rare vision and understanding for the game that could take me to the top, which also summed up my feelings about life.
After one lunchtime match, which we lost, I came back into my classroom singing 'We are the champions' quietly to myself, because I believed it. A loss was temporary and my talent was transcendent.
All Black captain David Kirk with the cup after defeating France in the 1987 World Cup final. Photo / John Stone
I was the house leader for Weka and I was a young narcissist. I remember watching John Kirwan's incredible solo try in the opening World Cup match against Italy on live television by myself at home.
I was probably not by myself but that is how childhood often felt to me. I was in a bubble. It sounds lonely, but I think it just reflected how I saw life, which is to say selfishly.
Midway through the tournament, my parents and I went on a two-week campervan trip around the South Island.
I remember that trip vividly, for many reasons: we went on an eerie tour of a dark and massive hydro electric power station, possibly Manapouri, just me and my parents, led by a man in a hardhat who seemed surprised by our presence; Queenstown was grey and cold and everything was closed; it's the last time I can remember thinking my parents were in love with, or even fond of, each other.
Greg Bruce (far right, middle row) with his Pakuranga Heights rugby school team in 1987. Photo / Supplied
But there is no memory stronger for me than watching the World Cup quarter-final on our campervan's TV in a Hokitika campground and seeing Sean Fitzpatrick running free down the wing and smashing over the Scottish defence.
On the morning of the 1987 World Cup final, the Pakuranga under-11s inevitably won their match at Ti Rakau Park.
I went home excited and sure about the final in the way of a child who knows nothing bad is ever going to happen. It's so strange to write those words now and know they were once true.
At one point, David Kirk disappeared into a maul where, for a second or two, the most probable outcome was death, then he emerged, miraculously untouched, and set up a try for John Kirwan.
It felt like the sort of magic that happened regularly and only to the All Blacks and to me. It was the end of the golden weather.