Sports critic really does give a Ratts

Sports columnist Chris Rattue deals with vicious criticism at times, including death threats and death wishes. Picture / Rebecca Zephyr Thomas

"Chris, all we can hope really is that you die in a car accident or in some other similar way. Regards, Dave Smith."

This is an email that arrived in the inbox of Herald sports critic Chris Rattue a few days ago. Dave's oddly polite "regards" aside, it's nothing out of the ordinary. With the possible exception of Wayne Barnes, Rattue is the most hated man in New Zealand rugby.

In a country where sport functions like religion, Rattue is a heretic of the highest degree. Dan Carter, Sonny Bill, Julian Savea, Manu Vatuvei - most of the greats have been insulted, written off and left for dead by our most contentious critic.

But where did he come from? Why is he so mad? Was he always this way? I gave him a call. To my surprise, he agreed at once to explain himself.

"There was one column that sort of set it all in motion," he says. "I had one of those rare experiences where it feels like you're channelling. There was a Welsh test coming up with the All Blacks and we were getting the same build-up about how Wales were going to be great and break traditions and so on. And at that time, the All Blacks always beat them like 50-3, so it just came pouring out.

"I referred to the Welsh as the 'village idiots' of rugby union, and it just went off."

Rattue received 700 emails overnight. Flying to Australia for work, he was oblivious to the fallout which would soon engulf him - a hysteria that reached the highest echelon of coaching staff and even somehow made the national news.

"What happened was the main newspaper in Cardiff actually ran the column verbatim on the front page," he says. "It was really strange. I didn't even know it had been published and I started getting these weird texts. I was thinking, 'I don't even know what these people are on about'. Then Graham Henry reacted to it, and I thought, 'I can't remember what I thought, actually'. It was a very unusual experience, but it certainly in some ways shaped everything that came after it."

Rattue grew up in Hillsborough, Auckland. In a house without television, he digested the Auckland Star, favouring the sports section with its varied columnists and extensive coverage. A self-described sports nut, the young Rattue haunted grounds across Auckland, following in particular the Ponsonby rugby team.

"My hero was Bryan Williams, and he still is," says Rattue. "Bryan Williams was a living god to me. I went to a lot of club games, I saw the players that rose into the Auckland team and I loved Auckland. Auckland rugby probably meant more to me, as a kid, than the All Blacks. The All Blacks came from places like the King Country, and I didn't even know where that was."

Rattue attended Wellington Polytechnic's journalism school alongside the likes of Mark Sainsbury, Fran O'Sullivan and Steve Braunias, who remembers him as a quiet, handsome kid.

"He was the youngest. He stood out. He stood out for pretty obvious reasons: he was ridiculously handsome. He looked like a sort of Maori Mick Jagger. He was just cool. He was very quiet, very intense. He very much kept to himself. People really liked him, though. He wasn't a cold fish who people did not dig. Everyone liked Chris." (Editor's note: the Herald can inform the Spinoff that Chris does not have any Maori lineage, rather a mix of Irish and North American Indian ancestry ... which is why he is so handsome).

For his part, Rattue says Braunias was permanently barefoot with a real Bob Dylan vibe. Both would go on to make a lot of people very angry.

In 1986, after a stint in London, Rattue took a position at the Northern Advocate in Whangarei, before jumping ship to Auckland's Sun, a tabloid which operated for just a year in opposition to the Herald. Rattue saw it as a chance to work on a daily newspaper, and to get back onto the sports round. When the Sun went under, he joined the opposition, mostly covering rugby and league.

He was a solid reporter with obvious talent, a real literary flair, yet his work was missing the contrarian, antagonistic character of the columns that would later whip punters on both sides of the equator into vengeful and hellacious fury. But something changed. After 18 years in the trenches, Rattue was burning out.

"Around 2006, I'd just had enough of covering the round. I was on rugby at the time and it was killing me, to be honest. I was either going to get what I wanted or leave, because I couldn't do it anymore. So I went to [editor] Tim Murphy with a proposal, and the basis of it was that the media needed people who weren't attached to the sports, because they were asking the same people to write news and features as well as critique the sport.

"I said that we needed independent people, and I wanted to be one of them, and he let me do it straight away. He didn't even quibble or anything. He went, 'right, let's go for it'. I'm really grateful for that."

Murphy had witnessed a gradual transition in Rattue's work, moving from traditional reporting into an unofficial columnist's role. He saw the value in Rattue's writing and perspective, but knew there was inherent friction between the critic and the critiqued.

"Chris wrote sports beautifully. But even when he wasn't seeking a reaction, if he wanted to say what he really thought, he found himself being marginalised by the sports franchises he reported on. It became more difficult to give the unvarnished view he wanted to give, if he was still having to front up to press conferences and team namings and all that kind of stuff. There was some impatience, some hostility, some kind of wariness about what, the sport felt, was a guy who was reporting alongside them also kicking them in the nuts."

Rattue rubs his left earlobe when he's uncomfortable, and there's something confessional in the way he speaks. There are long pauses in our conversations, but they drift by easily, more a mutual gathering of thoughts.

I asked him if he believes everything he writes.

"I do believe it all, but sometimes to get that point across you have to go over here," he says. "People have accused me of trolling. Well, when you learn to write newspapers you're taught the intro is supposed to capture people. It's been given a negative connotation, but of course you are trying to get attention because you want people to read what you're writing. Why would you try to hide it? What's the point?"

So does he really hate Dan Carter?

"I think a lot of his career is overrated. What he did later in his career represents a lot of things about New Zealand rugby that I don't like: that it's all about the All Blacks, and everything below it is simply to be used and abused in the name of the All Blacks.

"When I was brought up, we loved provincial football. I hate what he stood for. I don't think he even tried to play his best for the Crusaders. He used them as a stepping stone for the All Blacks. But I also think the way he played wasn't beyond criticism, and I don't think he played well a lot of the time."

What about McCaw?

"Well ... I like Richie. There'll never be another one like him. What he did for nearly 150 tests isn't humanly possible. A lot of his contemporaries retired so long ago we've forgotten who they are, and he was still out there doing it. To run on the field with him must have been amazing. You must have kind of felt you were invincible. He played on a broken foot and he didn't even make a fuss about it. A broken foot!

"I was reading something about Simon Mannering the other day, how he played through these injuries where he should basically be in hospital, and I thought, 'These are the stories that should be told'. But if you get time to interview a Super Rugby player, you're lucky to get five minutes.

McCaw isn't exactly the only player to limit his contribution to the national discourse. New Zealand Rugby have one of the more impressive PR teams in sport, shutting down the personalities of several hundred men every year, leaving sports journos with little more than rugbyisms and the occasional drunken fight to work with. With a censored player base and a restrictive private broadcaster at the helm, things are looking a little too Soviet for Rattue's liking.

"It's outrageous, mate, the way they're blocking the media off from anybody. And when you do get hold of a player, you get five minutes of just nothing. They just talk a load of shit. It's outrageous. One of my contributions is that I nicknamed the NZRU the Kremlin, and they are under Steve Tew. He is a very fine administrator, but he's a control freak. They're control freaks. I think it's a shame. I hate it, I really hate it."

And that's the least of their crimes.

"They've taken the game away from the people and, with Sanzaar, have created the worst professional competition on the planet.

Rattue talks often of shaping, of motivation. There is an amateur psychologist inside of him, wedged tight between the critic and the philosopher. He's interested in what drives us, in what we know about ourselves. In what we don't know. It's an inherently empathetic mix.

But still, he writes with such anger, blaspheming the patron saints of the punters, week after week. Before the 2015 World Cup, Rattue penned his own Satanic Verses, calling for the sacking of Dan Carter and promising doom should his warnings go unheeded. It was a ridiculous call in hindsight, particularly in light of Carter's crushing 70th-minute drop goal in the final against the Wallabies, a kick felt in the groin of Aussie fans.

But even when Rattue is right, he's wrong. The guy can't catch a break. I asked him what he made of the response to his work. Why were people so consistently pissed off?

"I think it's a peculiarly New Zealand thing, in some respects. I still don't think a lot of New Zealanders understand that the rugby union is a corporation and it's selling a product to them. They still think it's a local, folksy rugby crowd who represent all their hopes and dreams and who only have their best interests at heart.

"New Zealanders are quite insecure about the national identity. They get very defensive about anything they feel is sort of non-patriotic. On one side, we have this overly patriotic can't-criticise-New Zealand crowd, then on the other side you have someone like me, who people deem to be overly critical. We've never been strong in that middle ground of putting ourselves into perspective without using a sledgehammer."

The criticism at times can be vicious. Death threats, death wishes, even the occasional 'one-outs'. A friend in England recently told Rattue he needed to be careful about some of the things he was saying, out of concern for his physical safety. The Herald bears the brunt of this ire, a barrier Rattue has been infinitely grateful for.

"It is hard to deal with the criticism at first, because no one ever really coaches you on how to deal with that," he says. "There are some people who are not built to take it, and they shouldn't do this sort of job. I've seen people at work cop criticism from columns and they've found it very difficult, but I've always been a bit of a loner, I suppose. I never felt I had to be in the in-crowd and I've actually shut myself off."

More important to Rattue is finding meaning in the work itself. Rattue believes his columns contribute to a dialogue, generating conversation and providing a touchstone for discussion. When unpopular opinions are silenced rather than debated, it sets a dangerous precedent. There are too few dissenting voices, he says.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen takes an ironically sympathetic perspective.

"Chris is just like all media people, isn't he? He's got a job to do," Hansen says. "Sometimes it can frustrate people, because they don't like what they write, but they're really only doing their job. [Rattue] is reasonably strong in his opinion and that's okay, too. It doesn't necessarily mean he's right, but he's strong in it and he believes in it. It doesn't mean he's wrong either, by the way. I just take it with a pinch of salt."

And that is the conundrum.

This feature first ran in 1972 magazine by Barkers - produced in collaboration with The Spinoff's Custom division.