By EUGENE BINGHAM
Robin Brooke's gargantuan frame unfolds from behind the wheel of a distinctly family car.
In the carpark at Western Springs where the Blues have come to train, Brooke's stationwagon is the only vehicle with a child's carseat.
Gear bag in one hand, personal organiser in the other, here is a man who was writing his own rugby obituary seven months ago when his career had flat-lined. A man whose focus is now on fatherhood and life as a supermarket magnate.
So what on earth is Brooke doing captaining the Blues this season?
Sean Fitzpatrick, fellow former All Black and current Blues assistant manager, expected people to question the choice of captain.
"I guess it's up to him to prove why we picked him."
The 1.97m lock has been at the top of New Zealand rugby since breaking into the awesome Auckland team of 1987 as the latest in a line of Brooke brothers to wander off their Warkworth farm onto Eden Park.
Last July, it was all over. The 34-year-old veteran of 62 tests was effectively dumped from the Auckland NPC squad, discarded in favour of much younger forwards.
At the time, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was time for others to get a chance.
A month later, Auckland selectors reached for the defibrillators and revived Brooke's career when injuries left the side depleted of middle-row forwards.
It seemed a reprieve, but now he is back at the front line, leading a side desperately trying to reverse their disappointing fortunes of recent seasons.
"Oh, I don't know," says Brooke in his laidback way. "Stranger things have happened."
Yeah, sure, he is back when some say he should be sitting in the stands. But he does not feel he has to prove anything to anyone, whatever Fitzpatrick or the public say.
"As long as I can be happy with myself and the guys are happy with me and we win, that's all I'm worried about."
Brooke believes that in some ways his being dropped from the NPC team last year and the end of his All Black days in 1999 gave him time to recuperate.
"From the end of the Super 12 last season to when I started NPC was probably three to four months. That gave me time for my body to rest and recover."
He admits that he has not been the world's most wildly enthusiastic captain in the past.
"To start with, when I was first asked to be captain, I wasn't worried whether I was or not."
But this season, he wants to lead from the front. He expects his team-mates to do their own preparation, "but I will crack the whip if I have to."
Whatever happens this year, Brooke is determined it is his last in rugby. With a new career already underway, he wants to move on.
After more than a decade off and on as a builder, he has his eye on the supermarket business. Last year he began an owner-operator training course with Foodstuffs.
It was a purely business decision.
"In the building trade, there are a lot of big players in the game now and it's definitely a cyclical thing. Whereas with food ... everyone needs food."
The course involves trainees working in every part of the business, down to stacking shelves, for six weeks at a time. Over Christmas, Brooke worked fulltime as a checkout operator at Pak'N Save Mt Albert.
"It was quite hard-case, really. I got some stares and funny remarks for sure."
Some who deal with him say the course has brought a change in attitude. Where once Brooke may have been accused of arrogance, he seems to have learned a bit of humility, says an Auckland rugby insider.
Once he is trained, Brooke hopes to buy into the company and start running his own supermarket.
It's a world away from the path that most former players take these days. But Brooke has no aspirations to pop up in rugby management or play overseas, as his brothers have.
He realises that he could have earned mega-bucks turning out for a club team on the other side of the world. But he would rather throw himself into a new career and get away from rugby.
For one, he says, he satisfied his wanderlust by playing three off-seasons in Italy early in his career. For another, he has a family to think of.
If there is one thing that will start Brooke raving, it is the subject of his 1-year-old son. Caleb's a dream child. He has slept through the night since he was only three months old.
"It's been a life-changing experience. It's opened up a whole new world for us [he and wife Hayley].
"Suddenly the world is divided into those people who have kids and those who don't."
Besides, older brother Zinzan - recently returned after a stint at the helm of English club Harlequins - has convinced him that life as an overseas rugby star is not all it is cracked up to be.
Lifestyles in Britain and New Zealand cannot be compared, especially those for children.
Take the Brookes' upbringing. The five boys - Naera, Marty, Zinzan, Robin and Simon, in descending order of age - and sister Margaret roamed wild and free on the family's rolling pastures at Aharoa, west of Warkworth.
They went to Mahurangi College, where sport figured largely. Robin was also considered excellent at athletics, particularly field events.
Good farm food, strong genes and plenty of rough-and-tumble between the brothers led three of them to win national honours (Robin and Zinzan were All Blacks, and Marty made the New Zealand Colts).
None of the boys has stuck with farming, though; Margaret is the only one of the family to have followed in the gumboot-prints of parents Sandy and Hine.
But Brooke says he would not trade his youth on the farm for anything. "We had an awesome upbringing. There wasn't much money to go around - we lived off the farm."
Not that money is a problem for the modern-day footballer. Brooke has played through the transition from amateur to professional rugby and is convinced it has been good for the game.
As a board member of the Players' Association, his main concern has been ensuring that players realise they have to think about life after rugby and not be lured into a false sense of security by the contracts available to Super 12 and All Black stars.
Brooke also rues the fact that the long domestic and international season robs players of the chance to play overseas during the off-season while they are still in their prime, as he did.
The rugby may not have been much, but Brooke still fondly remembers his seasons in Italy.
"It was like a paid OE. I used to ski two or three times a week - sometimes even on the morning of a game."
Right now, he has more serious business on his mind.
Fitzpatrick, who rates Brooke as one of the most outstanding athletes he played with, is convinced the Blues captain will be more than up to the job.
"Any player goes through patches where they struggle with getting themselves up for games. Rob would be the first to agree he has been through that this last year.
"But the biggest thing is that he still has respect. He is respected by everyone," says Fitzpatrick.
"I've told him to go out there and enjoy it. What better way to finish your career?"
New Zealand's Super 12 squads
2001 Super 12 schedule
Last fling before checkout time
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