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You are here: Home » News Comment » Once a Misfit - Now a Centurion. One lad's look at where Ma'a Nonu came from.
30 September 2015
In his next appearance for the All Blacks, Ma'a Nonu will become the 6th All Black to pass the milestone of appearing in 100 test matches. Here is one young correspondent's memory of his first sighting of the big midfield star. Adam Julian of Wellington takes up what was for him a very sad story....
Hello, my name is Adam. It is 2000 and I am a podgy, spotty-faced schoolboy whose squeaky tenor is rapidly turning hoarse.
I am at St. Patrick’s College, Silverstream in Wellington crowded on an embankment along with similarly delirious and odious smelling lads.
We are watching our First XV tackle Rongotai College in the annual traditional fixture.
These days are big. The entire school is let out of class for the afternoon to barrack for our boys.
We are expected to win but Rongotai College is always a dangerous opponent, despite our lopsided historical advantage.
They appear to be a tag of misfits, especially when contrasted with Silverstream boys.
Silverstream is a white, middle-class Catholic school. Our faces are clean shaven. Our uniforms are tidy and our hair does not extend beyond shoulder length. Our rugby teams play in a hard and calculated fashion. Later in the season we triumph in the local championship.
Rongotai are more cosmopolitan. Their uniforms are scruffy, shirts are untucked and some boys wear odd socks. Their supporters sing songs that don’t take the hallelujah out of hallelujah and their hair is liberally long. They play rugby with cheek. They can be super and shite in the same phase.
They are Silverstream’s anthesis.
With two minutes left Silverstream are up 24-19; it's uncomfortably close. We haven’t played well, but this team knows how to get it done.
Last play and this bloke with dreadlocks busts our usually secure defence. To us privileged 'Dooleys' (Catholics) he looks like an overaged Rastafarian bodybuilder.
He goes and he goes, surely not! But yes, he scores. We are all stunned.
Silence is temporary. The same bloke lines up the conversion to win the game. He can’t kick this. It would be blasphemy. It is right on the sideline.
We taunt without mercy, Django Unchained suddenly sounds like Sesame Street. The ball leaves the tee and like a dagger through the heart sails down the middle of the posts. Rongotai wins 26-24.
Fast forward fifteen years and that Rongotai heathen will play his 100th Test for the All Blacks on Friday.
Ma’a Nonu once described himself as an enigma – and that he is.
He is the most yellow carded player in Super Rugby history and one its most capped nomads.
He was loathed by the most fabled franchise. The Crusaders didn’t want a bar of him, yet he happily carries the water for his Wellington club team, Oriental Rongotai.
He once took umbrage at a critical match report. Quizzed on why he was so upset, he said it was because his parents had read it.
Then there was mascara, Colin Meads' heart rate would have soared.
In 2007 Nonu was omitted from the All Blacks World Cup squad.
The relative lightweights of Aaron Mauger, Luke McAlister, Isaia Toeava and Mils Muliaina (it’s true) were the preferred midfield stocks.
After four seasons, and 19 Tests, the then 25-year-old appeared finished.
Since 2008, Nonu has played 81 of the All Blacks 104 Tests. He has started 83 Tests overall and won 87 times.
He has shared the midfield with Conrad Smith 55 times. Their respective nicknames ‘the Snake’ and ‘the Rock’ capture their opposing styles perfectly.
Smith is silky. Nonu is a bully. Smith outwits you. Nonu hurts you.
Nonu has matured into the complete footballer. He has always been explosive with or without the ball, but now those attributes are complemented by deceptively light feet, a precise and varied kicking game and a greater all-around astuteness.
In 2011 he won the William Webb Ellis trophy and was on the shortlist for IRB World player of the year.
The All Blacks have produced some fairly handy second-fives over the years. Warwick Taylor, Ian MacRae, Walter Little and Bert Cooke immediately spring to mind.
Do those names strike fear into the opposition like Nonu?
Do those names boast the longevity of success Nonu has enjoyed?
Nonu has polarised. He has upset the apple cart.
He is the magnificent misfit who fits.
I only wish I appreciated that 15 years ago.
.............
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And it's three titles too for captain Farah Palmer. In the final in Edmonton, Canada, New Zealand beat England 25-17
McCARTHY, WINSTON
The famous New Zealand radio commentator who revolutionised the way rugby commentary was done all over the world.
The Wellington born McCarthy had essentially an outward personality; he loved talking, and he had had time on stage as a lad in the early 1930s in New Zealand. It followed then that he was not phased by nerves when he became a rugby commentator. He broadcast his games with a style so different from the conservative way callers had been first commentated the game in Britain. McCarthy was loud and brazen not afraid to raise his voice and ‘let go’ on the air.
When he was sent by the New Zealand Government to broadcast the 1945-46 Kiwi Army rugby of Britain back to New Zealand his style fascinated the conformist BBC. They took his broadcasts and put them on their stations. They were amazed that he could engender so much excitement. The BBC wanted him to stay on. Instead McCarthy came back to New Zealand, but his style lingered in Britain. Gone were the stuffy, some might say plum-in-the-mouth callers and encouraged was the McCarthy style. The great Scottish TV commentator, Bill McLaren, recalls how, as a young fledgling radio man, he was sent by the BBC to Cardiff in 1954 to stand behind McCarthy and watch ‘how’ he broadcast a game.
Because of the high peaks of emotion surrounding the 1956 Springbok tour of New Zealand Winston’s words of description and catchphrases became the catchphrases of the New Zealand nation. His most famous call was ‘listen….it’s a goal!’ when a shot at goal was taken. He would allow the cheering of the crowd to tell the radio audience first whether a kick was on target or not.
In his time, in the 1940s and ‘50s Winston McCarthy became one of the best-known New Zealanders. He became the eyes and ears of New Zealand’s voracious appetite for listening to their All Black team on tour. It was commonly said around the country that if the All Black selectors of the time could not see every game being played each week they were influenced in their selection of test teams by what McCarthy had said on the air. His words weighed that heavily.
Who was the last New Zealand Referee to control the All Blacks in an Official test match?
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