BEING GREAT
NZ RUGBY WORLD HAS THREE COPIES OF NZ’S GREATEST XV TO GIVE AWAY. TO BE IN TO WIN SIMPLY EMAIL JIM@NZRUGBYWORLD.CO.NZ AND TELL ME WHO YOUR FAVOURITE ALL BLACK IS AND WHY.
It was a hot, early-October Thursday afternoon in Johannesburg, 2012, and the All Blacks were sloppy. Balls were dropped, moves were bungled and lethargy was king. It was perhaps understandable. In August they had played and beaten Australia twice in home-and-away matches that doubled up as Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup tests. Another superfluous but nevertheless physical Bledisloe Cup encounter awaited them in Brisbane in two weeks' time.
In between, however, they had beaten Argentina in a surprisingly hard-fought contest in Wellington, before shifting their base to Dunedin to play the Boks a week later. They had a few days to nurse bruised bodies at home following a 10-point win before boarding a flight across the Pacific to La Plata for their first Rugby Championship match on Argentine soil. A day later the All Blacks had crossed over the Atlantic to Johannesburg and had assembled at this training session at the University of Witwatersrand, one of the oldest academic institutions in the country more commonly referred to as Wits.
The around-the-world travel was tiring enough for those of us who didn't have to train and play, but this was a poor practice so skipper Richie McCaw called his men into a huddle. In a short and
