His toughness is legendary, but how is the man recently voted the world’s best rugby player of the last decade holding up now? Richie McCaw had vowed to quit lifting weights once he hung up his boots. He changed his mind. Instead, he told me, he decided to stick with it, to keep his remarkably … Read more
The exhibition T20 Black Clash, between Team Rugby and Team Cricket, will take place this Friday. Here Alex Braae sets out why the game is such a joy to watch. There was a moment near the start of last year’s T20 Black Clash which summed up why it connects so well. Stephen Fleming, one of … Read more
Ahead of the All Blacks first game Trevor McKewen makes some fanciful, fraught and hopefully on-point predictions for the Rugby World Cup. Can you take one for the team? Could you cope with the All Blacks coming up short in achieving an unprecedented third straight World Cup if it was for the greater good of … Read more
Stan Walker just made Postie (nee Plus) cool again, but he’s not the first celeb brand ambassador to raise our collective eyebrows. Tara Ward takes a trip down New Zealand’s weird and wonderful celebrity endorsement highway. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and Postie (nee Plus) wants to thank us for buying a … Read more
Fresh from their nuptial marriage, newly-weds Richie McCaw and Gemma Flynn have delighted downtown Auckland with a walkabout that left many onlookers lost for words. Flynn, 26, who exchanged vows with the Rugby World Cup winning hero over the weekend before friends and family at an exclusive Wanaka event dubbed “New Zealand’s royal wedding”, looked … Read more
An extreme latecomer to the Richard McCaw fan club reviews his heroic new autobiographical documentary. Watching the All Blacks pull apart Wales then the Wallabies in their trademark clinical fashion this year, something hasn’t felt quite right. When the bus stop billboards started going up for the autobiographical Richie McCaw documentary Chasing Great a couple … Read more
The heroic image of Richie McCaw chugging an ice cold bottle of Powerade has been blamed for ruining kids’ teeth, but as Jamie Wall finds, it’s far from the first troubling endorsement in All Blacks history. First published in June 2016. Richie! All this stuff about you being responsible for destroying a poor little kid’s … Read more
Richie McCaw won New Zealander of the Year last night, proving we cannot and will not stop giving him awards. Steve Bolton tracks a humble man from Kurow’s gradual transformation into a prize-laden deity. Winning is a habit; something a person gets used to and begins to expect of themselves and the others around them. … Read more
The All Blacks great is more than just a Versatile home owner – he’s a surprisingly versatile actor. Richie McCaw was named New Zealander of the Year last night. Some people are angry. They say setting about every All Blacks record, winning two World Cups, and retiring the greatest rugby player of all time isn’t … Read more
Jenga, bumper boats, waka ama, go-karting, archery, ______? It would take some kind of pattern recognition genius to figure out what activity will herald the beginning of the next Super Rugby season in New Zealand. Calum Henderson looks back at the evolution of the season launch in pictures. It started with a game of off-brand … Read more
The Crowd Goes Wild’s James McOnie on the underrated man-management and team cultural strengths of Richie McCaw. As the stats whirled around about Richie McCaw’s incredible feats as an All Black (the most astounding: he played in almost a third of all New Zealand test rugby wins in history!) there was a story that couldn’t … Read more
Following the All Blacks’ tense victory over the Springboks early on Sunday morning, the New Zealand prime minister did what he does, and, let’s be honest, what many of us would do were we the New Zealand prime minister: he sauntered into the team’s dressing room and chewed on a beer with The Boys. Photographer … Read more
“Bullrush,” says Josh Kronfeld, “is rugby without the ball.” David Slack pays tribute to the sport without a point in his warm and wonderfully entertaining book Bullrush!: A Celebration of the Great New Zealand Game. The finest game of Bullrush you will ever see is three and half minutes long and you will find it … Read more