As we pull into a gas station opposite the appropriately named Johnson Street,
John continues his story: “I still owe that lady at the RFU a bottle of
wine. It wouldn’t happen now but she passed on my letter to all the players
and I had something like 17 replies.
“Five of the guys ended up in New
Zealand, the first being Martin Johnson. We picked him up at
Auckland and on the drive down to Taupo he kept flinching. Every time a
logging truck went past he ducked. He was petrified.”
Johnson was only just beginning his journey into the heart of darkness. The
pitch at Tihoi is now a swede field and the posts are overgrown with
branches. All around is bush, where men are men and everything else is
hunted.
There was scarcely anyone in the Tihoi team who was six foot tall. Might have
been a couple who were that wide.
Albert says: “There was one family who were world champions at bareback
riding, bull riding, roping steers. Another bunch used to jump out of
helicopters on the side of the mountain to bulldog deer.
“Then there was a group of guys who were bushwhackers felling these huge
trees. You had to be tough. A tree doesn’t tell you where it’s going to
fall. It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in New Zealand.
“They weren’t all brilliant rugby players, but they were tough. They
thought Martin was soft and told him to harden up.”
Albert and I have just pulled up to a pub where Colin Meads, aka pinetree, is
crunching stories. We pay our dues with a few pints of beer and Meads comes
over.
He may just be the hardest rugby player of all time. He was chairman of King
Country at the time and Johnson’s mentor. Both Meads and Albert remember
Johnson being called “pretty boy” but Alve is adamant about “lovely boy”.
Meads says: “Martin was a quiet, nice young fella. They gave him a bit of a
King Country barracking. He changed from being a soft Pom and then he
developed. There’s nothing surer than he would have been an All Black.
“Martin was a workhorse and I was supposed to be his tutor. After he had
played two or three games for King Country [the regional team] I thought I
had better say something to him. This was up at North Harbour.
“I said to him: ‘Martin, you’ve got to get more aggressive. You are allowed to
hurt the opposition when you’ve got the ball. People don’t realise that.
You’re a big unit. When you get the ball you’re in charge of the whole game.
You’re allowed to knock someone over. You’ve got to get more aggressive’.
“He became the enforcer, England’s strong man. Before the drop kick when
England won the World Cup, he took it up five or six yards.”
Johnson’s first game for King Country was against Argentina. Glynn Meads, son
of Pinetree, had just put one of the Pumas on a stretcher.
Pinetree says: “Martin could understand what the Argentinians were saying. The
King Country boys didn’t have a clue. Martin told them there was warfare
coming up.” Then it all went off.
Alve says: “He was a little bit wet behind the ears. He was holding his head
after one game. I asked if he was OK. ‘I’ve never played rugby like that
before,’ he said. He grew with us. He wouldn’t give in.”
Johnson was learning quickly, but the real bush was too dense for “a tall
spindly ——”. He had rubbed shoulders with the wild Maoris and decided to
take a job in the bank.
He met a local girl called Kay and left John Albert’s too-small-beds for
something bigger up at the farmhouse. Johnson still pined for McDonald’s.
Johnson was harder than Market Harborough, but he still wasn’t going to live
on venison and grubs.
He played for New Zealand Colts and selector John Hart made Meads guarantee
that Johnson would play for New Zealand. Then Johnson went home with a torn
up shoulder. After six months he was playing for Leicester.
“He wasn’t coming back to New Zealand,” says Meads. “England had all this
money even if it was amateur days. The offers were two big. He wrote me a
nice letter about it.”
Now England had a terminator. Johnson may never have hunted wild pigs with a
couple of dogs and a knife, but he came back from King Country with a bit of
the wild bush in him. He came back a man who could claim to be England’s
greatest lock forward.
But did he learn enough to manage a winning World Cup team in New Zealand?
John Albert says: “We threw out a fishing line and caught a big fish, but if
England wins this World Cup he will be the biggest fish in rugby history.
“We all make choices in life, but most of us don’t make the right choices most
of the time. Martin has made the right choices all the way through. I have
this feeling.
“He is sounding very confident right now. Martin makes so many choices
that are right. You can’t bet against him.”
