A view from the middle of the RWC mayhem
Or, what happens when it goes right and what happens when it goes wrong ($).
Who doesn’t love a Rugby World Cup?
Well, maybe some of our cousins across the Tassie might not be that interested in it right at the minute. And to be fair we Kiwis haven’t always loved them! There has been, at times, a love/hate thing going on.
But there is affection there too. After all, it was a Kiwi, the much under-recognised Dick Littlejohn from Whakatane, who, alongside Australia’s Sir Nicholas Shehadie, did much of the heavy lifting to make the first Rugby World Cup a reality.
My own experience at Rugby World Cups is varied. I managed to miss that inaugural 1987 tournament completely even though I lived in Auckland and worked as a journalist at the Auckland Star. A lot of people missed that first tournament. The opening game was played in front of a barely half full Eden Park. Semifinals were played at the small-capacity Concord Oval and Ballymore in Brisbane and the third-place playoff (now re-named the Bronze Final) was played at Rotorua International Stadium - a cracker which was won by Wales at the death thanks to a stunning try by John Devereux who ran over most of the Wallabies.
I was engaged in sponsor activity and as a fan at the 1999 Rugby World Cup in Wales and the United Kingdom (possibly the worst tournament event).
I worked for the Australian Rugby Union as deputy chief of staff, public affairs, at RWC 2003. That was the tournament where Australian coach Eddie Jones in his first coming famously came into the semifinal against the unstoppable All Blacks saying his Wallabies were “roadkill”. With nothing to lose, they cut loose and we lost. Not so much an ambush by the canny Aussies as a gang tackle, mugging and kicking on the ground to boot. On our daily 7am call the next morning I told my Aussie boss (the affable and fair-minded Strath Gordon) that I didn’t feel well because I’d woken up on the wrong side of the World Cup!
Joining New Zealand Rugby as head of communications and All Blacks media manager in 2004, my next World Cup experience was our remarkable bid to host RWC 2011, inspired by the late Jock Hobbs, who was NZ Rugby chairman, and our CEO Chris Moller.
Built on the back of the successful hosting of the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour, we bagged the tournament against all odds (and bigger and better financed Japan and South Africa). We then set out to host one in 2011 while also trying to win the one before it in 2007.
Like this year’s tournament, the host union was France. Though, unlike this year’s event, some of the games were not in France. Like the quarter-final the All Blacks were scheduled to play in Cardiff against tournament hosts France, who were runners-up in their pool after losing to Argentina in the opener.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My role at RWC 2007 was two-fold. The first part was to support our media and communications responsibilities including backing up All Blacks media manager Scott Compton. I had relinquished that part of my role several years earlier as the duties of both jobs expanded. I was also there to manage issues and crisis communications for NZR as history had shown that RWC tended to throw up a few bombs for participating teams and their organisations to try to catch.
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