'Everyone had moments of getting shitty, but it was nothing we didn’t get over'
Sam Whitelock book extract ($): The All Black legend's family and other early influences reflect on his career the environment that produced a champion.
The following is an extract from Samuel Whitelock’s autobiography. I chose this section because it is one of my favourite parts of the book. In the course of researching Sam’s life, we came to the realisation that we had all this great insight from those who loved and knew him best, but with no easy way to slot it into his story. So while we have 17 ‘traditional’ autobiographical chapters we thought, “Why not do one chapter framed as a dinner-table conversation?” It’s the sort of thing that happened in the Whitelock household every night when the boys were younger. It provides a window into the their world and insight into the family forces that helped drive Sam to greatness. Some parts are abridged.
NB. On Friday I will run an AMA about the ghostwriting process — and thanks so much for a number of great questions — and announce the two winners of the book giveaway.
Until then, enjoy…
A CONVERSATION WITH MY FAMILY
OVER THE COURSE OF researching the details and recollections that make up my story, many conversations were had with family and others that played a big role in my development as a person and a player. The stirring up of old memories was a lot of fun. Here’s a distillation of some of those conversations.
Cast: Caroline (Mum), Braeden (Dad), George (oldest brother), Adam (big brother), Luke (little brother), Darron Larsen (basketball coach), Rob Jones (school housemaster), Hannah (wife).
EARLY DAYS ON THE FARM
Caroline: Braeden was still playing club rugby for High School Old Boys when Samuel was born. He must have finished in 1989. I was in the stands in the club final against Varsity, I think, holding on to baby Sam, and George and Adam kept getting on the field.
Braeden: I thought to myself, ‘Bloody hell! This is a final – who’s that on the field?’ I looked over and they were my kids.
I went to Flock House, the farm training centre near Bulls, when I left school, then went to Canterbury for a few years, where I met Caroline. When I came back to Manawatū, we had all these All Blacks playing for us. We had Gary Knight, Bruce Hemara, Frank Oliver, Mark Shaw, Geoff Old, Mark Donaldson, Doug Rollerson, Lachie Cameron, Mark Finlay, Craig Wickes. I was the youngest forward on that Manawatū team.
Caroline: You won that final. I think you got two tries that day and came off thinking, ‘That’ll do.’ It was getting a bit busy with a big farm and three young boys (and Luke still to come), so Braeden made the call to finish playing.
I often get asked who my favourite son is. I don’t know how they can ask me that. Cheeky buggers. I loved them all equally. The others always reckon Luke was the spoiled one, but I don’t know if that’s true. They were all spoiled.
Braeden: The boys did a TV show where Adam said Luke only stopped breastfeeding because he was going to be late for the school bus. Sam and Adam reckoned they only each got three weeks each, but Luke always got special treatment.
George: The old farmhouse had a grass tennis court. Mum and Dad used to put us in there to play because it had a high chain-link fence. It didn’t take us long to learn how to climb up over it.
Adam: Rugby started early with us. We did play a bit on the tennis court, but our favourite ‘pitch’ was the trampoline. We played ‘knee rugby’, two on two, the two middle ones took on the oldest and youngest. George was always the strongest, so this was a way to even it out. It would just turn into a massive wrestle. It would normally end with someone crying – more often than not Luke, but Samuel and I might have shed a few tears from time to time too.
George: Everyone had moments of getting shitty, but it was nothing we didn’t get over.
Luke: There was a lot of competition growing up, and Sam – being just a couple of years older, and my roommate – was the obvious one for me to target. As a younger brother you’re trying to prove yourself all the time, and taking on George – he was a teammate – and Adam probably seemed unrealistic, so Sam was my target. There were a few fights, a few tears from time to time, but a lot of laughs. That competition at home instilled a lot of the things we took into sport and life, really.
Adam: We always did things together, whether it was playing sport or setting off down the farm to do a bit of possum hunting or get up to mischief.
Because George and I roomed together and were a bit older, we’d sometimes decide on things we wanted to do without Samuel and Luke hanging around, and the easiest way to do that was to tell them we were going to a place on the farm where there were a lot of ferrets you had to fight your way past. Samuel wasn’t keen on non-domesticated animals.
Luke: I’m grateful for growing up and all that space. I actually can’t imagine growing up as four boys in town. Trouble follows boredom and we were never bored. We were also fortunate in that we weren’t that far from Palmy, so it wasn’t like we were totally isolated at the end of a road hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city.
GETTING FED
Caroline: Sam could never keep the fat on. His legs above the knee were skinnier than below – we always used to joke about that. He didn’t get really tall until we sent him away to boarding school. In Year 10 he came home one weekend and I was like, ‘Holy heck, what have they been feeding you?’ He just sprouted. Mind you, his grandfathers were both six-three, six-four.
George: At home we’d go through a box of Weet-Bix between us for breakfast. We always had roasts for dinner, a two-litre tub of ice cream and a big tin of fruit salad for dessert. We were a big-eating family.
Caroline: Sam reckons he was skinnier than the rest because he always sat at the end of the table, and by the time the food was passed down to him there wasn’t much left.
Luke: He probably missed the odd breakfast, because Samuel loved his sleep. I can still see his mop of long hair up one end of the bed and his feet hanging out the other. That and his Britney Spears music he insisted on listening to.
Braeden: He was always last out of bed.
George: He was so slow to eat. We’d all hoover up our food and he’d still be at the end of the table, just chewing away in his own time. We weren’t allowed to get down from the table until he’d finished, so he wasn’t always popular.
Adam: We never used to go out for dinner much when we were kids, but when we did I don’t think it was that relaxing for Mum or Dad. As soon as we sat down they would order for all of us – four burgers or four plates of fish and chips – and tell the people running the place that it would be a good idea to get the food on the table quickly because they had four boys who were capable of wrecking the place.
INTRODUCTION TO FOOTY
George: My earliest memories of rugby are on the frosty fields of Ongley Park. Samuel tagged along with Adam and me. He might have been playing juniors for Old Boys, Dad’s club, before he had started school. He would have been attracted by the fish and chips on the way home after practice on Thursday.
Adam: Mum and Dad were awesome supporters all the way through but they were low-key. It wasn’t until we got to high school that Dad started to understand that he had some talent on his hands and we could play a bit of rugby. That’s when he started to commit to coaching. Up until then he would be out on the farm on Saturday mornings, come in to take us to footy, watch our games, then we’d stop for a pie and a can of fizzy on the way home. Dad would be back into farm work until we got around the table that night and talked about our games. He obviously loved rugby, but I never felt like he was pushing us hard in that direction.
We’d have these VHS tapes, Super Rugby highlights or All Blacks top tries. I can’t remember exactly, but I know as kids we’d stick these tapes in the machine one after the other and watch them back to back for hours at a time. Samuel would have picked up things from that, I certainly did, watching your heroes at that age.
Dad encouraged us to play in the backs because he probably knew with our size we’d eventually move into the forwards and he wanted us to grow our skill level. Samuel, being tall, was always a forward, but Luke and George definitely spent time in the backs as kids.
George: After school, Mum would pick us up from the bus stop, which was about three kilometres from here. Often she’d just pick our bags up and we’d run home. That was rugby training for us. We would have been between eight and 12, I guess.
SCHOOL DAYS
Caroline: When it came to high school, they were always going to go boarding.
Braeden: It was cheaper than keeping them at home and paying for food and petrol. If they were home, they would cut loose on the farm and we wouldn’t see them for homework.
Caroline: Their dad and grandad had a history at Feilding High School, but the main thing for me was that it was co-ed.
George: Feilding High was renowned as a middle-of-the road state school. Being the eldest, I led the way, so wherever I went, the others were always going to follow, so Mum and Dad sat me down to talk about which school I should go to. They just wanted us to grow up to be good people. They wanted us to be able to associate with women respectfully, and had some concerns that growing up in a house with four boys and then going to an all-boys school might have stunted that.
I was probably a bit upset, because most of my rugby friends were going from intermediate to Palmerston North Boys’ High, but I look back on it now and we made the right choice. I have no qualms about it whatsoever. Going to Feilding made us work harder. We were playing First XV by Year 11. It was not easy. We were going out there and getting hidings. I remember Aaron Smith, who dripping wet was 50 kilograms, playing first-five as a Year 11 against these big Wesley College men. Future Wallaby Sekope Kepu was 130 kilograms as a No. 8 and lining him up.
Caroline: When we had all four of them there it was a bit embarrassing. We’d take them over and they’d have all their bikes and duvets and gear. I had to put a horse float on, and they were so embarrassed when we rocked up in that.
George: Roger Menzies came in as principal and suspended so many kids straightaway. He set the standard really high.
Braeden: George got in a bit of trouble, but he was never suspended. Samuel was the only one who was suspended.
Caroline: Didn’t it involve throwing eels into the girls’ showers?
Braeden: I’m not sure if that was the specific incident, but I do know the girls got their own back for that and put some old chooks in his drawers.
Caroline: I got the job of going over to pick him up. I got there and he was sitting on a bench seat with his head down. Got in the car and he never said a word the whole way home because he was so scared about what Braeden was going to say.
Braeden: He thought he had been expelled.
Caroline: Yes, he didn’t know the difference between a suspension and an expulsion.
Luke: Samuel was sent away to boarding school, and it wasn’t long before he was sent home for a cold shower and a bit of self-reflection. I think I quite enjoyed that.
George: The hostel manager was a guy named Rick Francis, who was the most instrumental single figure, outside our immediate family, in our careers. He formed our habits. He was massive on goal setting. That’s where the red book comes from, which Samuel lives by.
He made a huge difference to our lives by making us reach for something and then holding us accountable to that. He was also big on the basics of life. We didn’t take to the field in dirty boots. We didn’t start our day with unmade beds.
Dad came on board with Rick to coach the colts, and we started from the bottom up, started tripping up a few big teams. We beat Kelston one year, which was an eye-opener for them.
Darron: Rick was walking me around the school when I joined the staff. George and Adam were in the pool and he introduced me. I was like, ‘How long have you two been working here?’ Turns out they were Year 11 and 12. They looked like fully grown men, shaving twice a day.
Rob: When I first came, I thought George was on the staff. Those boys would always look you in the eye and shake your hand – sometimes a bit harder than it actually needed to be.
Darron: Sam didn’t play basketball in Year 9 but I had brought a whole lot of basketball-mad kids with me from North Street Intermediate to Feilding High, and he fell in with them as a friend group. At the end of Year 9 he asked me if he could play basketball. What was he then, 1.88 or 1.89 metres? I just said, ‘Yes please.’
George: I knew Samuel was really talented from a young age. I don’t think Adam will mind me saying that Samuel and Luke had a skills base that was higher than ours because Dad learned things along the way to help develop them earlier and faster. Adam and I were like guinea pigs, in a way. The other thing was that they played basketball. Looking back, that really helped with their coordination. It really balanced Samuel and Luke’s skill sets, and they were both far more comfortable than me in particular with the aerial and ball-handling side of the game.
Braeden: When Sam and Luke used to come home for the weekends, they’d be constantly playing one-on-one with each other. When one of them scored they’d always say, ‘Oh, baby!’ We ended up naming one of our horses O Baby and she was the top three-year-old harness racing filly in New Zealand.
George and Adam weren’t basketballers, but they were good athletes. George was a good runner, but Adam was elite. He never lost a race at Feilding High. Never. He always made the final of the 1500 metres and the 800 metres at the New Zealand Secondary Schools champs.
Caroline: Adam could run all day. He had the endurance.
Luke: I was a bit behind Sam in terms of what I offered in basketball. He had that extra height. I had a role to play in the team and provided that, but in terms of taking my game to the next level, rugby always collided, so high school was my level. I had a bloody good time, though.
Darron: In Year 12, Sam was invited by Basketball New Zealand to a camp for the top 30 school players in the country. It was at the same time he was picked for a national rugby squad, so he had to make a choice. His choice was this: pay $560 and get yourself up to Auckland for a basketball camp, or show up to a flash hotel and get a big bag full of new kit for free to play rugby. He liked basketball a lot, but, realistically, rugby was always going to be his path.
It would have been nice to see how far he could have gone because he had the physical attributes and he worked so hard. He did the grind work. Similar to rugby. When Sam was in Year 13… we qualified for nationals and would have done really well but we lost Sam, Mitchell Crosswell and Luke, who were playing for Hurricanes schools that same week. We lost three of our main six or seven players. We ended up pulling out of nationals because we would not have been competitive. I’d suggest with those three we would have been top eight definitely, and a real chance of top four.
His court vision, his passing, spatial awareness and above-the-rim skills he all transferred to rugby. Luke was a little more coordinated than Sam, but not as big. By Year 10, Sam was starting to dribble the ball. Yeah, a couple of attempts ended with the ball in the stands, but by Year 13 he could take the ball, run it up court a few steps and hit someone in the lanes in transition. You have to remember he started a year later than most, but worked that little bit harder than anyone else to catch up.
He could have made a career out of it, but not the same as rugby. Actually, I shouldn’t say that, because Samuel worked so bloody hard, I don’t really want to put a limit on what he could have achieved as a basketballer. He might have been a couple of centimetres short to make the NBA playing the type of game he did – but you know what, the way he worked at his game, he might have made it anyway.
He had a will to win and a doggedness. That group I had, I was tough on them in a way I probably couldn’t get away with in this generation of kids. The amount of running I made them do at training, the water bottles that were thrown or kicked into the stands, the amount of pens and clipboards that were broken because I was so intense – they loved it, they didn’t sulk, they soaked it up.
George: It was at school where we, as brothers, probably thought, ‘Yeah, we could be okay at rugby.’ We were all making Manawatū rep teams and Hurricanes schools. We had a lot of good guys around us – Nick and Mitch Crosswell, Chris Walker, Richie Tichborne, Daniel Smith – he was electric – but also a lot of players who never played again when they finished school. Sam and Luke benefited from Adam and me going before them and accumulating this knowledge about what it took to stand out.
We’d be glued to the TV on Friday nights watching the Hurricanes. For whatever reason – call it the Rick Francis influence – we’d be pausing it, asking each other what we’d do in certain situations. All of us have been captains, and I reckon you can trace those leadership traits back to then. We just loved the game and quizzed each other all the time. ‘If you were captain, what would you do here? If you were calling the lineout, would you go front, middle or back here?’ We still do it now if we’re together, but I tend to fall asleep during the night games, being a dairy farmer.
Adam: I was playing for Hurricanes schools and Samuel was skinny and rawboned. He was named in the New Zealand Schools team in Year 12 and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. He’s still got another whole year to go.’ At the time he was still playing basketball and I think that was amazing for his skills. He played rugby above his head so much better than other tall kids his age. That was such a point of difference for him.
Darron: Luke was the most outgoing one, George was the most serious – he was head of the hostel in Year 12 and seemed to know what he wanted out of life. Adam was the most focused on his study and Sam was probably the rebellious one. Initially, schoolwork didn’t seem that appealing to him, but I think a bit of Adam’s diligence started to rub off on him.
Rob: Sam was in the middle of everything at school, but he wasn’t necessarily a ringleader. He was a quieter type of leader. People followed him, but not because he told them to or was a ‘look at me’ type of student.
We were a big goal-setting school under Rick. So in Sam’s Year 13 group we had to come up with a training program, and had to state some short-term and long-term goals and say how this training program was going to help. Sam’s long-term goal, the one he wrote down, was to play at the 2011 Rugby World Cup. He asked me what my goal was. At the time I was doing a bit of ice climbing and I said, ‘I love the thought of Mount Everest – I’d love to climb that.’ He said: ‘I’ll make the World Cup and you have to climb Everest.’ I’m like, ‘Let’s do it.’
I’ve still got that piece of paper somewhere. He typed it out. Every time I see him, he’ll ask, ‘Have you done Everest yet?’
ON THEIR CHARACTER TRAITS AND HARD WORK
George: Adam is the joker of the family. Samuel’s a bit quieter, a bit more like me in that he takes things pretty seriously, although he’s probably a bit more relaxed than I am, and Luke, being the youngest, was just happy to go with the flow, but he possibly holds things in a bit more.
Luke: I was very lucky to have three older brothers. They set a really high standard at whatever they did, whether it was at home on the farm, at school or even just in how they dealt with people.
George: We were always told to stick together when we were growing up, and, being the oldest, I took that responsibility seriously. So yeah, I looked out for him, but we all looked out for each other, really. We could be problematic from time to time, like when we locked the babysitter out of the house and wouldn’t let her in for an hour. There were a few tears that night when Mum and Dad got home, but all pretty harmless stuff.
As rugby players, I was the guy who grinded away. Adam, he had a massive engine. Huge. Probably the hardest-working back I’ve played with. Samuel had that natural height and skills to go with it, and Luke probably had the best pure skills out of the lot of us.
Caroline: In terms of personalities, the boys are all similar but different. I know that’s not very insightful, but it’s true.
Braeden: Adam has always been the most underestimated of the boys, probably because he played in George’s teams and George was always captain, was always talking, and by default Adam was in his shadow.
Caroline: Adam is a deep thinker and a real people person. That’s why he loves real estate, because he’s always talking to people.
Braeden: George wouldn’t have the patience for real estate because he’s so cut and dried. He’d be like, ‘This is what it’s worth so either pay it or piss off.’
Caroline: They always fronted up and worked on Christmas Day.
Adam: It was the way we were brought up. You pitched in and helped out where you could, whether it was covering the silage stack a few hours after dark to get it done, or milking on Christmas Day. Even now, if we’re home we’ll get up at 4 am to go down to the shed and work. Two would go to one shed, two to the other and it was always a race to see who could get done quickest and get home for breakfast.
Those things Mum and Dad instilled into us, and they kept us humble. Dad didn’t get School C. He got a lot of canings but he was smart. He started that business with 60 hectares and now he’s got two and a half thousand cows. They have a massive asset and employ 15 people. Dad didn’t go to uni and Mum worked at home, but they’ve been extremely successful, are good people and we’re bloody lucky to have them as parents.
We were all so lucky to be able to play professional rugby but we’d still get a kick out of going home and working on the farm and being able to give the staff time off on Christmas. It was a way that Mum and Dad could make sure we never forgot our roots, and to be honest, they didn’t have to ask.
ON LEAVING HOME FOR CANTERBURY
Braeden: People assume they all just followed George down to Canterbury, but that’s not how it worked at all. They all went on different paths and George’s actually started at Otago.
George: After a summer at my uncle’s farm in Te Pōhue – I started to get fit and strong running all his hills – I went to Telford, the farm training school near Balclutha. I’d been there a few days when I had the New Zealand Under-19 trials in Taupō. I won the fitness test and got named as captain, and that was massive for me as I’d never made New Zealand Schools. I had envisaged a life on a farm with a bit of footy, but from that trial on, rugby took over.
Adam: George was smart in a really practical way, but I wanted to be the first from the family to go to university and get a degree. I took pride in that because I showed Samuel and Luke that it was possible for us farm boys to get decent marks and to go to university, and they both followed with scholarships.
They had to work on being studious, whereas I think I’m more that way by nature.
George: The others all ended up at university in Christchurch, which is pretty cool. I was flatting in Dunedin, playing club footy for Alhambra-Union and had just started making the Otago team when I got a call from Robbie Deans. He said that he thought I was a number seven and asked me if I wanted to give it a crack in Canterbury and the Crusaders.
Luke: I played for four or five years at Canterbury and had some opportunities with the Crusaders, but I was lacking a bit of identity. I don’t mean this in a negative way at all, but I probably needed to break free of family. I had all that comfort and familiarity of having family around. The simple fact is that I felt like I had a lot more to give in terms of playing and leadership, but arguably wasn’t playing to my potential, or just showed glimpses of it. Jamie Joseph flew me down to Dunedin, gave me a chance, and it was the best thing that happened for my rugby. I had four amazing seasons down there and have a lot to thank them for. Jamie and Tony Brown simplified what they wanted out of each player, what they wanted out of each position. Scott McLeod was a big influence, too. I started playing with a clarity I had been lacking.
LIFE AFTER RUGBY
Hannah: When Sam first made the All Blacks he was still finishing his degree at Lincoln, but even then he was worrying about what he was ‘going to do’. It didn’t matter how often I’d tell him to just enjoy being a professional rugby player, in the back of his mind he always knew his career could end at any time. I don’t know if that makes any sense for people who don’t know him, but that’s how he was.
Buying the Hawke’s Bay farm in 2017 not only gave Sam a bit of peace of mind for when his career finished, but it also gave him something else to keep his mind occupied. It wasn’t rugby all the time.
George: I did a year in Japan at Panasonic in 2014 and promptly retired. I probably had a bit of good rugby left in me but I was over it, especially the demands of the game off the field. I was never that keen on that side. I still loved playing the game, but all the other stuff, I was sick of it, to be honest.
Kayla [nee Sharland] was playing hockey for New Zealand and there was an opportunity on the farm here. We didn’t want to live our lives in different parts of the world for six months of the year, so while it was a massive call to retire, it was also an easy one.
Braeden: Half the farm is Braeside – mine and Caroline’s side – and half is Galaxy. We’ve sold George and Kayla half the cows and he leases Galaxy.
George: I’m well established here now, and that was the other thing. I didn’t want to play till my mid-30s and then take five years to get established on the farm, because I wanted to enjoy my kids from their ages five to 15. Those are golden years as far as I’m concerned, and I didn’t want to spend every waking minute on the farm trying to establish myself when they were at that age.
Adam: Steve Hansen told one of the boys – I can’t remember if it was George or Sam – that if I’d played number seven I would have been an All Black. Instead, I was a midfielder who often played on the wing. I wasn’t an out-and-out speedster but I worked hard, chased every kick, got touches on the ball, won all the fitness tests and made a career out of that. I’m proud of my career and am stoked to have played for New Zealand Sevens. I had some bad injuries. I dislocated my elbow at Bayonne in my fourth game. I had it put in a sling and it locked at 90 degrees and I couldn’t bend it. I had to have that operated on and fixed in New Zealand. I suffered a number of concussions, and the last one just wouldn’t come right so I retired after 2017.
The first year or two after I retired was pretty tough. I was always angry at myself. I kept second-guessing myself as to whether I should have played on. I was still fit and there was part of me thinking I should have played on to 35 or 36. Yeah, that first year or two was not a good time in my life, but now I’ve found something I love doing in rural real estate. It’s a job where I can really use all my skills: my accountancy degree, my networks, my people skills and my interest in farming all come together.
Luke: I learned from Adam having to retire early after head knocks that you don’t always get to dictate how long you play for, and in the end I wanted to have an overseas experience before the game slipped away from me, which is why I left for Pau in 2019. The All Blacks were out of my control, to an extent. You’re relying on a couple of opinions to fall your way. I wasn’t like Sam, who was picked if he was available.
Braeden: Sometimes I think the Whitelock name might have been a positive and a negative for Luke.
Luke: I was probably viewed as the youngest Whitelock brother. I was overthinking things, trying to be perfect at everything, rather than nailing the things I was good at. I was identified as having some talent and got a taste of the All Blacks early on, so it was always a goal, but it wasn’t until I actually let go of that goal and focused on what I could control that I got back in. I felt like I was playing well for a couple of years, but in 2019 I didn’t make the team for Japan, and Claire and I decided it was time to enjoy a new experience.
Choosing to play overseas and what opportunity to take was in my control. There is no right or wrong, but ultimately it was the decision Claire and I made at the time rather than staying in New Zealand to chase another game for the All Blacks. The Highlanders had changed by then too, and it felt like time to hand the keys of that team over to the next generation.
That left Samuel as the last one standing in New Zealand.
ON SAM’S CAREER
Adam: There was one time that stood out for me in terms of realising Samuel had something special about him. It was his first year of Super Rugby. We were playing a semi-final against the Bulls. I was a non-playing reserve, sitting in the stands in a hostile environment in Soweto and watching Samuel steal a lineout ball off Victor Matfield and burst through the lineout on a 20-metre run. This was just going through the heart of the Bulls’ biggest strength, and I recall watching it and thinking Samuel really had something about him – but he was my brother, so I couldn’t get too excited.
I never got nervous watching Sam and Luke through the bulk of their careers, but I found myself getting nervous in 2023 because it was coming to an end and I honestly didn’t want it to end for Samuel, because I got so proud watching him. I never took it for granted, sitting there on a Saturday night watching my brother run out to play for his country.
I watched all his games, but I didn’t give him advice. I would send him a little text, though, telling him I liked his lineout steal or his hit on Brodie or something like that. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to let him know that I was not just watching the game, but I was keeping an eye out for him. It probably sounds a bit funny, but it was my way of telling him how proud I was of him without actually saying those words.
Braeden: Sam has a great temperament but he had to work on it big time. He used to get very nervous. He was tall and bony and was so anxious to get out there with his brothers that he used to get injured quite often in those first five minutes. We used to get him to rub his neck or shake his legs out just to get him less keyed up. So he had all these little twitches I could pick up on. I still know when he’s going to jump at the lineout, every time. I can read his cues.
Hannah: The World Cup loss in Japan was the lowest I had seen him. Not getting the opportunity to play in the bronze medal match. He tends to keep a lot to himself. He doesn’t like to bring his ‘rugby moods’ home to me, but that was a time when it was obvious to me how much he was hurting.
The other time I noticed something was wrong was when we came back from Japan and went straight into Level Four lockdown. I was trying to engage in conversations and was getting nothing back. I was thinking to myself, ‘What is happening here?’ He finally told me that he’d just spoken to Fozzie and he’d been told Sam Cane was going to be captain. He was really gutted. He knew it was totally Fozzie’s call to make, and that he’d do what he thought was best for the team, but a lot of the conversations they’d had were the types of conversations you’d think a coach would have with his incoming captain before they started a new era. He’d never been promised anything, but he was second-guessing whether taking the sabbatical in Japan had hurt his captaincy chances. That, coming relatively soon after the World Cup disappointment, was the lowest I have seen him.
Caroline: Did I get nervous watching Sam play? Yes and no. You always want the best for your kids – you always want them to do well. You never want to see them hurt, so it’s natural to feel a bit anxious. When the boys are playing I tend to watch them and no one else.
Hannah: I’m a naturally competitive person and I do get nervous in close games. When I watch, I watch to make sure Sam’s up and moving, but I try to catch the wider game. I think Caroline pretty much exclusively watches him. I definitely check in after tackles and I touch base visually from time to time, but I’m not too obsessive.
Freddie is a pretty intense spectator when it comes to Dad. There was a game when we were at Panasonic, and Emma, David Pocock’s wife, was trying to chat to Freddie, and he told her to shush because there was a scrum he wanted to concentrate on.
Caroline: Sam would give me a peck on the cheek when I went to his games. It was usually a bit grizzly and sweaty, but I took what I could get.
Hannah: Sometimes I would have liked him to show a bit more of his personality. People always say to me how serious Sam is, and that’s not what he’s like to be around. Absolutely, he takes his rugby and his leadership roles seriously, but at home he’s always joking and stirring the pot. In public, he’s more guarded and aware of how quickly something he says could be taken the wrong way.
He doesn’t have a big social media profile, and when Silver Lake came in [the investment firm purchased a stake of the All Blacks in 2022], there were a lot more demands on the players for promotional stuff and I don’t think Sam was big on that side of the game. His view was that it was their job to win games of rugby and all the other stuff would fall into place behind that.
I do ride the highs and lows with Sam because I see how much work goes into it, but there are times when I try to play, not so much the devil’s advocate, but maybe try to offer a perspective that moves him out of that All Blacks bubble.
Caroline: Sam’s very level-headed. I’ve only seen him have a real paddy twice. It takes a lot to get him rattled.
Luke: It’s not until you step back and get an overview on it that you think, shit, to play one game for the All Blacks, the history and immense competition to make a squad and play a Test, is a hell of an effort. Then I think about Sam’s career and I’m incredibly proud. The quality of rugby he’s given to that black jersey is exceptional. He’s played a lot of 80-minute Tests, he’s played alongside some of the greatest All Blacks we’ve ever known, in some of the best All Blacks teams we’ve ever seen. When you step back and think of the two World Cups and trophies and milestones, it’s hard to fathom.
He’s a humble, head-down, work-hard guy. Yeah, I’m incredibly proud of what he’s achieved and I hope he’s as proud of it as I am. Sometimes it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t reflect that much. Now it’s coming to the end. I hope he’s thinking more about what he’s managed to stack up.
Adam: My favourite photo is the one of us all in our black jerseys – Sam, George and Luke with their All Blacks jumpers and me in my Sevens one. It was Grandad’s idea. We didn’t really think anything of it, got it done and then probably went hunting. Now I look at it and it’s one of my proudest moments.
I don’t think we took it for granted then, but after you retire you certainly get more appreciation for the fact you got to play professional rugby with your brothers. The Barretts are getting to do it now, and you can see how much it means to them.
Luke: To have him come here to Pau and there being a full-circle element to it is really special.
Hannah: I know he’s made his decision to retire, but he also told me he’s going to keep a couple of pairs of boots aside just in case.
I probably haven’t told him enough how proud I am of what he’s done in rugby – but I am. We’ve grown up together and I’ve had a front-row seat to this unbelievable career and because it’s been such a whirlwind, especially when you add children to the mix, we probably won’t appreciate it fully until it’s over and we can start to reflect.
George: Do I reflect on it? Yeah, it’s pretty neat. The best thing about it, though, is all four of us are still as close now even if we live in different parts of the world. I take as much pride in that as I do in our rugby careers. We’re bloody lucky.
My favourite thing to do in life these days is to watch the kids play sports – and it won’t just be my kids, it will be Adam’s, Samuel’s and Luke’s too. Let’s face it, there’s a good chance they’re going to be sporty. We don’t know where we’re all going to end up, but I want to enjoy that, and I want Mum and Dad to enjoy watching the next generation too.
© View from the Second Row
By Samuel Whitelock and Dylan Cleaver
Published by HarperCollins Aotearoa New Zealand