All Blacks Rugby Quotes

Not even an advancing All Blacks haka could have dragged him away from the swing of her ass

On either side of them the essence of honky tonk beach resort had now enclosed them: gas stations, fried clam stands, Dairy Treets, motels painted in feverish pastel colors, mini golf. Larry was drawn two painful ways by these things. Part of him clamored at their sad and blatant ugliness and at the ugliness of the minds that had turned this section of a magnificent, savage coastline into one long highway amusement park for families in station wagons. But there was a more subtle, deeper part of him that whispered of the people who had filled these places and this road during other summers. Ladies in sunhats and shorts too tight for their large behinds. College boys in red and black striped rugby shirts. Girls in beach shifts and thong sandals. Small screaming children with ice cream spread over their faces. They were American people, and there was a kind of dirty, compelling romance about them whenever they were in groups never mind if the group was in an Aspen ski lodge or performing their prosaic/ arcane rites of summer along Route 1 in Maine. And now all these Americans were gone.

It was good to be gay on Top of the Pops years before it was good to be gay in Parliament, or gay in church, or gay on the rugby pitch. And it’s not just gay progress that happens in this way: 24 had a black president before America did. Jane Eyre was a feminist before Germaine Greer was born. A Trip to the Moon put humans on the Moon in 1902. This is why recent debates about the importance of the arts contain, at core, an unhappy error of judgment. In both the arts cuts—29 percent of the Arts Council’s funding has now gone—and the presumption that the new, “slimmed down” National Curriculum will “squeeze out” art, drama and music, there lies a subconscious belief that the arts are some kind of . . . social luxury: the national equivalent of buying some overpriced throw pillows and big candle from John Lewis. Policing and defense, of course, remain very much “essentials”—the fridge and duvets in our country’s putative semi-detached house. But art—painting, poetry, film, TV, music, books, magazines—is a world that runs constant and parallel to ours, where we imagine different futures—millions of them—and try them out for size. Fantasy characters can kiss, and we, as a nation, can all work out how we feel about it, without having to involve real shy teenage lesbians in awful sweaters, to the benefit of everyone’s notion of civility.

You Are Not Your Jersey “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” - Colin Powell The New Zealand All Blacks (national rugby team) have a mantra: “Leave the jersey in a better place”. It means, this is not your jersey, you are part of something bigger but do your best while you wear the jersey. It provides a valuable lesson about enjoying your moment in the sun but letting go to pursue another one once your time ends. When I played in Toulouse they had the same mindset. The club only contracted a certain number of players each year and there was a set number of locker spaces. Each locker was numbered in such a way that was not associated with a jersey number and that was also the number you wore on your club sportswear. Some numbers were 00, others were 85 and mine was 71. When I joined the coach explained to me in French that this was not my number, but I was part of a tradition that spanned decades. My interpretation still remains, “You are not your jersey.

So, fast forward from Cardiff 1997 to Auckland 2011, from a Rugby World Cup quarter-final to a World Cup final, from a team heading towards defeat to a team heading towards victory. It’s the same two sides playing: New Zealand vs. France. It’s just as tight, but this time New Zealand lead by one point. Read the body language. Richie McCaw breathes, holds his wrist, stamps his feet – reconnecting with himself, returning to the moment. He looks around. There are no glazed eyes now. No walking dead. Brad Thorne throws water over himself, cooling his thoughts. Kieran Read stares out to the far distant edge of the stadium, regaining perspective. New Zealand, the stadium of four million people, is less calm. The dread casts a long black cloud. The spectators can’t help but flash back to the bad pictures. They are in the Red, but the All Blacks stay in the Blue. The clock counts itself down, slowly, slowly; until finally . . . the whistle blows. 8-7 New Zealand. ‘We smashed ’em,’ says Graham Henry. And in their heads, they did.

The final examination came and my mother came down to watch it. She hated watching me fight. (Unlike my school friends, who took a weird pleasure in the fights--and more and more so as I got better.) But Mum had a bad habit. Instead of standing on the balcony overlooking the gymnasium where the martial arts grading and fights took place, she would lie down on the ground--among everyone else vying to get a good view. Now don’t ask me why. She will say it is because she couldn’t bear to watch me get hurt. But I could never figure out why she just couldn’t stay outside if that was her reasoning. I have, though, learned that there is never much logic to my wonderful mother, but at heart there is great love and concern, and that has always shone through with Mum. Anyway, it was the big day. I had performed all the routines and katas and it was now time for the kumite, or fighting part of the black-belt grading. The European grandmaster Sensei Enoeda had come down to adjudicate. I was both excited and terrified--again. The fight started. My opponent (a rugby ace from a nearby college), and I traded punches, blocks, and kicks, but there was no real breakthrough. Suddenly I found myself being backed into a corner, and out of instinct (or desperation), I dropped low, spun around, and caught my opponent square round the head with a spinning back fist. Down he went. Now this was not good news for me. It was bad form and showed a lack of control. On top of that, you simply weren’t meant to deck your opponent. The idea was to win with the use of semicontact strikes, delivered with speed and technique that hit but didn’t injure your opponent. So I winced, apologized, and then helped the guy up. I then looked over to Sensei Enoeda, expecting a disapproving scowl, but instead was met with a look of delight. The sort of look that a kid gives when handed an unexpected present. I guess that the fighter in him loved it, and on that note I passed and was given my black belt. I had never felt so proud as I did finally wearing that belt after having crawled my way up the rungs of yellow, green, orange, purple, brown--you name it--colored belts. I had done this on my own and the hard way; you can’t buy your way to a black belt. I remember being told by our instructor that martial arts is not about the belts, it is about the spirit; and I agree…but I still couldn’t help sleeping with my black belt on that first night. Oh, and the bullying stopped.

Her face lit up in welcome as she saw me, and taking prompt, if cowardly, action in the face of emergency I smiled, waved and ducked out through a side door. As I hurried around the side of the building into a handy patch of deep shadow (Briar being a persistent sort of girl), I tripped over someone’s legs stretched across the path. I lurched forward, and a big hand grasped me firmly by the jersey and heaved me back upright. ‘Thank you,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Helen?’ Briar called, and I shrank back into the shadows beside the owner of the legs. ‘Avoiding someone?’ he asked. ‘Shh!’ I hissed, and he was obediently quiet. There was a short silence, happily unbroken by approaching footsteps, and I sighed with relief. ‘Not very sociable, are you?’ ‘You can hardly talk,’ I pointed out. ‘True,’ he said. ‘Who are you hiding from?’ ‘Everyone,’ he said morosely. ‘Fair enough. I’ll leave you to it.’ ‘Better give it a minute,’ he advised. ‘She might still be lying in wait.’ That was a good point, and I leant back against the brick wall beside him. ‘You don’t have to talk to me,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ There was another silence, but it felt friendly rather than uncomfortable. There’s nothing like lurking together in the shadows for giving you a sense of comradeship. I looked sideways at the stranger and discovered that he was about twice as big as any normal person. He was at least a foot taller than me, and built like a tank. But he had a nice voice, so with any luck he was a gentle giant rather than the sort who would tear you limb from limb as soon as look at you. ‘So,’ asked the giant, ‘why are you hiding from this girl?’ ‘She’s the most boring person on the surface of the planet,’ I said. ‘That’s a big call. There’s some serious competition for that spot.’ ‘I may be exaggerating. But she’d definitely make the top fifty. Why did you come to a party to skulk around a corner?’ ‘I was dragged,’ he said. ‘Kicking and screaming.’ He turned his head to look at me, smiling. ‘Ah,’ I said wisely. ‘That’d be how you got the black eye.’ Even in the near-darkness it was a beauty – tight and shiny and purple. There was also a row of butterfly tapes holding together a split through his right eyebrow, and it occurred to me suddenly that chatting in dark corners to large unsociable strangers with black eyes probably wasn’t all that clever. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I collided with a big hairy Tongan knee.’ ‘That was careless.’ ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ I pushed myself off the wall to stand straight. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Nice to meet you.’ ‘You too,’ he said, and held out a hand. ‘I’m Mark.’ I took it and we shook solemnly. ‘Helen.’ ‘What do you do when you’re not hiding from the most boring girl on the planet?’ he asked. ‘I’m a vet,’ I said. ‘What about you?’ ‘I play rugby.’ ‘Oh!’ That was a nice, legitimate reason for running into a Tongan knee – I had assumed it was the type of injury sustained during a pub fight.

You know, I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape. I was reading an article about early-onset arthritis in rugby players, and apparently the whole lot of them are cripples by the time they get to sixty. And they’re the ones who are sixty now; they played a hell of a lot less games forty years ago.’ ‘But they patch them up a lot better these days,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s still not much you can do about having no cartilage left in any of your joints.’ ‘They can replace knees and hips.’ ‘Not shoulders. Or fingers. How many of them has he dislocated?’ ‘I don’t know. A few.’ ‘There you go. Those’ll all be buggered in another ten years. You would have ended up wiping his bum for him.’ ‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ I muttered. He passed me out a handful of bolts and shuffled along to the next corner. ‘You’re pathetic. And there’s another reason you should have been heading for the hills.’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Do you know what the All Blacks’ motto is?’ ‘“Feed your backs”?’ ‘Nope. It is – and I kid you not – “Subdue and penetrate”.’ ‘I don’t believe you.’ ‘Google it then.’ ‘Maybe it didn’t sound so dodgy a hundred years ago when they came up with it,’ I said weakly. ‘Of course it did. It’s not like human biology’s changed since then. Very shady people, rugby players.

One of Henry’s toughest jobs when he arrived in the post was trying to eradicate the All Black’s inherent binge drinking culture. Previous All Black regimes had never challenged the idea of professional athletes knocking back the pop. For coaches and players who emerged through the amateur era it was hard to change the mindset. Booze had been an integral part of the culture in that period. There were no body fat tests or other high tech assessments of this, that and the other back then. As amateurs it was their right to have a few beers – that was kind of the point of playing. Rugby has never been just about what happens on the field. The camaraderie has always extended into the bar and a rugby team that hadn’t drunk together was not a team.

he’s wearing tight jeans and an All Blacks rugby shirt, one of the new performance home jerseys. They’re ultra-tight, to make it difficult for rugby opponents to grab. As he straightens, I can see every defined muscle in his chest. He has a six-pack. How did I not know he has a six-pack? I’ve trained myself not to look, but today my gaze lingers of its own accord on his toned body, his muscular arms, with the gorgeous black tattoo that snakes out and curls around his right biceps.

There’s no yielding to status in a rugby tackle, there’s no privilege in a scrum.

A mi primer equipo con Scrum solía presentarle un video del equipo de rugby All Blacks preparándose para un partido. Los All Blacks, escuadra legendaria de la diminuta Nueva Zelanda, son un equipo trascendente. Antes de cada encuentro celebran la ceremonia de la haka, propia de los guerreros maoríes. La haka es una danza guerrera que llena de energía a quienes están por entrar en batalla. Al presenciarla, casi puedes ver la energía salir de cada jugador y fusionarse en un gran conjunto.

the analogy of a bridge that is secure because it is made of several different planks: personal skills, friends, family, being an All Black. ‘If the only plank you’ve got is the rugby one, then you’ll always come unstuck.