‘There’s a chance we’ll meet up with Richie McCaw in Christchurch,’ proffered the PR on our New Zealand press trip. The man from the Sunday Times and I let out a little gasp. We weren’t sports journos but we knew where McCaw stood in the pantheon of all-time greats.
He is the most capped player in rugby union history, a World Cup winner on two occasions and arguably the best open-side flanker there has ever been. He captained the mighty All Blacks 110 times out of his 148 matches, and is probably the most popular living Kiwi. That’s all.
Richie, as everyone knows him, retired from the game in 2015 after lifting the William Webb Ellis trophy at Twickenham. Married to a hockey player, he’s now involved with a helicopter company (he has his pilot’s licence) and has no interest in becoming a coach or TV pundit because ‘I’m not good at getting into all that criticism business’.
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