Kevin Mealamu

John Cregan wrote:He's also very good at picking fellas up and smashing them to the ground almost ending their rugby careers................

I'll remember him most for that......................

Taylorman wrote:When I was playing Papatoetoe were distinct minnows laurie. We never lost to them.
Has that also changed up there?

anotherworldofpain wrote:I remembering my introduction to NZ school rugby when I get tackle on the first game and some player put the sprigs to my back and then when I try to get up some big fist punch me in the mouth and I went down again. When I was checking or my tooth came out and try to stop the blood running on my nose and lie on the ground I look up and see the the captain to the team running past and I say to him "did you see that?" and he just say "get up! you f***ing sook". So I always remember this, you have to keep care of yourself and always win the physical challenge and never admit you getting hurt to get the respect. There is never an excuse and you have to always get up smiling and say well played and then go back and use motivator to get the win. First lesson.

aucklandlaurie wrote:
chequered Jersey

Are you talking about that incident that happened about five years ago?

aucklandlaurie wrote:
But that wasnt an unecessary,premeditated,off the ball "spear tackle".

But sure as hell the rest of the rugby World has paid for it a thousand times over with the overreactive "tip Tackle" law and sanctions, just because the Irish threw their toys out of the cot.

anotherworldofpain wrote:

aucklandlaurie wrote:
chequered Jersey

Are you talking about that incident that happened about five years ago?

SEVEN years ago.

disneychilly wrote:I've heard BOD whinge about it. Can't remember which article but "They could have broken my neck for all they cared" was a distinct quote among other things.

You're right to an extent. The NZRU and the players really stuffed up the aftermath. But even if both Umaga and Mealamu had been cited and suspended we still would have given the Lions the caning they had in the first place.

We got told to suck it up in 99 after France were biting and ball grabbing the whole game. That's pretty cowardly as well and the consequences of that on your nuts can have some pretty serious repercussions too. But I like to remember the irrepressible nature of the French play in the second half as well. Just as long as you don't let your anger hide the fact that you got to see the best ever test performance by a 10 in the second test.

John Cregan wrote:

anotherworldofpain wrote:

aucklandlaurie wrote:
chequered Jersey

Are you talking about that incident that happened about five years ago?

SEVEN years ago.

It should never be forgotten..........one of the most cowardly acts ive ever seen on a sporting pitch. What made it worse was the fact that eiither Mealamu or Umanga never acknowledged any wrongdoing or showed any remorse...............the inaction of the officials on the day and the subsequent scandal of the "non citing" left a very poor taste in the mouth...............

BOD has always been very gracious about it and never spoke ill of either player..............

EBOP wrote:Is that true??? Thought he was quite bitter. He seemed a bit funny on the latest tour, almost like he wanted to punch all the kiwi's interviewing him.

The thing is, Mealamu is a warrior and AB legend (to us) and is not defined by the BOD incedent that happened seven years ago.

John Cregan wrote:

EBOP wrote:Is that true??? Thought he was quite bitter. He seemed a bit funny on the latest tour, almost like he wanted to punch all the kiwi's interviewing him.

The thing is, Mealamu is a warrior and AB legend (to us) and is not defined by the BOD incedent that happened seven years ago.

But it is part of his past.......a shameful part.............the attack on O'Droiscoll remains one of if not the worst thing ive ever seen on a sporting field..................

I still suspect it was in retalliation to a percieved disrespect of the silly dance the AB's did before the game...........

I was very enthusiastic going into the first test in Christchurch. I'd been looking forward to it for two years and couldn't wait to give it everything I had. Not even some of the worst weather Christchurch could throw at us could change that. Everyone knows - or thinks they know - what happened in the first 90 seconds. I went into a ruck and cleaned out Brian O'Driscoll.

I was standing over the ball trying to protect it when he bounced back to have another crack at disrupting our possession. We were tussling as he tried to get through and I grabbed his leg to try to unbalance him, a technique I'd used before and still use to this day. What I didn't realise was that Keven Mealamu was doing the same thing on the other side of the ruck. As I got one of O'Driscoll's legs up, Keven hoisted his other leg and drove him back.

He ended up with both feet off the ground, not in control of himself or the situation, a position rugby players often find themselves in. When we let him go he came down and what happened, happened. I didn't think anything of it, I just took off.

When the whistle blew and he was being attended to by his medical staff, I was completely focused on the job in hand. The game I'd been preparing for since the 2003 World Cup had just started, the pressure was on, and I was concentrating on what we were going to do next. It didn't really occur to me to go and check on what was happening in their camp. There was no conscious decision not to go over: I didn't do it then because I didn't do it, period; I'd never done it for anybody else. I was a competitive animal out there.

The flipside of that was my bedside manner when my players got injured: if I saw someone in my team on the ground, I'd say, "What's wrong with you? Just get up." I was always telling cousin Jerry that. When they carted O'Driscoll off I thought Jesus, major, then I put it out of my mind and got on with the game.

I didn't go and see him after the game but I ran into a group of their players who weren't going to the after-match function and asked Richard Hill how Brian was. He said he'd gone to hospital. Again, I didn't think anything of it. When we got back to the hotel after the dinner, Keven and I were told that we'd been cited so we had a meeting with NZRU lawyer Steve Cottrell to run through what had happened. While we were doing that, news came through that the Citing Commissioner had ruled there was no case to answer. We were relieved but not surprised; from the outset our view was that since there'd been no malice or intent, the matter shouldn't go any further.

The Lions leadership and their high-powered spin doctor Alistair Campbell wouldn't take "no case to answer" for an answer and found a way to take the matter much further. The sustained personal attack they launched against me was hard to believe and even harder to stomach. You don't want to take it personally but it's almost impossible not to when another player, a guy you had some respect for, attacks your character in the most direct and damning terms. My first thought was geez, don't be a sook; there's no use crying about it, man, it's over. On the other hand I could understand how bitterly disappointed O'Driscoll was. He would have been just like me: buzzing with anticipation, really up for it, and desperate to make a point on the field.

There was a lot of talk about the Lions' response to the haka. Someone had supposedly advised O'Driscoll to kneel down and pick a blade of grass, which he'd done, and we'd supposedly regarded that as disrespectful. The truth was we didn't care what they did. I noticed him doing it but just thought, oh, that's different. Opposition teams had tried a variety of responses and our attitude was always the same: whatever.

We didn't understand what he was doing so they were one up on us there, but it's rubbish to suggest that it had anything to do with what happened at that ruck. The media tends to provide interpretations of what they think has happened, as opposed to what actually did happen, and it's often all that speculation which creates the angst and inflames the situation.

At first, the kerfuffle didn't really bother me. It was a case of, oh well that's the way it is. But it just snowballed and O'Driscoll kept going on about the fact that I hadn't rung him to say sorry. I'd actually tried to get hold of him on the Monday via the Lions' media liaison person but I never heard back. By this stage we were in Wellington and it just kept cranking up and I was getting a bit angry. I finally obtained his number and got hold of him but it wasn't a warm exchange.

He was still angry that I hadn't gone over to see how he was and once he'd got that off his chest, he accused me of being involved in a lot of off-the-ball incidents. The Lions hadn't been impressed with the way I'd played, he said, and I had to watch it. I said, "Don't talk to me about off-the-ball incidents, talk to your own players." (With all the fuss the Lions had made over the O'Driscoll incident, it had almost been overlooked that their lock Danny Grewcock, a player with a history of foul play, had been cited, found guilty, and banned for biting Keven Mealamu.) "Look at Grewcock," I said. "He's a meathead."

"Yeah, he is a meathead," he said. "You can't change that but we're better than that. We shouldn't play like those guys. We thought you were a gentleman." While he went on along those lines, I was thinking to myself, hang on, this is a game I take seriously.

And I did: I aimed to let an opponent know I was out there and get into his mind so that next time he'd have a look to see if I was coming. I'd body-check him on the way through or if I came up quickly and the pass didn't go to him, I'd still give him a little reminder that I was around so he knew that if he didn't have his wits about him, he could get hit, and hit hard. I had no qualms about it; that was how I played. That's the gamesmanship of rugby. Players sledge. I sledged a bit and did so in that game.

I was always trying to get an edge and in that respect I was no different to a lot of players. But when he started talking about off-the-ball stuff and me not being a gentleman I thought, oh, you're reaching now. I never went out to commit foul play: I didn't punch guys on the ground or stomp on them. So I said, "Oh well, mate, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I'm sorry for what happened to you but there was no intent in it; it was one of those unfortunate things that happen in rugby." He said, "Yeah, but you could've helped it." "Okay, mate," I said, "all the best." And that was where we left it.

Instead of trying to get on the front foot straight away, our PR strategy was to let the storm blow itself out. But it didn't blow itself out and when I eventually held a press conference a few days later it felt like a hollow exercise. By that stage I was all for just taking it on the chin and getting on with it, but our media people wanted to respond to what had become a pretty relentless and inflammatory - as in "I could have died" - campaign.

I'd been getting a lot of support from the team all week and at the press conference I was backed up by the leadership group which was great, even though the exercise itself felt like it was all a bit late. Whether it could have been nipped in the bud is a moot point given the intensity of their media blitz but for a couple of days they had the floor to themselves and they made the most of it.

Even when I was being bombarded with questions I couldn't help seeing the funny side of it: poor little me surrounded by all those big, burly forwards as if I couldn't protect myself. It was good to have my say but I wanted to do my talking on the field. Clive Woodward had talked his team up, saying they were the best prepared Lions ever and wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the 2001 Lions tour of Australia, which was a crack at Graham Henry who'd coached that team. That kind of thing - attacking our people, talking themselves up - just steeled us. We wanted to show them that they weren't as good as they thought they were and Woodward wasn't as good as he thought he was.

They started the second test very well, scoring under the posts virtually from the kick-off. I wasn't worried because we hadn't had the ball or played any rugby. My message was let's get the ball, get down there, and give it a crack. They launched another attack but this time they dropped the ball. I picked it up and gave it to Daniel Carter because I knew he'd do something with it and I was able to run off him and score. It was a team try, pure and simple. I didn't see it as some sort of personal statement - "straight back at you" - because I never felt like it was me against them.

At times, though, they seemed to think it was them against me. As a ruck broke up, Paul O'Connell loomed over me ranting and raving. As I got up, their props Julian White and Gethin Jenkins started pushing and shoving. I knew it was going to happen at some stage so I just said, "Come on, any time, just bring it." I backed away slowly looking at them and saying, "Are you going to start playing soon or what?" Later, when O'Connell went down, I went over to him as he was rolling around the ground and said, "Mate, don't give up now, we're just getting started." He jumped straight up. When Stephen Jones came on for Jonny Wilkinson he took the ball up yelling, "For our captain!" like something out of Braveheart. I said, "Are you serious?" You could see how they were trying to motivate themselves but it became quite laughable . I got into some of their forwards about being a bit chubby and after the game Jenkins said to Steve Hansen, who'd coached him when he'd been with Wales, "Can you tell Tana it's nothing personal, it's just the game." That was a bit rich coming from them. During the game I hadn't thought about the stuff they'd been saying about me until their players started having a crack at me. I didn't go out that night but the guys who did ran into a bunch of Lions and reckoned some of them were good guys.

Thomond wrote:I don't think anyone would dispute that the All Blacks were out of this world in that series. Carter in particular. That second test I watched on Youtube recently. He was unbelievable.


I have punched fellas and stuff in rucks and things like that but what Mealamu and Umaga did was feicing cowardly and could have caused serious damage, it's in the past now but anyone who can condone that is someone I have little respect for. It doesn't define his career he is a very solid player it just disappoints me as it wasn't something they needed to do. It's in the past now and I don't think it matters at all now.


Laurie, I don't think I ever recall this coming up on this version of 606 i nthe past yeah, but you find that most Irish people stopped bringing ti up long ago.

No it gets raised by the Irish posters every now and then I think Ive discussed it with Staggy on a couple of occassions.But I didnt even realise that its now seven years ago.

John Cregan wrote:

EBOP wrote:Is that true??? Thought he was quite bitter. He seemed a bit funny on the latest tour, almost like he wanted to punch all the kiwi's interviewing him.

The thing is, Mealamu is a warrior and AB legend (to us) and is not defined by the BOD incedent that happened seven years ago.

But it is part of his past.......a shameful part.............the attack on O'Droiscoll remains one of if not the worst thing ive ever seen on a sporting field..................

I still suspect it was in retalliation to a percieved disrespect of the silly dance the AB's did before the game...........