Jerome Kaino: The Blindside Megatron
Two days out from 2015 Rugby World Cup final, we talk of head-to-heads and hypotheticals. Can the old warrior McCaw, 148 tests and counting, stop Hooper? Will Israel Folau’s ankle come right and, even if it does, is he better than Ben Smith? We’re all worried about Pocock. But as Ian McGeechan, the wisest of the northern scribes, says, the fate of the game may rest in the hands of two unfancied players. Just as in 2011, Jerome Kaino is the All Blacks’ most crucial man. In this stock profile from 2004, back when Kaino had played barely a dozen senior games, we asked if he might one day fill the biggest boots of all — those of the Iceman, Michael Jones.
He must’ve played this game a thousand times before in his mind — at least a million New Zealand men have fond if fantastical memories of their All Black debut — and blindside flanker Jerome Kaino will shake his head afterwards and say that his first game for the All Blacks flashed past.
But there’s still a quarter of an hour to play. The All Blacks lead the Barbarians 33–12 and now they’re given a penalty 30 metres out from the Barbarians line. Halfback Jimmy Cowan takes the tap, then slings a 20-metre cut-out pass to his left that skips four players and falls into the arms of Jerome Kaino.
While Cowan’s pass has given Kaino time, it hasn’t really given him space: by taking out four attacking players, Cowan has allowed the Barbarians defensive line to drift across, shepherding the All Blacks towards the sideline. Kaino’s best option, the safe play, is to take the ball to the line, take the tackle and set up the next phase. But Kaino glides sideways, casts a furtive glance at Ma’a Nonu’u outside him, then suddenly straightens, charges at the narrow gap between the two South African defenders who rush at him. Poor AJ Venter, having assumed quite reasonably and only for an instant that Kaino is going to pass to Nonu’u, realises what’s really happening too late. he slips. Kaino strides outside the South African centre Gcobani Bobo and then has just Matt Rogers, the Australian fullback, in front of him. Kaino shapes to cut inside but then props off his left leg and swerves outside Rogers to score a quite wondrous try.
Mexted: “Ho, ho, ho… see ya later! I love to see that. A big loose forward with the speed and ability to beat a man. And that’s a back he beat easily on the outside.”
“Ho, ho, ho, see ya later!” cries commentator Murray Mexted. “I love to see that. A big loose forward with the speed and ability to beat a man. And that’s a back he beat easily on the outside.”
If you watch the try frame by frame you see the almost imperceptible feints, the momentary deception that threw Venter off-balance and then flummoxed the hapless Rogers. Watch the try a dozen times and you realise that Kaino may have got past three defenders in a reasonably tight space without even being touched.
“Here’s a star being born for sure,” co-commentator Grant Nisbett says. “I think we’re going to see a lot more of Jerome Kaino.”
Anyone who saw this try, or saw him go within an inch of scoring another (Mex: “A very, very good effort. He shows what long arms he’s got — wonderful!”), or saw his smashing tackle on the Australian lock Dan Vickerman which saved an imminent try (Mex: “Well that’s good blindside flanker play!”), will struggle to understand why Jerome Kaino’s selection for the All Black’s end of season European tour in 2004 was the most contentious in a series of what rugby people euphemistically call “bold selections”.
“Who the hell’s Jerome Kaino?” barracked a Radiosport listener from Christchurch, minutes after the team was selected in October last year. “What the hell’s he done?
Colin Meads, whose rugby knowledge is, of course, infallible, admitted that he was “surprised” at the selection of the 21-year-old Aucklander. “Kaino’s barely played Super 12,” he said in a newspaper column admitting he would taken Sione Lauaki or Bay of Plenty’s Wayne Ormond. Former All Black prop and now columnist, John Drake, reckoned picking work-in-progress Kaino was cheapening the All Blacks jersey.
Kaino himself was aware of the mutterings around the nation’s bars and RSAs. “It was quite daunting coming on tour,” he told a English reporter from The Times. “A lot of people back home were saying: ‘He’s too young… Is he good enough to wear the jersey?”
“I was one of those people too. I was like ‘What have I done to deserve this?’”
Jerome Kaino is not nearly as big as you imagine a 1.96m, 108kg loose forward might be. As we sit chatting on a grass bank beside the Auckland Hockey Association’s ground in Mt Eden, Kaino answering questions in a surprisingly soft voice, it’s easy to forget that this is the marauding man-of-the-match from that game in Twickenham three months before.
Born in Tutuila, American Samoa in 1983, Kaino moved to New Zealand with his family four years later. They were looking for a better life. “It was a pretty humble beginning,” Kaino says of those early years in Manurewa and then Papakura. “Mum was picking strawberries, Dad was in the factory.”
There may not have been a lot of money around, but Sa Kaino, Jerome’s father, was a proud man determined that his kids would do well here. “My Dad always told me that if you want to get something done, then you just have to go out there and do it,” Kaino says. “Don’t rely on anyone else to do it for you.”
Dad would always use Michael Jones as the example. He’d say: ‘Here he is, only living with his Mum and he’s succeeding in rugby. He’s a good guy. A very humble guy too. Strong in his faith.’
These paternal motivational sessions would usually end with the invocation of one of Samoa’s favourite sons. “Dad would sit me down,” Kaino remembers, “and he’d always use Michael Jones as the example. He’d say ‘Here he is, only living with his Mum (his father died when he a boy) and he’s succeeding in rugby. He’s a good guy’.
“A very humble guy too. Strong in his faith. He’d always mention him as an example if I was getting out of line.”
Any suggestion the young Kaino was at risk of going off the rails is laughingly dismissed by Alan Foster, Deputy Principal at Papakura High School. Foster remembers Kaino, who started at the school in 1997, as a “nice, quiet, polite Island boy.”
In rugby terms, “he was tall, thin, gangly,” Foster says. “He didn’t really show out much in his first couple of years, but then he started to fill out and show some real promise.”
For his part, Kaino has good memories of his time at Papakura, especially some epic games of lunchtime league. “There were a lot of Pasifikan boys at the school. Being a junior, you have to earn the respect of the seniors. And so we’d just join in their league games and try to get that respect.”
In 2000, Kaino took a scholarship to St Kentigern College, following his Papakura High School team-mate, John Afoa, to the well-heeled Presbyterian boy’s school. Astute talent-spotting said some. Poaching said others.
“Jerome was always the one you thought would make it,” remembers St Kent’s Head of Sport Martin Piaggi. “He was the full package — like all top players he knew where he had to be to get his hands on the ball and where he had to be to make the big hit. There was no running around here, there and everywhere hoping to make something of nothing.”
Curiously Piaggi compares Kaino to the Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian ice-hockey player known simply as The Great One.
“Gretzy said that the thing that made him the greatest was that he skated to where he thought the puck was going to be. Jerome is also very efficient in the lines he runs.”
Piaggi’s enduring image is of Kaino and Joe Rocokoko charging down the track in the school’s 100-metre final, a race that has entered St Kent’s lore. “Jerome was the Chariots of Fire runner,” Piaggi says. “He was the complete athlete — (he had) physical presence, balance, speed and power.”
Anyone who has seen him play can see his talent. Jerome Kaino’s problem is that until he played his sole game for the All Blacks last December, few people have actually seen him on a rugby field. His first class rugby experience consists of just seven games for Blues and a dozen games for the Auckland NPC side, most of these off the bench.
For Kaino to be called into the All Blacks on the back of such a slim resume was surprising to say the least.
He was round at his girlfriend’s house, sewing her pants in readiness for a job interview, when he got the news. Even then the text on his phone — “Congratulations” — was a little cryptic. “I was wondering what it was all about,” he laughs.
He called his folks straight away but the line was engaged and so he raced home. He didn’t get the “I’m proud of you son” speech from his father — “he’s not that kind of Dad, eh” — but he could tell his Dad was “stoked”.
Kaino’s rapid ascent to the All Blacks had a precedent: he was fast-tracked into the Blues Super 12 squad in 2004 despite having no NPC experience. What he did have was a remarkable record with New Zealand’s under-age rugby teams.
He was a member of the New Zealand U19 team that thrashed France 71–18 to win the Junior World Cup in 2002. In 2003 Kaino, along with All Blacks Ben Atiga, Sam Tuitupou and Jimmy Cowan, were part of the Colts side that won the World Under-21 championship, a title they retained in 2004. Kaino’s influence, particularly in the most recent tournament was considerable — he would later be named the IRB under-21 player of the year.
“We think he’s got a lot of potential,” says coach Henry. “He’s got size, he’s got skill. He’s got the physical make-up to be a top international player. And he’s quite bright.
But it’s Kaino’s speed that excites observers, even the unflappable Henry. “He’s very quick for a forward,” Henry says. “In fact he was the quickest forward in the All Black squad that went away to Europe last year (Kaino’s time for a standing 40 is 4.86 seconds, according to the exuberant Mexted).
“He’s got the size and he’s got lineout ability,” Henry continues. “He’s got the ability to play all three positions — better suited to six and eight perhaps than seven. But his utility value is very special, especially when you go into a test match with just four loose forwards. If you’ve got one guy who can play in three positions, that’s a pretty positive situation.”
But for all his talent, there’s work to do. “He hasn’t got a lot of training history,” Henry says. “He needs to build his endurance fitness. That takes some time — it doesn’t happen overnight.
“Then he’ll have the ability to run for 80 minutes pretty quickly and that’ll be a huge asset.”
There’s no better player to study, Kaino reckons, than Richie McCaw. “There’s aspects of his game I’m trying to put into mine,” he says. “His workrate… how he’s always on his feet trying to contest the ball.
Kaino talks in awed tones of a McCaw performance that he watched from the sidelines. “Last year when the Blues played the Crusaders down in Canterbury, Richie McCaw nearly beat the Blues by himself. He solely took our team apart.”
A canny move, then, by coach Henry to room the two flankers together on the tour. Kaino, who admits to being very nervous, let McCaw go into the room first and choose his bed, before walking in and “claiming” the other bed. Once Kaino caught his breath, he started peppering McCaw with questions. McCaw’s Nike-slogan-like answers — “the higher you go in rugby, the harder you have to work etc” — were lapped up.
Kaino, who admits to being very nervous, let McCaw go into the room first and choose his bed, before walking in and “claiming” the other bed. Once Kaino caught his breath, he started peppering McCaw with questions. McCaw’s Nike-slogan-like answers — “the higher you go in rugby, the harder you have to work etc” — were lapped up.
You never play the perfect game McCaw said. Even Kaino’s dream All Black debut could’ve been better. “I made quite a few mistakes in that game,” Kaino says. “I didn’t catch a kick-off. And I picked the wrong line-out option once.”
And, yes, it’s just one game as talkback callers were quick to point out. Gotta keep your feet on the ground. “You had a good game,” Henry told him after the Baa Baas match. “But it’s just the beginning and you gotta move onwards from here.”
For now, Kaino has to get past the redoubtable Justin Collins and the highly-rated Angus McDonald if he even wants to start for the Blues. And standing in his path for the All Blacks is McCaw, Rodney So’oialo and Justin Collins, whose last performance against the French was the most convincing seen from an All Black loose forward trio in several seasons.
He’ll have to overcome injuries, like the hamstring injury that prevented him returning to Twickenham for the tsunami match. He’ll have to contend with suspensions, like that for his high shot on Queensland halfback Josh Valentine. Then there’ll be days when he’s part of forward pack going backwards, where he’s dragged into what old cauliflowered timers call “the heavy traffic”.
How he fares, then, will decide whether he’s remembered as a flash-in-the-pan, a flat-track bully. Or whether he’s the real deal, a complete player who’ll be talked about in the same tone as the incomparable Iceman.
First published in Metro, April 2005. ‘Jerome Kaino’ was a finalist in the T.P. McLean Awards later that year.
