McIlraith’s sheer enthusiasm for both rugby and the role of the press was borderline unique. For Pocock – who was just 23 at the time – to agree to this in the middle of rugby’s most important tournament is almost unheard of.
It didn’t hurt Pocock’s game either.
The squat loose forward played a blinder against South Africa, destroying the Springboks at the breakdown in the Wallabies’ win.
Joe Frazier
One of the greatest boxers in history, with a famous left hook, Joe Frazier turned up in Auckland thanks to promoter Dean Lonergan and I got to spend about an hour with him.
Sadly, his speech was not good, apparently due to a car accident (as an aide reckoned) – although you had to wonder if boxing contributed.
Frazier fought the most famous trilogy in the sport’s history, against Muhammad Ali, who tormented him with awful words.
Fair to say, they had a complicated relationship. Frazier told me what Ali had whispered to him when they last met, but it was impossible to properly make out what Smokin’ Joe was saying. Frustrating.
Boxing great Joe Frazier in 2005. Photo / Richard Robinson
Jack Nicklaus
A one-on-one with one of the two greatest golfers of all time came about when Jack Nicklaus helped open the course he designed at Kinloch, near Taupō.
The long interview went well, then the story was hastily written through the night to meet a weekend deadline.
But a later radio interview with Nicklaus sounded almost word-for-word like my interview. There’s only so much those famous characters can say after a lifetime in the spotlight.
When I spoke to her, she was still working as a frontline police constable in Palmerston North and had also become the primary caregiver for two nephews six years earlier.
Caring for them in their hometown was her priority, even if it hurt her international sevens prospects.
Winiata named her hero to be Black Ferns legend Dame Farah Palmer.
“She was Māori, had graduated from university, had become a doctor, and I guess I had grown up hearing negative stereotypes [about Māori],” Winiata said.
“She is a humble, ordinary person, who always gave you the time of day.”
Ella Williams reckoned: “I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be a singer, surfer, dancer, actor, squash player. I loved doing them all. I just wanted to stand out. I wanted my name to be known, to be in magazines, do the interviews. I don’t know why – it’s just me. I wanted to put New Zealand on the map with surfing.”
Brilliant.
Ella Williams after winning her maiden World Surf League Qualifying Series event in 2016.
New Zealand have beaten the USA just once, and a 40-year-old Barbara Cox and teenage Michele Cox – our greatest-ever women’s player – were both in the Kiwi team for that 1987 triumph.
Barbara Cox – who set up the goal – reckoned: “It was just a game – we weren’t frightened at all. We never thought we were inferior.”
People like the Cox family gave women’s football a magical foundation, but it is still trying to recover from the sins of misogynist administrators.
Barbara Cox (left) and Michele Cox were the first mother and daughter to take the field together in international football. Photo / Dean Purcell
Sophie Devine
Maybe life is simply a series of quirks of fate.
Sophie Devine had just assumed the White Ferns cricket captaincy when she talked about the way her physical surroundings as a kid had influenced her batting style.
At her family’s Tawa front yard, known as Devine Oval, the most productive shot was a straight hit.
“That’s probably why I like hitting straight to this day,” said the noted six-hitter.
“Suzie Bates is the same. Where she grew up, they had a little L-shaped laneway, and she had to late-cut behind point and that is certainly a strength of her game.”
Her story, which includes surviving domestic violence, had been revealed before I interviewed her.
But her insights into domestic abuse reinforced the idea that people who really know the subject need to be more involved in solutions.
“The support is there – but then again, not the kind we want,” she said.
“A lot of the women in the organisations say they know, but they don’t. They would only help me for a short time and they only visit you at the courts. They just ring and don’t even come around to homes and check.
“I don’t even trust the police system – I tried to go to court but they believed him over me, because I’m a boxer. I didn’t have anyone to vouch for me at the time – he did. The police only protect you for the moment, not the long term.”
Mea Motu: "I don’t even trust the police system." Photo / Matt Klitscher
She highlighted other issues, such as the abuser often being in the vicinity when a victim took a phone check from authorities.
And I had to choke back the emotions at her revelation that the love and care from boxing training brothers Isaac and Boaz Peach had allowed her to trust men again.
I also loved her revelation that her boxing hero was Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight great from the 1950s.
Who would have guessed?
“He wasn’t the flashiest boxer – he just had heart,” she said.
No sport connects with its fans quite like darts, and it was a doddle to arrange interviews with the world stars who started coming to New Zealand about a decade ago.
The best to talk to by far was Peter Wright, renowned for his flamboyant hair and whacky outfits.
His hairdresser wife Jo Wright spends a few hours making him up for competition, and revealed how she uses the time and various tactics to build up his shaky confidence.
Wright’s reputation was one of being pipped at the post. And he said the wild stage persona was at odds with his shy personality.
They were an unusual and interesting sports couple.
Cafes may seem an obvious choice, but they are usually terrible for noise and privacy issues.
An ill-timed smoothie maker can be a wrecker, and also provide an “oh-no” moment when you listen back to the tape.
When other cafegoers are close, it can be offputting.
The tightest squeeze in this regard came when interviewing 2.11m Tall Black Rob Loe in the corner of a Milford cafe, although it worked out quite well despite the noise.
There was a confusing aftermath though.
“I won’t be back – don’t worry. I’m set on this,” Breakers departee Loe told me in June 2023, about retiring from the Aussie NBL.
Just a month later he signed for Melbourne United, and he’s still there.
Wally Lewis
More confusion.
The Australian league legend was winding down his playing career with the Gold Coast and said during a sit-down interview next to a hotel pool that he would be coaching the NRL battlers the following year.
The certainty of this was news to most people, and when asked about it back in Australia, Wally Lewis seemed to deny knowledge of the interview taking place at all. I was flabbergasted.
And yes, he ended up coaching the Gold Coast, although results suggested that coaching may have been too strong a word for his efforts.
Neil Wagner
Before interviewing the outstanding New Zealand pace bowler at his Pāpāmoa home, cricket insiders told me of his fastidious nature. Neil Wagner apparently rivalled Sir Richard Hadlee in terms of keeping a tidy corner in a Kiwi cricket dressing room.
On arriving at Wagner and wife Lana’s house, the cricketer said they had just moved and he wanted to apologise for the mess. The house was actually neat as a pin and spotless.
Michael Hendry
Just hours before our interview, the Kiwi golfer received the news from a specialist that his leukaemia was in complete remission after one round of chemotherapy.
And it meant Michael Hendry could take up a postponed entry into the British Open, a prize for his success on the Asian tour.
Hendry was a great subject because of his frankness.
When talking about previous British Open playing partners, he described American Brian Harman as “one of the most awful human beings I’ve ever met ... a dickhead”.
I just about fell out of my chair, and his wife Tara wondered if he wanted this to be reported.
Hooker Peter Ropati – who figured in Auckland’s historic win over the Australian Kangaroos in 1989 – had three Kiwi test brothers and he went on to become a well-known league pundit and commentator.
But when I interviewed him for a big feature around this time, he was an accountant living a typical semi-professional league life bouncing between New Zealand and the English scene.
Kiwi players were a massive part of saving English league in the 1980s, some playing for glamour outfits such as Wigan, while others such as Ropati turned out for battling clubs living on the edge.
Ropati detailed how his club had parked him in accommodation above a smelly fish and chip shop. And when the chips were down at the club, players might find their wages had not appeared that week.
Another anecdote: players were starting to use hair gel.
Spending an hour with your childhood hero and All Blacks great – it doesn’t get any better than that.
Jean (Stewart) Hurring
If there was a favourite interview, this affecting one was probably it.
Freestyler Lauren Boyle’s 2016 bid for an Olympic medal in Rio was the catalyst, and I met Jean Stewart at the enormous old-age establishment in Takapuna where she lived in a tiny room.
Hurring – whose family are Kiwi swimming royalty – remains the only New Zealand woman to have won an Olympic swimming medal.
Even this hung by a thread after the 1952 Olympic 100m backstroke final in Finland. One official called her in third, another fourth. The decision went her way.
The Helsinki lead-up included her training in the raw at a sauna pool, after finding out that the facility banned swimsuits. I’m sure she told me a workman was looking on, although the story doesn’t include that.
We certainly talked about growing old: she could no longer do her cherished ocean swims and chose not to do her sums.
“I’m 80-something but I’ve never worked my age out. I’d rather not know,” said this charming, self-deprecating woman with a touch of defiance.
When the fanfare of life is over, what might we have? A few possessions, a few more memories, a tiny room, a sea of hastily acquired acquaintances of like age, and the feeling that you are no longer relevant. Hurring doubted that Boyle “would know anything about me”.
“It’s funny to be older than everyone else,” she mused.
Hurring died aged 89, in 2020. It was a privilege interviewing her.
Jean Hurring, nee Jean Stewart, winner of a bronze. Photo / Michael Craig
Sir John Walker
The great Olympic athlete attended to a customer in his equestrian supply shop in South Auckland before our interview, dispensing advice with that well-known Walker clarity.
Sir John Walker’s dream as a kid was to own a shop. Despite dealing with Parkinson’s disease, he worked long hours at Stirrups, which he set up with his wife Helen.
The 2005 New Zealand Herald interview was to help mark the 30th anniversary of Walker’s historic run in Sweden, when he became the first human to break 3m 50s for the mile.
Walker had just cancelled a big dinner to celebrate the anniversary, not wanting the adulation.
“We didn’t care about money – we just ran,” he said, and had plenty of anecdotes about athletics in his heyday.
Walker was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 41. He talked about how the mask effect on his face made him reluctant about public appearances.
His description of what the disease is like was so precise and revealing.
Sports press conferences can be ho-hum. Traditionally, if a journalist did have a good story to pursue, they certainly didn’t raise it in front of other media.
Now and then though, press conferences are wonderfully entertaining and can lead to a feature story.
The Ian Baker-Finch press conference at the New Zealand Golf Open stands out.
Ten years earlier, the Aussie had won the British Open. Then his game, famously, fell apart to the point that his opening tee shot at the 1995 Open disappeared over two fairways.
There were endless missed cuts and 30-plus coaches and gurus. Thousands of people wrote to him suggesting solutions, including actual solutions such as chamomile tea.
The nadir came at the British Open in 1997, when he shot a 92 then went into the Champions Room at Royal Troon and lay in a ball with his wife for 45 minutes, trying to deal with the pain.
He had a wonderful attitude to it all and had virtually turned his career crash into a calling card, making it a delightful story to write.
Jess Ruthe
The current rise of teenage running sensation Sam Ruthe from Tauranga led to revisiting the 2009 interview with his top athlete mum, Jess Ruthe.
It was staggering to see how open she had been about suffering postnatal depression following the birth of Sam.
“I didn’t want Sam, I wanted to give him away to start with,” she said.
“A lot of mothers go through the same thing – you feel like a failure, that you are worthless because you can’t even care for your own child.”
Just maybe, it was one of those sports stories that genuinely helped a few readers in their battles.
As a journalist, being under constant pressure to chase people for news and views, there’s a tendency to get down on subjects who aren’t willing.
And yet, so many have been amazingly forthcoming.
This is a chance to thank those people, while also accepting that for others, the big reveal is a step too far.
Marc Ellis
The former rugby and league star has a rare ability to connect with the mainstream.
When our 2023 conversation turned to the state of the nation, Marc Ellis articulated what many people were feeling, that the country had lost its mojo.
Ellis said: “I certainly think New Zealand’s finest days are behind it. We’re not at our peak. You don’t feel the same vibe or energy anymore.”
“New Zealand feels as if it is being pulled apart at the seams. I thought we were egalitarian and unified. It has become a heavy place – it’s not the New Zealand of five years ago to me.”
Interview gold.
Former All Black Marc Ellis: 'New Zealand's finest days are behind it.' Photo / Dean Purcell
Nicki Pedersen
Bringing the world’s top speedway riders to Western Springs for three years was a tremendous coup for Auckland, but the promotion struggled because there were no Kiwi stars anymore.
The riders were interesting characters, including Denmark’s Nicki Pedersen, a hugely controversial figure.
Other riders I interviewed in 2014 called him an “idiot” and “dickhead” over his dangerous tactics.
“It didn’t work. It was two-faced and I’m a straight person. I’m better with the knife on the throat,” the three-time world champ stated most memorably.
Matt Berry
One of my favourites came at the end.
The come-from-almost-nowhere 2025 national singles bowls champion from Auckland is a rough diamond to treasure.
Matt Berry had initially rebuffed an invitation from a boss to take up bowls in his mid-20s, but his ears pricked up when told the beer at the Birkenhead Bowling Club was cheap.
“Mmmmmmm – how cheap?” he inquired, and an unusual sports career was born.
