Man in black

Brad Thorn. Photo / Supplied

It was the moment the doubters got it. Sure, we've always known Brad Thorn has true grit, but the unspoken question was whether his regular All Black appearances were due to the lack of contenders for his aggressive head-down, bum-up role. It doesn't help that he remains notoriously publicity-shy, so we've taken his reputed greatness on trust. Until the 62nd minute of the second test against France on June 20 ticked over.

It was your standard horrible winter Wellington night and, after a timid loss in the first test, rugby's mana was on the line. While his team mates flapped about trying to halt yet another incisive attack by the French, Thorn carried his 113kg bulk half the length of the field to make a last-gasp tackle on our tryline. Not only was a try saved, his team was spurred to hang tougher. And that's when doubters like me finally got it. Nothing he does is fancy. Thorn's are the old ways, that battling, no-surrender spirit we like to think embodies the sport's amateur era.

But hold on, Thorn is also the man another All Black great, winger Stu Wilson, once said had delivered a "kick in the guts to all the blokes who had worn the black jersey and the thousands of others who had dreamed of it". Why? Because, eight years ago, after announcing that he had abandoned a hugely successful Australian league career to chase the black jersey, Thorn had the temerity to say "no" when one was offered. If his try-saving tackle reinforced fond beliefs, that decision, back in 2001, shattered some even bigger ones. Who turns their back on an All Black call-up? Just one other bloke actually — former Auckland prop Greg Denholm was asked to join overseas tour groups in 1976 and 1977 as an injury replacement, but his job came before country both times and he was never asked again.

When Brad Thorn did the same thing he polarised the rugby fraternity, but he almost gets kudos for it now. Indeed, if you count the offer he turned down, he's so far had three separate careers with the All Blacks.

But to many the 34-year-old is still somewhat of a mystery man. At an All Black meet-and-greet at the Suburbs in Avondale before the opening Tri-nations test two weeks ago, I asked several of his greatest fans what makes Thorn tick. Like many, dyed-in-the-wool fans Russell Geddes could only scratch the surface: "Oh, he's my hero. I think he has really good morals but other than that I think he likes to keep his private life totally separate. It makes him really mysterious I guess, so you just have to respect him as a player."

Bradley Carnegie Thorn was born in Mosgiel, Otago, where his watchmaking father Lindsay would pluck Thorn from his cot to watch test matches beamed from the other side of the world and encourage him to sing along to a crackling 45 of Big Bad Don, a tribute to his hero, Don Clarke. When he was 5 the family moved to Bannockburn, where he fitted in two seasons of littlies' rugby before the Thorns flew to Australia to seek better job opportunities and a better education for Brad and his older brother, Aaron.

They settled in Brisbane. Sports-wise, Aaron was older, bigger and led the way. While he did well at rugby and basketball, his eventual 2.03m frame proved susceptible to injury and he gave it away. As for Brad, he dabbled in a bit of junior rugby, then Aussie Rules, but decided on the sport his mates played. He was a good league prospect, but he admits he was lazy, and it took a fatherly rark-up and a threat to withdraw taxi services to put him on course. "In the PC world of today, well, [my father] was different to that," Thorn says with a rasp caused by too many throat-high tackles. "He just wanted to see a young guy reach his potential."

It worked, because from his school's 1st XIII he made the state representative side and did enough to have talent scouts from six NRL clubs calling. He chose a Sydney club, the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs. "It would have meant going to live in Sydney a week after high school had finished. But Mum and Dad weren't too sure about that when they found out."

So his father called the Brisbane Broncos and asked if they were interested in signing the 19-year-old instead. Damn right. After a few trials with suburban club Wests he played his first NRL match against the Bulldogs, with his proud parents in the stand. By the end of that 1994 season, he'd played seven first-grade matches, won the club's rookie of the year award and pulled on the green and gold jersey for the Australian Junior Kangaroos.

"Everything took off really fast," recalls Thorn. "My money went from about $5000 a year to $40,000. Then [the breakaway league competition] Super League came along [in 1997] and my pay tripled again."

And the troubles began — battles with drink and his suddenly inflated sense of self.

"I did a lot of binge-drinking, chasing the ladies, all that, and I probably had a bit of an ego. Not to say I don't have one now, but I was still living in a normal neighbourhood and I'd gone from being a high school kid to a few years later making more money than anyone living on my street, and that's like guys in their 40s or 50s. And not just that, people start to know who you are and patting you on the back and all that. How does a young guy prepare for all that?"

What made that transition harder was the heart attack that killed his father at the end of his first NRL season. Thorn was reeling. "Those were real tough times," he says. "Apart from being a role model and a best mate, a beautiful mate, he's missed out on so much — meeting my wife, seeing his grandkids, all that. And for my mother, they were basically like one person, so tight. But heaps of people go through it. It's part of life."

Trying to cope with his grief, Thorn devoted himself to league and his team mates who took to calling him "Strongy" after he broke the club benchpress record. Off-field, and he gives away little, his antics would now be front-page fodder given the scrutiny players face, but back then it wasn't doing his career any harm and at 21 he won his first State of Origin cap for Queensland. At 23 he became a Kangaroo and played all three tests against the Kiwis in 1998.

Thorn was a star and a dinky-dye Aussie to boot — except for when the All Blacks were playing at Ballymore. All the same, he wasn't content. Big life changes were in store.

"I'd had six years of all this carry-on [his hard living]. I mean I'm a consumer, when I drink, I drink heavily and I like my food, and I was pretty set on me. But it got to the point where I started to think about when I was young and all those memories told me that this was not what my parents had raised me to be. I'd done a lot of stuff that I'd dreamed of doing, but I felt a little empty, I wasn't fulfilled."

He later met Cronulla Sharks prop Jason Stevens who he says "had a big impact on me".

"We liked to enjoy our time, Jason did too, but he didn't get into the booze and stuff. He was a Christian, but it was his actions that impressed me.

"We talked about it and I thought Christians were nice people and that, but I thought if I was going to give it go it'd be when I'm old. With my life then, I'd have been a hypocrite [if I had been Christian]. But what he said hit home and a couple of months later I decided to ask God to forgive me for the stuff I'd done and help me move forward. From then on everything started to change ..."

He began cutting back his drinking in 1998 (it took him three difficult years to get it under control and now drinks only occasionally — he admits to having "a few beers" the last time Canterbury won the Super 14) and dedicated himself to his girlfriend, Mary-Anne. But despite winning another grand final in 2000, Thorn was restless. Still only 25 and at the peak of his league powers, he was grappling with the demands of his new lifestyle and some "what if?" fantasies — in particular, what if he had stayed in New Zealand?

He had a hit-out with the Brisbane Jeeps rugby club and after deciding the game was a reasonable fit he thought back on the All Black dreams of his childhood. Changing codes was a huge risk; Broncos coach Wayne Bennett said it was one of the most courageous things he's ever seen.

"When I try to achieve something, I focus on it and want to do it well," says Thorn. "So there I was coming from a sport where I was at the top, to one where I was like an under-10 player. I had to listen to everyone. So that was very humbling ... but I arrived [in New Zealand] with three goals: to see if I enjoyed rugby, to see if I was any good at it, and to see if I enjoyed living in New Zealand. And for the first six months the answer was 'no' to all of them."

With help from a relative in Otago and current All Black co-coach Steve Hansen, he joined Canterbury, where he met Todd Blackadder. "Our feeling was that he was coming back to his roots," says Blackadder, now Thorn's Super 14 coach. "He really wanted to experience playing rugby here so we just opened the door and made him welcome. But it was a huge challenge. We were a very successful team and he had to meet those standards very quickly if he wanted to succeed. But he's such a hardworking, honest guy and has this massive competitive spirit. He's a real role model."

By way of introduction he told his new mates about the trouble he'd had getting his "pythons" past customs. Then pointed to his muscled arms. For moral support Thorn joined St John's Anglican Church in Christchurch and began helping out with the Salvation Army. He quickly developed some unusual friendships, such as that with fellow churchgoer 91-year-old Joan Sawyer, once New Zealand's tallest woman, who he took for a walk on the beach. Acting minister Peter Collier says he's still the favourite topic of conversation among their elderly female congregation.

But even with their encouragement, the fast track was too fast. Canterbury wanted Thorn at number 8, the linchpin at the back of the scrum where a rugby brain is vital, and Thorn didn't have one yet. He didn't understand the rules or how the game flowed so he ran around like an over-muscled ostrich looking for rucks to bury his head in.

Even so, those who mattered saw potential and didn't want to lose it. They knew Thorn had signed a two-year contract with a fast-approaching back-out option, and that he wanted to go home. It was no secret.

All the same, he was named in the All Black squad to tour Argentina and Britain in November 2001. "It was a huge moment, a privilege and an honour, but I just wasn't ready as a person and if I had gone I'd've taken the place of someone who was. I'd been dealing with a lot of stuff in my life for a few years and I needed time away to think. If I had gone on that tour and then left ... I couldn't do that either. That was one of the most pressured moments of my life, then the phone calls started, family and mates all wanting to congratulate me [on being named in the squad]. So it wasn't an easy time, especially calling up the All Black manager and saying I wanted to stand down."

The NZRU tried using the cherished All Black jersey as bait. According to Blackadder, Thorn had met the selectors and explained his situation: "At the time I was his captain and we were pretty good mates, and he told them he just wasn't ready ... I can assure you that he had made it quite clear that he didn't want to be involved, but they obviously wanted him there, so they selected him anyway."

Regardless of whether people thought him courageous or cowardly, Thorn held firm, returned to Brisbane and married Mary-Anne. During their honeymoon in Europe he decided he still had unfinished rugby business. This time he was going to do things right, starting with some mid-summer Karate Kid-style practice with Crusaders coach Robbie Deans. If he was going to become a lock forward he needed better balance, so Deans stood him on a fence post and threw shoes for him to catch. He earned a second All Black summons and jumped at it. His first start came at Carisbrook, scene of many childhood memories, against the Springboks, his dad's favourite foe.

He was selected for the 2003 World Cup squad, but found himself unwanted by the next coaching panel led by Graham Henry. He earned more brickbats when word got out that Thorn was returning to league.

Stu Wilson again, writing in The Truth: "The talk that he's eyeing up another stint at the Brisbane Broncos made me wonder whether playing for the All Blacks is the ultimate for some blokes. Obviously it isn't ... Thorn has to be told that turning his back on the All Blacks for the second time is downright disgraceful."

For Thorn it was more about not being wanted. He had a family to look after, his pay packet had been halved, and besides, Brisbane would always be home.

"That's something I don't shy away from and I'm not ashamed of. I'm Kiwi to the bone, I was born here and have family here, but Australia's where I was schooled, it's where my mates, my [four] children and my wife were born. So that's my home, and I was proud to play for them."

He made it back into the NRL where he helped the Broncos win the 2006 premiership before falling foul of the salary cap — as a parting gift he gave bibles to everyone in the team.

Again he looked for a new challenge and was looking to Europe when Robbie Deans all but manhandled him to Canterbury for one last trot. The word was that Graham Henry still didn't rate him, but post-World Cup desertions and retirements saw him last year reselected against the Irish. And he's still going strong, with every hit offered up as thanks to the God he says made him what he is. As he told an Australian newspaper: "Even I couldn't have dreamed of this, and I've had big dreams."

His next move will probably be a stint in Europe before heading back to the Queensland sun, but until then he'll keep pouring his heart into the All Blacks: "As a kid, I used to go and watch them at Ballymore. I expected them to show that pride in the jersey, the history, every time.

"And that's how I feel now. So getting my jersey is always special. I take it to my room, look at my number and everything that's written on it.

"Then I think about all those old people who grew up with amateur rugby and want to see that old passion; all the young kids, just like me, watching their heroes; and what being an All Black means. It doesn't matter if you're tired, feeling a bit crook, or got a niggle, you give it everything you've got, and you never take a backward step. That's like a contract with me."