By Chris Rattue
A star was born when young Auckland journalist Phil Gifford invented a rugby character named Loosehead Len 50 years ago.
Loosehead, the beer-swilling bigot, barged out of newspaper pages to become a Kiwi cultural identity.
Somewhat ironically, he helped open doors for Gifford, whose fond parody of a traditional rugby bloke proved dear to the heart of many of the game’s most famous characters.
Another star was born in the process. Gifford invented a genre and has had the stage to himself as a personality sports journalist in this country.
The 77-year-old Gifford - back living in Auckland after a long spell in Christchurch - is still going strong. His 26th book, a biography of rugby coaching genius Wayne Smith, was released just a few months ago.
The columns still flow, and so do the stories from a man with a trap-like memory for events and anecdotes.
Gifford has been honoured in the New Year list for his unique contribution to sports journalism.
He chats about the famous people he has met, along with some of sport’s biggest issues.
Your most memorable interview has been…
(Athletics coach) Arthur Lydiard, who had a fire and a spark in the belly almost unlike any other person I’ve interviewed. He had a drive, the ability to convince people.
He coached Peter Snell and Murray Halberg to that double gold at the 1960 Olympics and that played forward to 1974 when Dick Tayler won the Commonwealth Games 10,000m. Dick was a wonderful runner but didn’t have a lot of confidence. Lydiard convinced Dick that he was the best runner in the world, and that is how he ran that day.
Your least favourable experience as a journalist is …
The worst experience by a long way was the 1981 Springboks tour. Rugby was so precious to me and suddenly in 1981 it completely divided the country. About 20 years after the tour I interviewed Graham Perry, the policeman in charge of the flour bomb test at Eden Park, and he said – and I agree 100 per cent – it was a miracle we got through the tour without anyone dying. But it left behind an incredibly divided country.
You’ve had a front-row seat at the Crusaders/Canterbury rugby dynasty … what is their secret sauce?
They had real quality people coaching: Wayne Smith, Robbie Deans, Toddy Blackadder, Scott Robertson. They were also way ahead of their time in having a players’ official – Steve Lancaster. A young player might not feel they could speak on equal terms with the coach, but Lancaster could on their behalf. Sometimes as a sports journalist, it feels like you are repeating cliches, but the Crusaders and Canterbury have something special – you don’t have to be a prick to be a winner. That is the key to everything about them.
The biggest reaction to a column was …
I wrote a column that was complete nonsense really … an impassioned plea that I didn’t feel strongly about calling for the use of TV replays in rugby.
It came after replays showed that a winning try to the Blues against the Highlanders at Eden Park in the 1990s – to Joeli Vidiri – should not have been awarded.
The next minute I’m flown to Auckland to be on the Paul Holmes TV show, which was huge at the time, arguing with David Moffett, the CEO of New Zealand Rugby, who was against the use of replays.
I had used a phrase in the column, repeated in the headline, that the referee and touch judges had made the worst mistake since the Bob Deans try was disallowed against Wales in 1905. I had just written the column to have a bit of fun with it.
You’ve written 26 books – how close do you get to your subjects?
There have been lovely connections with virtually everyone I’ve done a book with. The first was with the Stanleys (All Blacks great Joe Stanley’s family) and we are still really close, keep in touch all the time and we are going to their youngest daughter’s wedding in March.
Jan (Gifford’s wife) and I have also formed an incredible connection with (Olympic shot put great) Valerie Adams.
I met Val at a Mad Butcher’s charity lunch in 2010 and had an almost instant connection. She makes such a huge impression on you; she is so intelligent, vibrant and funny.
At times, writing her book was an emotional experience. Valerie told me how her mum had died in her arms when she was just 15. It was such a raw, personal thing.
She is like a member of the family now. And we are her “palagi parents”, and you can’t ask for a lovelier thing for someone to say than that … one of those incredible bonuses that life gives you sometimes.
Speaking of Tongan superstars – did you have much to do with Jonah Lomu?
(Former Auckland prop) Peter Fatialofa – a dear friend of mine – had a great line about Jonah. He said Jonah never changed, he’s still a boy from South Auckland, but the people around him act differently.
I remember a group of schoolgirls waiting for him in the foyer of a Johannesburg hotel and when he arrived, one little girl took off like Usain Bolt and leapt so high in the air that she had his arms around his neck, legs around his waist. He gently untangled her and put her down.
I arranged to interview him once but unusually for those times, the PR woman said she couldn’t give me his numbers.
Anyway, Jonah didn’t ring at the appointed time. He eventually did and said his car had broken down – he was ringing from an Ōtara phone box where “every Tom, Dick and Harry is staring at me”. So he gave me his home and mobile number – that’s how I got his numbers.
And as Colin Meads said in South Africa: “I’ve played with jokers as big as Jonah, but they weren’t on the wing.”
You also had a front-row seat to the great Auckland team of the late 1980s …
Eleven of them were in the winning World Cup final team of 1987, clearly the best team at that tournament. They had two or three all-time greats, John Kirwan obviously, also Michael Jones. I did a weaselly thing in my 2013 autobiography, and picked Richie McCaw at 7 and Jones at 6 in my greatest team, to get them both in.
Michael had physical gifts beyond … the All Blacks fitness trainer Jim Blair told me he could jump and touch a mark higher on the wall than Gary Whetton, and in bench pressing he was as strong as the props. In training, he had the skills of the backs. He could have played any position.
So what was McCaw’s edge?
It goes without saying that he was an extraordinary player. I was the guest speaker at Lincoln University when he received the major sports award there, and the vice-chancellor told me that McCaw was not just an A student, he was an A-plus student. He said if it weren’t for pro rugby, McCaw would have bolted a Rhodes Scholarship. I met his parents that night and you could see then why Richie was such an outstanding person. His parents are everything good about rural New Zealanders – and I don’t think there are any better people in the world than intelligent, decent farmers.
Who were your childhood heroes – and did you get to meet them?
Three come to mind. The first was (legendary former All Blacks coach) Fred Allen. He told me Dan Carter was the best rugby player he’d ever seen, not just the best first five-eighths – that sticks in my mind.
Another guy I idolised as a kid was Colin Meads. He was the only other person in a hotel breakfast room one day, so I thought to myself “don’t be a wimp”. I hadn’t planned to say this but I approached and said “I write a thing called Loosehead Len”. A lot was riding on that, he took a while, then said “we like that down our way”. He spent the next couple of hours telling me wonderful stories.
The other one I still can’t believe is Sir Edmund Hillary. He and Lady June were guests at a function where I was speaking – she said to me “you have a bach at Waihī”. They were about three doors down from us.
We went to see them one summer and I was sitting there, lost for words for once, when out of nowhere Sir Edmund asks “is it true that Buck Shelford punched Grant Fox after that test in 1990?”
I said “no, no, I’ve asked both of them”.
It turned out he was a rugby tragic and it’s almost all we spoke about for the next four or five years. He loved the Blues – I’d be sitting on a couch with a rum and coke and sitting next to me with a whiskey was Sir Edmund Hillary. He was everything you would have liked him to be … brave, strong, kind.
Moving way ahead … the sporting landscape is very different today.
Professionalism has been tough on New Zealand, for watching live sports. I remember back in the ’70s, driving to Stanley St, and seeing this little ginger-headed guy walking towards the tennis courts. It was (Australian tennis legend) Rod Laver, with his bag in hand. Back then money didn’t rule everything and it was easier to get high-quality fields, including great overseas athletes, to come here.
When I started in 1965, rugby was everything. That’s the biggest sea change by a mile. If you went to a small country school like I did at Waihī, you either played rugby or you stayed at home. No football, basketball, hockey ... that was reflected throughout the country. It made rugby have a prominence and influence out of all proportion. Rugby has taken a long time to wake up to the battle it now faces for the hearts and minds.
And concussion wasn’t an issue back then …
It’s the single biggest issue facing the game, and I’m not sure there is an answer to it. When you see the great players playing game after game - it terrifies me. But with this legal action in Europe – rugby is taking it seriously and needs to take it even more seriously.
The big sports moral issue of today is the amount of money Saudi Arabia is pouring in. What did Bob Dylan say? Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
Do you have time for other sports?
Rugby is about 10 months of the year now.
Boxing is my guilty pleasure. I love boxing – even if I shouldn’t. So many of my friends who were amateurs or professionals from the 1960s are damaged – they trained with headgear that they thought would stop concussion, which is bullshit.
But there is so much rugby now and even though I’m often disappointed, I’ve never gone to a big rugby game without a sense of excitement.
That excitement may not be as great as it was when I was 12, when Dad took me to the 1959 Lions test on the road services bus from Waihī, leaving at 5.30 in the morning. But I still get a buzz out of watching rugby. The day I don’t is when I’ll stop going and writing about it.
Why does rugby often disappoint you?
There are things I hate about it – this thing about seven forwards coming on at halftime is obscene, the more you kick the ball in test rugby the more likely you are to win, I hate the fact the bunkers take so much time and there is so much power in the hands of the TMO.
But now and then a game comes along, like the All Blacks’ match against Ireland at the World Cup. And then new players come along, like Will Jordan.
Will Jordan is something special – like a player from the past …
I’m a huge Will Jordan fan. There’s a Dan Carter-ish element to him. With the great ones, you feel they are seeing three moves ahead.
I want him to play at fullback – he is potentially the new Christian Cullen, and possibly even better because he can also send other people away, as well as doing it himself.
Speaking of players from the past, we can’t finish without talking about Loosehead Len. Where did he emerge from?
At the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, I was shown columns by the Australian league journo Mike Gibson and I thought they were hilarious. I introduced myself to him and he told me that he had been one of a horde of league writers in Sydney. So he went to his editor with an idea, to write that North Sydney was the only decent club and the rest were dickheads. Within six months he was one of the best-read league writers there.
I was aware that nobody in New Zealand rugby was trying to write funny stories. I went to the editor of the 8 O’Clock newspaper, and he eventually suggested I do it under a false name.
I’d been in rugby clubs and knew a lot of blokes like Loosehead Len. In my head it was always satire – I was a lefty, pinko journalist with long hair. The astounding thing was I had rugby players who wanted to meet me because of it, like the All Blacks captain Frank Oliver, who collared me after a test and we spent the night drinking together.
Loosehead Len was a key thing in my life and also helped get me into radio. It succeeded beyond any dream I had.
The missing rugby jersey was found after a two-year search.