100 Greatest All Blacks: Peter Whiting

At times top players must feel like they have an All Black detection bracelet attached to their ankles. They are seldom out of the selectors' earshot and eyesight as their health and wellbeing is monitored.

They are encouraged to have a decent break in between seasons yet they all know come the start of the next Super 15 series, they have to be up to reasonable speed so they take on board ideas about how to rest, what exercise to do and how to manage their nutrition.

If only the communication was so regular in Peter Whiting's day. The lock had broken his wrist on an opponent's head in club rugby and missed the national trials to pick the squad to go to South Africa in 1970.

He had been a NZ Junior and trialist and the selectors had considered him closely for the '67 All Black trip. They decided he needed a further season or so to settle and coach Ivan Vodanovich wanted him for 1970 in Africa.

News of Whiting's broken wrist scuppered that in the coach's mind and it was only years later when he heard the lock had the plaster cast removed the day the side flew out, that he asked Whiting why he hadn't told him.

"Because neither you nor any of the other All Black selectors asked me," was the retort.

Whiting's debut came with Colin Meads a year later in the Lions series and eventually he made an All Black tour to Africa in 1976. A surgeon helped the lock manage his painful back injury but it was his last international action. The injury, biased referees and a full card of playing every major nation in the globe, persuaded Whiting it was time to move into some business ventures.

Statistics
Date of birth: 6 August 1946
Position: Lock
Test debut: 26 June 1971 v British & Irish Lions at Dunedin
Last test: 18 September 1976 v South Africa at Johannesburg
Matches: 56
Tests: 20
Province: Auckland
Test tries: 3
Test points: 12