Bruce Robertson was the greatest All Blacks centre of the last 50 years.
He had the brilliant rugby mind of Conrad Smith, the spatial awareness and ability to set wings free of Joe Stanley, and the broken-field elusiveness of Frank Bunce.
What set Robertson ahead of even such agreat trio was speed, the sort of blistering speed rarely seen in an All Blacks midfield.
His death, after a long illness, also means one of the most good-natured, humble, decent men the game has known has gone. All those fortunate enough to have known him will be thinking of his wife Nellie and their family, and the prince of a man they’ve lost.
As a teenager in 1971 Robertson was a fullback for the Ardmore Training College club side in Counties. Counties coach Barry Bracewell, a quirky free thinker, switched the kid from Hastings to centre.
“He’s so skinny when he turns sideways you can hardly see him,” Bracewell would tell me with a broad smile. “But God he can play footy.” By the end of 1971 Robertson was playing for the North Island. In 1972 he was a 20-year-old All Black.
What never changed, in a glittering 34-test career that spanned a decade, was his modesty.
I once discussed with him how Muhammad Ali had said in a biography that everything he saw in the ring felt as if it was in slow motion, which made boxing easy for him.
Did Robertson ever have the same experience on a rugby field? He hesitated, then almost whispered, “Actually, it feels like that in most games I play.”
My favourite Robertson moment came in 1980 in a test in Brisbane against the Wallabies. In one of the most bizarre selections in All Blacks history, coach Eric Watson had left Robertson out of the original touring squad. Robertson was flown to Australia as an injury replacement in time for the second test. Trailing 9-6 well into the second half Robertson was passed the ball well inside his 22, and ripped open the Australian defence. Fifty metres later he fed the ball on, and hooker Hika Reid scored a remarkable try. The conversion gave the All Blacks a 12-9 victory.
1978 Cambridge University v New Zealand All Blacks, Bruce Robertson. (Photo by Mark Leech/Getty Images)
In 1981 he was one of two leading All Blacks, along with the team’s captain Graham Mourie, who refused to play against the apartheid-era Springboks.
Robertson had toured South Africa in 1976, and as a schoolteacher had made a point of visiting non-white schools. What he’d seen had horrified him.
“The facilities are so bad for black schoolkids it’ll take at least a generation, maybe two, for them to be on an equal footing with white kids.”
In an unusual postscript Robertson, by 1982 working for the Auckland Rugby Union with schools rugby, helped win back the almost catastrophic loss of primary school players that backlash from the Springbok tour had triggered.
Māori All Black Ness Toki, like Robertson a former teacher and a gently spoken, hugely likeable man, and Robertson formed a duo that visited schools, persuading teachers that rugby deserved another chance.
Final proof for me of where Robertson stands in the pantheon of New Zealand rugby greats came when for a magic hour in 1974 I sat with two immortals, George Nepia and Bert Cooke, who were in Auckland for the 50th anniversary reunion of the 1924 Invincibles.
At one point Cooke left the table, and I asked Nepia if he’d ever seen a midfielder to compare to Cooke, a man so elusive English critics at the time compared him to Houdini the great magician.
“Just one,” said Nepia. “This boy Robertson. He’s amazing.”
