Ruben Wiki: Low-flying Kiwis happy to be underestimated

Judging by what's been said over here in the UK, Australia and Great Britain will be in the Tri-Nations final.

It doesn't look like anyone watched our two tests against Australia and we're apparently here to make up the numbers - but that suits us just fine.

Maybe they're basing it on what happened last season, when we fell away after a good start, but we've found it pretty incredible to be written off so early.

We're a bunch of guys who let our actions do the talking so it'll be sweet when we make it to next month's final, as we expect.

We've flown under the radar here, although it was hard not to draw attention to ourselves when we went on an open-top bus tour of London with a Kiwis sign on the side of the bus. A few more people might have known who we were after that and hopefully even more will have to stand up and take notice after this morning's game against Great Britain.

Although I tried to approach it like any other test match, it was hard not to think about it being my 47th test to break the world record for the number of tests played by one person. It was an honour last week to join such a select group of Gary Freeman, Australia's Mal Meninga, Great Britain's Garry Schofield and Mick Sullivan, and France's Gilbert Benausse. It will feel a bit weird to be out on my own today.

Longevity has certainly helped my career and, amazingly, I have played in every position for the Kiwis except hooker, in the halves or fullback. The guys in those positions shouldn't worry too much because I'm not getting any faster and I never had a sidestep anyway.

It's kind of funny because I could have played even more tests if the men at the judiciary hadn't had a few things to say about that.

I still remember my first international back in 1994 when I was a pretty green 21-year-old playing for the Canberra Raiders.

It was a wild introduction to the test arena because it was in Papua New Guinea and the game was held up by spectators throwing Coke bottles onto the field in the direction of Kiwi referee Jim Stokes.

Police had to fire tear gas into the crowd to calm them down and we all had to hit the deck to get out of the way.

We managed to win the game and, on the way back to the bus, police let the dogs loose on the crowd because they thought they were getting too close to us. It was all pretty freaky and I remember hiding behind big John Lomax.

Since then I've had a few different hairstyles and put on a few kilos but I still love pulling on the black-and-white jersey and hope I can be around for a little bit longer.