League: Hellish time motivates true-blue McClennan

Brian McClennan in the Mt Albert clubrooms at Fowlds Park this week. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Footballers sweat on life-changing calls; a representative coach with good news or bad or an agent promising a big break.

The telephone call which Kiwi coach Brian McClennan will never forget came at 4am one morning last November, when he was Daniel Anderson's assistant with the national side in England. And it had nothing to do with the game that has been central to his life.

His parents told McClennan that his wife Julie had a cancerous brain tumour. Minutes later, he was banging on the Leeds hotel doors, arranging a dash back to New Zealand.

Julie had previously suffered mysterious headaches and neck pains. A neurologist sent her to a physiotherapist, and they tried a chiropractor. But a sudden deterioration and MRI scan revealed the frightening truth.

"She was operated on while I was on the flight home," recalls the 43-year-old McClennan, who names his first Kiwi squad of 40 on Monday.

"I went straight from the airport to Auckland Hospital and she was in a bad way. You just wouldn't wish it on anyone. She was gone - couldn't walk or talk.

"Julie's a great girl. We've been through a hellish time. They've cleared her now and she goes for a scan every three months.

"But she went through a rehab centre to learn to walk and talk again, and radiotherapy on the brain really knocks you around.

"You've also got three-year-old twins climbing up the curtains at home and I'm still trying to run my auto glazing business. Football was the last thing on my mind.

"Rehabilitation for her is now an everyday fact of life. But you can't dwell on it - you've got to keep moving forward."

This is more than the backdrop to McClennan's rise to Kiwis coach. It has re-moulded his views on life, meant that any time away from his family must be worth the separation, and strengthened his desperation to create a consistently successful Kiwi team.

He sold his business, built up over five years, so every effort can go into the coaching job. The goal is to match Australia in the win-loss columns, and elevate test football above the Australian obsession with the State of Origin.

History says this is a tall order, and McClennan has struck familiar hurdles over player availability.

"We're like the little brother who gets slapped around a bit. We're sick of it - it's time to do something about it on the field," he says. "We'll let the players know what's been going on - stories I won't reveal in public. We've got to stop being bullied."

McClennan is true-blue league. This interview is conducted at the Mt Albert club - he'll still coach them next season - with remnants of the Bartercard Cup final celebrations in evidence alongside a tatty club jersey hinting at past sweat, cheers and tears.

He remembers days of old, playing in inter-freezing works games where each side boasted a handful of Kiwis, when you could write a who's who of the game from the ranks of Auckland's wharfies. These were times when the game was invigorated by its rough diamonds and lovable rogues.

His father, the former Kiwi fullback Mike McClennan, was an obsessive coaching legend, whose Auckland club feats were repeated in England where he guided St Helens' challenge to Wigan's supremacy.

Mike McClennan was known as "Blue Max", a legacy of some old incident. Mike and Maureen McClennan's only child is known by one and all as Blue or Bluey.

It was pre-ordained that he would become a coach, given the hours of "yakking" about football with his dad, and watching him scrutinise players and tactics.

Long before mandatory video analysis, Mike McClennan received tapes of Australian club games when brown paper and string rather than battleship-grey satellite dishes carried such precious information.

Brian McClennan says: "I was really lucky to be coached by the old man, and to see him doing his analysis at home ... understanding how you break down a game, how you can put processes in place over 80 minutes to strangle teams. And learning how players have got to trust the coach."

As a player, the shrewd Brian McClennan won a string of club titles with Mt Albert and Northcote and in 1990, the stand-off captained Auckland to victory over Great Britain and led a Kiwi trial side.

But finding his Kiwi dream over and that transfer fee hassles were interfering with offers from England, McClennan headed to his local club, Hibiscus Coast, as a player-coach.

Hibiscus Coast, with a population makeup hardly associated with the rigours of league, was more grass seed than grass roots, and even more so than McClennan realised.

"To be honest, I thought they were second division," he says. "We played the first game and I realised we were in the third."

It is a sporting miracle, a water-into-wine story, that McClennan guided Hibiscus Coast up the divisions to the national Bartercard Cup title. Success continued. He coached Mt Albert to a second Bartercard Cup this year, a season marred by the tragic death of forward Paulo Teniseli of a brain haemorrhage two days after a match in July.

McClennan and the club carefully monitored the players' grief, including a designated time every Thursday when they could talk about their feelings.

These are experiences which shape people, where strength rises from adversity.

But McClennan thought long and hard about the Kiwi job this year, because the Tri-Nations will take him away from his wife and kids - Regan, 5, Daniel and Katie, 3 - for seven weeks.

"If I hadn't been so far along the coaching trail, I probably would have given it away," he says.

"I was standing there facing the fact that I might lose Jules, that our children were perhaps going to lose their mum. That is scary.

"It's going to be real difficult for the family, which gives me the motivation to do the best I possibly can.

"You bowl along thinking everything is rosy, then something like that happens to the person you love most. You can't take anything for granted.

"We love every minute of every day ... I've learned it's so important to grab every chance you can.

"This is a passion. I dream of doing well with the Kiwis. I wasn't quite good enough as a player, and here's a chance to do something for the game."