Ahead of the release of Gregor Paul's new book on what it takes to lead the All Blacks, he goes inside the dressing room to reveal what it was really like having one of the toughest jobs in the land.
The All Blacks captaincy is a job no one covets
Gregor Paul: The scars, the slights and the scandals - the secrets of our great All Black captains
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But as much as it has broken little pieces of the men who have done it, all of them say they would do it again.
And it's on this point – the almost conflicted view that it's the worst job in the world but also the best job in the world – that former All Blacks captains are united.
Going back to Andy Leslie in 1974 to Sam Cane in 2020, the job has changed almost beyond recognition and yet there are core similarities: two demands that won't be buckled by time.
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The job is defined as a never-ending quest to live up to unrealistic public expectation and win the respect of teammates.
All the captains of the last 50 years agree that's what the job is and that trying to achieve those two goals was a journey of impossible highs and crushing lows.
Even those who were deemed hugely successful - Richie McCaw, David Kirk, Sean Fitzpatrick, Buck Shelford, Graham Mourie – endured periods of self-doubt; times when they were lonely, isolated and victimised, certain they didn't have the respect of their peers.
No one has had an easy, trauma-free tenure as All Blacks captain and probably no one ever will.
Kirk was dumped from the role in late 1986 because he says the returning Cavaliers – those All Blacks who had taken part in a rebel tour to South Africa - didn't want him as their captain.
"There was a division in the team and definitely I was excluded," he says. "They were not open to me, listening to me or seeing me as their captain. That group didn't want me as their leader."
Fitzpatrick, recognised as one of the greatest captains in history, took almost four years to win over his teammates and his own coach, Laurie Mains who rang him up in early 1992 and asked if him he still wanted to be an All Black.
When Fitzpatrick said yes, Mains replied: "Well you are not going to be."
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"He said I was arrogant," says Fitzpatrick of that phone call. "And the thing that hurt me most of all was that he said, 'You've lost respect for the All Blacks jersey'."
Two months later and Mains, not by choice but through necessity, made Fitzpatrick captain and for the next two years he battled against a coach who didn't want him and teammates who didn't respect him.
"In 1992 and 1993 there were players in the All Blacks who thought they should have been the All Blacks captain and I won't say who, but it was a case of me having to deal with that," says Fitzpatrick.
Shelford says he captained the team amid a not so hard to detect undercurrent of resistance from the heavy number of Auckland players in his team who wanted to play their own style and boot him out so Zinzan Brooke could take his place.
Even McCaw, the greatest captain of all, will recognise that what bonds all those who have led the All Blacks, is the inevitable struggle that comes with the role, for he too endured a period after the failed World Cup campaign of 2007 where he honestly didn't know if he was looking at a changing room that had his back.
The All Blacks are a brand built on endless success and so the tendency is to gloss over the moments of failure or cling to the myth that captains are all equipped to cope with it – being chisel-jawed, superheroes who know how to process or flush negative emotions that arise from falling on the wrong side of history.
The idea of an All Blacks captain being vulnerable, exposed to pressures and outcomes they are not emotionally ready to deal with is one that is rarely if ever considered.
But those stories are there. Reuben Thorne sits as one of the most maligned and misunderstood All Blacks captains.
He suffered, in silence, endless media criticism throughout his two-year tenure and then when his world collapsed with semifinal defeat at the 2003 World Cup, the one man who had stood by him was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
"I felt isolated in terms of dealing with all that because John Mitchell [All Blacks coach] pretty much pulled right back out of it," reveals Thorne.
"It was kind of 'You're the captain, you deal with it.' I don't think I was well supported."
What's probably sadder is that Thorne brought a stoic brand of low-risk, high work-rate rugby and verbal frugality and an unflappable demeanour that would have been revered 60 years ago.
But in the modern era, the New Zealand public were looking for something more explosive and dynamic and expected the All Blacks captain to not necessarily be verbose but at least charismatic.
It meant he was never judged fairly or able to shake off the perception he was a journeyman promoted beyond his abilities.
"I wasn't flash or flamboyant or scoring tries," he says. "People in New Zealand expect or want their captain to be something a little more than that. They want them to be the star, they want that person to be a larger-than-life sort of character or an amazing athlete that's going to score tries and dominate people and for me it was really hard to shake that off."
Justin Marshall would never be accused of lacking flamboyance but he was accused of lacking the temperament the job required when he was given it on the All Blacks UK tour of 1997.
Pedantic Scottish referee Jim Fleming was annoying the All Blacks with the way he was officiating the final test of the year against England so Marshall was told by the senior figures in the pack to talk to him.
Every time he tried, Fleming shooed him away until Marshall snapped after England had been awarded yet another penalty, and said: "You know what Jim, if you don't f***ing well do something about this my forward pack will and then we will have a hell of a messy test match."
Fleming marched him back 10 metres and then another 10 when Marshall said: "Look Jim I am just trying to tell you how it is my team are feeling."
What bemused Marshall and still hurts, is that ended up being his last test as captain and he was never told why. "He [Fleming] marches me 20 metres and all of a sudden I am a shit captain. I win three games and a draw but when the team is named in 1998, I am in it, but Taine is captain. There has been no communication. Nothing."
Marshall's surprise that he wasn't captain in 1998 was nowhere near as large as Taine Randell's that he was.
Randell had perhaps the saddest experience of all as captain – appointed at just 23 after one year of test football and at a time when he was still flatting, living the scarfie life that would see him play a test one week and then plot an egg fight through the streets of Dunedin the next.
He found himself in the All Blacks changing room standing in front of legends such as Michael Jones and Robin Brooke, relying on nothing more than bravado to try to convince them and himself he was the right man to captain the team.
As he says: "I had blind, youthful enthusiasm and I guess confidence. Being a babe in the woods was quite a good thing because if I realised then what I know now, I would have realised how woefully underprepared I was."
Randell wanted to quit in late 1998 – a year in which the All Blacks lost five consecutive tests. He told coach John Hart but was then persuaded to meet with corporate guru Kevin Roberts to see if there was any way he could carry on.
Both Randell and Roberts agreed he wasn't ready to continue – that he wasn't emotionally equipped to do the role - and yet there he was a year later, broken and devastated, trudging off the field at Twickenham as captain of an All Blacks' side sensationally been beaten by France in the World Cup semifinal.
Hart became the public's figure of hate after that tournament because he threw himself in front of the cameras and media, aware that his captain didn't deserve the vitriol that was brewing.
Rugby's toughest job is the veritable riddle wrapped in a mystery and maybe only those who have done it can ever truly know what a torturous yet exhilarating role it is.
No one has been a natural All Blacks captain, capable and competent the moment they landed the job.
Each person tasked with leading the All Blacks in the last 50 years has quivered inside at the enormity of responsibility the role carries and the pressure it exerts.
They have all hated it and loved it; feared it and craved it and whether their respective tenure was deemed successful or not, they all proudly stand as members of a special club of special men who can say they have been captain of the All Blacks.
Read an exclusive extract from Gregor Paul's book The Captain's Run on nzherald.co.nz tomorrow.
