Rugby: Lest we forget 1987

John Drake, former All Black and sports columnist. Photo / NZ Herald

All the surviving players from the All Blacks' 1987 World Cup winning side will come together during this year's tournament to honour their only absentee, outstanding tighthead prop John Drake.

The team, plus management, will attend a black tie dinner at the Ellerslie Racecourse on October 11. It will be hosted by Auckland University, from which Drake was a graduate, to raise money for the scholarship started in his memory.

After retiring, somewhat prematurely, as a player at the end of the 1987 season, Drake became a much respected commentator and columnist who as an analyst was something more than a cheerleader. He died suddenly, aged 49, late in 2008, and the following year, many of his University team-mates, along with his old Auckland Grammar headmaster John Graham, launched a scholarship in his honour.

A reunion lunch of the 1987 side was held at Eden Park in 2007 but was attended by only about half the playing squad of 26. For this year's dinner, organisers have arranged for all 25 players to be present. They have been helped, of course, by the fact the dinner will be held between the quarter-finals and semifinals in Auckland when the World Cup tournament will be at its peak.

At the dinner three of Drake's University, Auckland and World Cup team-mates, David Kirk (who took over the on-field captaincy of the All Blacks when Andy Dalton was injured), Sean Fitzpatrick and Grant Fox, with coach Sir Brian Lochore, will form a question-and-answer panel.

Lochore says the fact the entire squad will attend the dinner shows the esteem in which Drake was held. Some will travel from the other side of the world, with Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke and John Gallagher now living in Britain.

Others such as John Kirwan, Steve McDowall and Kieran Crowley will be back in New Zealand in their World Cup coaching roles with Japan, Romania and Canada respectively.

Also attending will be one of New Zealand's most respected 1987 opponents, Scotland fullback Gavin Hastings, who stayed on in New Zealand after the tournament and played several games for University in Auckland's premier club competition.

He, Drake, Fitzpatrick and Fox played in that year's Gallaher Shield final when University beat Marist 31-13, with Kirk unable to play because of injury. In remarkable contrast to what happens under today's professionalism, both the University and Marist sides were studded with internationals and players of representative standard.

Besides the internationals, University had Mata'afa Keenan, later to play for Samoa, Auckland representatives Iain Wood, Tua Saseve, Mark Adam and John McDermott and two New Zealand University representatives in Mark Free and Noel Anderton. Marist had six All Blacks: Kirwan, Greg Cooper, Terry Wright, Bernie McCahill, and Zinzan and Robin Brooke.