Where are they now? World Cup winning captain David Kirk on the truth behind iconic All Blacks image

David Kirk with injured captain Andy Dalton and the Webb Ellis cup after the All Blacks won the 1987 Rugby World Cup final against France. Photo / Photosport

It's 1986 and a 26-year-old David Kirk has just captained a young, raw, All Blacks team that became known as the Baby Blacks, to a stunning 18-9 victory in Christchurch over France, the best team in Europe.

In those amateur days he's quickly back into his white coat as a house surgeon at Auckland hospital, serving out the two years of practical work a young doctor must do to qualify after six years study in Dunedin.

"I was working in the endocrinology ward with a senior female doctor, a registrar," he told me this week.

"We were talking with an older patient, a guy, and he said, 'you're David Kirk, the All Black captain, aren't you? You've done really well, good on you'. I said, 'thank you' but I didn't really engage too much.

"As we walked away, the registrar said, 'oh God, he's confused isn't he'? She thought there had been a reaction to the drugs he'd been given.

"So I had to tell her, 'well, actually, I am the captain of the All Blacks'."

It's possible that Kirk, who to be fair to the senior specialist has always looked much younger than he actually is, may have struck one of the few people in the country unaware of his sporting identity at the time.

David Kirk scores a try in the 1987 Rugby World Cup final. Photo / Photosport

By the middle of the next year he was an absolutely iconic figure, leading the 1987 All Blacks to victory in the first World Cup.

In the final with France he scored the try that cemented the win.

Midway through the second half, with the All Blacks ahead 12-3, Kirk says, "we won a lineout, and went to Joe (Stanley), who set up the midfield, and then Foxy (Grant Fox) called the direction back to the right from the ruck. But he was running into traffic. The person who made the try was Michael Jones.

"He took the pass and hit it with his typical pace and power, and got in behind the French, and then got tackled and offloaded to me.

"When he passed me the ball, I didn't think I was going to get there. There was quite a bit of cover there. But two guys tried to tackle me and they got in each other's way. Then it was just go for the line, still half-expecting to be tackled.

"You reach a point where it's a certain number of paces to the line. Sort of, 'one, two… then dive.' I thought, when can I dive? You get the first step, the second, one more step and you can dive, then the tackle still doesn't arrive and you know you can dive. You leave your feet and you know that as long as you hang on to the ball you can make it.

"I thumped the ground. It was sheer joy. That was exactly the time when I felt absolutely confident we were going to win. I thought that after the whole month of buildup, one second ago we won the World Cup. I felt at that point much more intense emotion than I felt walking out to actually get the Cup."

At that presentation Kirk drew squad leader Andy Dalton in to join him holding the Webb Ellis Cup. It was a touching, healing, moment that erased a lot of the bitterness that had followed a rebel South African tour in '86, led by Dalton.

Kirk had refused on principle to join the trip to an apartheid-era South Africa, and was pilloried by some of the Cavaliers for his stand. Eight former Cavaliers were in the All Blacks side that played the '87 World Cup final.

"When we got up to get the Cup," Kirk told me a decade ago, "it hadn't occurred to me to reach out for Andy Dalton. What happened was completely unplanned. Andy had been such a big contributor off the field, and on the spur of the moment I grabbed him by the front of the tracksuit top he was wearing and physically pulled him across to me. I could tell he wasn't going to come over unless I dragged him."

Kirk would play one more test, leading the All Blacks to a Bledisloe Cup win in Sydney a month after the Cup final, before taking up a Rhodes Scholarship and heading to Oxford University, where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics.

David Kirk, patron of Otago Univerity Rugby, at University Oval in 2019. Photo / Photosport

His career course changed from medicine to business, working in London for an American global management consultancy company, for three years.

Then it was back to New Zealand, for an unsuccessful bid to become the National Party candidate in Rob Muldoon's old seat of Tamaki. Kirk missed out to Clem Simich, but then became chief policy advisor for Prime Minister Jim Bolger. "I've had a life long interest in good public policy," says Kirk now.

After four years at the Beehive it was back to the business world, and his CV spans chairing the Maui gas fields gas venture for Fletcher Challenge, moving to Sydney, becoming the CEO of media company Fairfax, where he led the charge to make the hugely profitable purchase of TradeMe in 2006, and becoming the CEO of entertainment giant, Hoyts.

In 2010 in Sydney he co-founded Australian stock exchange listed Bailador, an investment company specialising in media and information technology.

So where does he now call home? Before 2016 he would have no doubt answered Sydney. But early in 2016 he and his wife Brigit bought a house near Ocean Beach, in Hawke's Bay, and now, says Kirk, he crosses the Tasman at least 10 times a year to spend time there.

"They say home is where the dog is," he says, and laughs. "But we don't have a dog now, and because we split our time so much now between Sydney and Hawke's Bay, I'd say we've got two homes."