What you see with Andrew Hore is pretty much what you get - a gnarly old hooker whose head looks great in the middle of a front row, not so good on the cover of GQ.
Try to picture him next to Dan Carter on Jockey billboards. Not great, is it? Far more palatable to imagine him in a pair of Red Bands with a Swanndri, quad-biking around the family farm in the Maniototo Valley.
Hore made his debut for the All Blacks in 2002 and only his age - and possibly the shape of his nose - has changed since then.
Hore is a bit old school - too old school for Hurricanes coach Mark Hammett if rumours that his propensity for a midweek beer was behind his divorce from the franchise. Hore has a reputation for striking fear into the rookies with withering assessments of their abilities after training-ground errors. In the old days of the back-seat pecking order, he would have been the one at the rear, meting out punishment for those who were getting above their station.
To Hore's great credit, he can play the modern game. For awhile, the sport's requirement for multi-dimensional forwards looked like it might leave him behind.
