Rugby: Mealamu set to raise the Super bar with 163 matches

Super Rugby record-setter Keven Mealamu must be one of the best liked players in NZ. Photo / Greg Bowker

Nathan Sharpe tells a good story about Keven Mealamu, the man who will tonight break his individual Super Rugby appearance record by playing in his 163rd match.

The former Wallabies lock, who notched his tally over 14 years while playing for the Reds and the Force, talks of a test in Wellington. Year: 2004. Weather: "One of those typically beautiful Wellington nights with rain coming in sideways".

It involves Mealamu, who will celebrate his milestone while playing for the Blues against the Lions at North Harbour, and one Brendan Cannon, another front-rower, who, like Sharpe, is now a television commentator for Fox Sports in Australia.

"I was captaining the team and I looked up to see Brendan Cannon throw one of the biggest right hands I'd ever seen straight into Kevvy's face. And Kevvy did not even flinch. It was unbelievable," Sharpe says.

"I think Canno was pretty happy when everyone else arrived because he had given it all he had with the first punch and realised he might not have much of a chance.

"They were both sinbinned for the scrap and - I've never forgotten this - Canno said after the game that as they were heading for the sideline, Kevvy turned to him and asked, 'How's the family, Canno?'. And that just sums him up, really. He's as hard as a nut on the field but he's the nicest bloke off it. That's how he's always been."

It is for this reason that Mealamu is one of the best liked figures in New Zealand rugby; a tough guy who will give everything for his team, but who is a modest and humble individual off it; a family man; a tough little kid born in Tokoroa and brought up in Otahuhu who became too small for loose forward so switched to hooker and kept playing and playing at the highest level.

How tough? The Cannon reaction is probably evidence in itself, but the All Blacks coaches in 2008, when asked in a casual conversation on the Grand Slam tour of that year which of their players would win a cage fight automatically answered Mealamu and Rodney So'oialo. Their reasons were, as Herald journalist Gregor Paul later wrote, because "neither would give up unless they were dead and both had the mental and physical capacity to take and give relentless punishment".

Not surprisingly this week, on the brink of his first game of the season after sitting out the first three, 35-year-old Mealamu was reluctant to get too carried away with it all, although some of his friends and family might tonight. There are apparently more than 60 turning up to help him celebrate the occasion.

His immediate thoughts on talking about the big 163, which has come on top of his 124 test caps for the All Blacks, were on how lucky he is to be in this position.

"I'm playing with guys who, when I was playing my first game, were probably around 5 years old. I think that probably puts it in perspective.

"I was really blessed to play 100 and I think after that it was case of making every single match a good one.

"I get up every day and do something that I love and I don't think everyone is able to say that."

As for Sharpe, he joked he might put the boots back on to try to get the record back, before saying: "He's the man. If there was ever a guy you wouldn't mind taking the record off you, it's Kevvy."

Keven Mealamu

• Super Rugby matches: 162
• Super Rugby debut: 2000 v Brumbies in Canberra
• Tests: 124
• Test debut: 2002 v Wales in Cardiff
• Total first-class matches: 362 (Colin Meads held previous record of 361)