The player from nowhere

By CHRIS RATTUE

It would be hard to find a New Zealand Super 12 player who popped out of nowhere quite the way Luke Andrews did.

"Not a lot of sports people come out of Riverton," says 27-year-old Andrews, with the hint of rolling Rs that mark his Southland heritage.

"In fact, I can't think of anyone."

Not surprising, given that Riverton - a town north-west of Invercargill and one of this country's oldest European settlements - has a population of just 1900.

Riverton might be remote, but not as much as Andrews' chances were of grabbing lineout ball and shoving his lean 103kg frame into scrums in the Super 12.

He's done it with good effect this year, the key lock in a Hurricanes tight five given the sort of opening reviews that would close a Broadway play in a day.

Five games in, and Colin Cooper's Hurricanes are dancing on centre stage. Andrews and his maligned mates are developing as more than just a supporting cast in a team aiming for a fourth straight win, against the Chiefs tomorrow night.

Yet until the sixth form, Andrews was a shorty who played halfback and even then it wasn't for the first XV at Aparima College. Hunting and fishing were his go.

His family, who didn't reach great heights, looked on in amazement as a growth spurt took him close to 2m..

"A bit of a mystery that one," says Andrews, rolling another r.

And when others his age had discovered ambitions of rugby fame and were doing their best to bother the selectors, Andrews went fishing.

From the age of 17 to 20, he was a breath-hold commercial diver around Stewart Island, Fiordland and the Marlborough Sounds, scouring for kina and paua.

"It was a pretty tough life but a good life.

"Where I'm from everybody becomes a fisherman, a cow cocky or a forestry worker pretty much.

"A couple of times I was caught beneath bull kelp or in a cave ... wedged between rocks 30 feet under.

"You build up a fair bit of lung power, enough to get out of trouble. The more time you spend there, the more you know your limits."

It was good money when the weather behaved. But Andrews decided there was more to the world than Riverton and headed to Dunedin.

He has ended up studying marine science, while developing a rugby career firstly with Otago, who then loaned him to - you guessed it - Southland, before Wellington came calling.

It is worth noting here though that even when he first arrived in Dunedin, rugby was the last thing on his mind. Andrews is the accidental rugby tourist whose comeback from obscurity was in a varsity hostel team short of players.

"I had a hell of a hangover. I went 'okay' and they said come along to the trials. I ended up playing for Varsity Golds, the worst team in the history of varsity."

But things were looking up. Varsity A picked him, as did New Zealand Universities. Murray Roulston - now the Hurricanes assistant - helped nurture Andrews' talent in the Otago Colts. He also had a brief fling with the national sevens team.

Still, you couldn't expect this particular rugby odyssey to go too smoothly.

Even though then Hurricanes coach Graham Mourie encouraged Andrews to move to Wellington, he gave him only four games as a replacement last year.

Then Andrews wrecked a knee in the second round of the NPC, against Southland. Three weeks later he dislocated an elbow at training.

"I played about 60 minutes in the Super 12 last year. It was hard to feel part of the team, no matter how hard the guys tried to make you feel part of it," said Andrews, who also plays blindside flanker.

"They would go away for a week then come back with moves you weren't aware of. That's all been levelled out this year. We are a family - team comes first.

"A lot of the flash tries to the backs have stemmed from the front row, the tight five. So we deserve a pat on the back.

"I'm injury free, the team's winning, and it doesn't get much better than that."