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Contents Acknowledgements 8 Foreword by John Mitchell 10 1. Sowing Seeds Our farm in Zimbabwe and early rugby moulding 13 2. No Longer Welcome Time to flee our ‘homeland’ 30 3. Making Peace Reflections by the sea 43 4. A Fresh Start New life in Brisbane before a calling to the west 51 5. Laying Foundations My early years in Perth amid African callings 72 6. Def ning Moments My Test debut and a new worldview 86 7. Battling Demons Personal challenges and the EightyTwenty focus 96 8. An Untimely Injury My Rugby World Cup dream is almost shattered 111 Openside_ Internals FINAL.indd 6 28/10/11 1:01:37 PM 9. Rising Again Returning from injury and charity challenges 124 10. Creating Heroes Back to Super Rugby and the birth of Heroes 137 11. Wake-up Calls Samoa shock and an All Black lesson in Auckland 151 12. Changing Tide Victory in Durban and Tri-Nations triumph in Brisbane 166 13. Game On A memorable Maori welcoming before victory over Italy 179 14. Injury Frustrations Shock loss to Ireland before the USA fronted up 193 15. A Welcome Relief My return against Russia and victory over the Springboks 204 16. A Temporary Ending Semi-final loss will make us better for next time 220 Re lections 239 Openside_ Internals FINAL.indd 7 28/10/11 1:01:38 PM 1. Sowing Seeds Our farm in Zimbabwe and early rugby moulding y first memory of the Rugby World Cup is Pieter Hendriks pumping his fist as he scored against Australia in the opening Mmatch of the 1995 tournament in South Africa. I have great memories of watching the 1995 final between the Springboks and All Blacks on TV at my grandfather’s farm in the Lowveld in Zimbabwe— the plane flying over the stadium, Nelson Mandela being at the game, and the Springboks in the final. ‘... van der Westhuizen to Stransky, Stransky for the drop goal’— straight through the posts. I can still remember my dad, Andy, throwing his empty coffee mug in the air in joy. What a day—that’s Rugby World Cup! I started playing rugby in Grade 3 at Midlands Christian School in Gweru, a city near the centre of Zimbabwe, in Midlands Province. I had been throwing a ball around for as long as I can remember though and Mum tells me I used to sleep with my rugby ball as a kid. There’s a photo of me somewhere at about two months old trying to reach for a ball that was just out of my grasp—it was obviously a pretty strong impulse. Halfway through my first day of training with the Grade 3s, I was sent to train with the Grade 5s and I played in the Grade 5 Colts team for the rest of the year. I loved it. If we ever went anywhere—to a friend’s house for dinner, 13 Openside_ Internals FINAL.indd 13 28/10/11 1:01:38 PM David Pocock my grandfather’s farm for the weekend or away on holiday—the rugby ball would come with us. My two brothers and I would kick the grip off it and we’d play with the bald bladder-looking ball until the inevitable day when it was kicked too far or mis-kicked into a thorn tree. People often ask me if I played rugby in Zimbabwe. Rugby is played in most schools there and it has always been very competitive and of a pretty decent standard. Zimbabwe played in the 1987 and 1991 Rugby World Cups but has failed to qualify since then. Top players have often moved south of the border to play rugby in South Africa or further afield. Notable Zimbabwean players include Adrian Garvey, Gary Teichman, Tendai ‘the Beast’ Mtawararira and arguably two of the fastest men in rugby—Tonderai Chavhanga and Takudzwa ‘Zee’ Ngwenya. Tonderai got six tries on debut for the Springboks, and Takudzwa scored that memorable ‘try of the tournament’ for the USA, when he outpaced Bryan Habana against the Springboks at the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France. We were lucky enough to have a satellite dish out on our farm and could get South African TV, including Supersport, which showed every game for the Currie Cup, South Africa’s regional competition. And I would try and watch every game. I used to spend hours and hours watching rugby. Whether it was Griquas v Eastern Province or a big clash like Western Province against Natal Sharks, I’d try and pick up little things that certain players did or moves that came off. I’d write them down and then try and use them for the school team. I didn’t miss too many Springbok games either—often we would go to a friend’s place where we’d have a big braai (barbeque) and watch the game in the evening. I will admit, though, that when there were a lot of people there I hardly ever watched the game on TV—the opportunity to play rugby out on the grass with my mates was far more appealing. These games inevitably started as touch rugby but soon morphed into full-on contact, complete with rucks and mauls, and grass burns to 14 Openside_ Internals FINAL.indd 14 28/10/11 1:01:38 PM Sowing Seeds remember the game by. It was always a case of laying claim to being your favourite player, and then you got to play as him for the game. I usually got in early, telling everyone that I was Bob Skinstad. I didn’t grow up thinking, ‘Wow, my family is a rugby family so I’ll be good at it’. But my dad and my grandfather say that every generation had excelled. My pop (Mum’s dad) was a keen rugby player and had a lot of talent, but chose to pursue his studies, becoming an Air Force pilot and then eventually building up a very successful citrus farm in Zimbabwe. The land was classified as ‘unfit for human habitation’ but he bulldozed it from bare thorn bushes and scrub anyway. I love listening to his stories of starting the farm, with so many unknowns, he was really just beginning with a dream and seeing where it would lead, building it slowly over time with a lot of hard work. My uncle now runs it, which has been a very tough job given the political and economic situation that Zimbabwe has been in for the last ten years. My dad, Andy, was a very good rugby player in his day too, but he also chose to study and then move back to the family farm. Dad says that things were very different back then because rugby never offered you the option of making a living and it took second place once he, and I imagine many like him, left school. Even though he couldn’t keep playing, Dad sure passed on that love of rugby to his sons. I’m the oldest of three boys. Mike’s about eighteen months younger than me and Steve is four years younger. They are such good brothers: always keen for an adventure, not afraid of a bit of competition and they both love the outdoors. I sometimes feel sorry for my mother, Jane, who had to live in a house with three boys and my father. But Dad always says, with a chuckle, ‘Your mum’s fine, Dave, she married well.’ My brothers and I were forever playing hockey or rugby in the backyard. Or we’d play WWF (after the World Wrestling Federation, not the World Wildlife Fund), a sort of wrestling free-for-all where we 15 Openside_ Internals FINAL.indd 15 28/10/11 1:01:38 PM David Pocock would practise moves that we had seen on TV, but this only happened when Mum would go into town without us. When Mum came home, we’d hastily put the cushions back on the couches. She’d ask us, ‘Boys, have you been wrestling?’ at which point we’d lie and say that we hadn’t. We were terrible liars and I’m sure we didn’t fool her. We were under strict instruction not to watch wrestling on TV. It was ‘too violent’ and got us ‘too wound up’. I’m certain Mum knew full well that we wrestled (she had caught us more than a few times and it’s hard to cover things up when it ends in tears or a blood nose) but she turned a blind eye. Mike’s not doing so much wrestling anymore—he has almost finished university. He’s been studying construction management and got a job in the field after doing some prac work for a company. He’s really the handiest, most helpful guy you’d ever meet. At his 21st birthday party, the guys who made speeches all spoke about Mike being there for them during the hard times in their lives—that’s Mike through and through. Whenever I have a project at home that needs doing I’ll send him photos and a flurry of questions about how best to make it happen and he always has the answers. Back on the farm in Zimbabwe I would spend hours devising traps to capture wild birds or monkeys or the genets that lived in our roof (I did release them, but it was a lot of fun). Mike would inevitably help with the building of the trap from a sketch meticulously drawn on graph paper to a trap ready to carry down the hill from our house to where we wanted to set it up.