The Chosen One

For The Last Few Years, The All Blacks Have Been Hoping To Discover The Natural Successor To Jerome Kaino At Blindside. They Think They May Have Found Their Man.

- Gregor Paul

There hasn’t been a formal audition process as such, but the All Blacks’ selectors have been looking, since 2012, for an understudy to Jerome Kaino.

It wasn’t a project they viewed as particularly urgent. Time, if not circumstance, was on their side when they began casting their net.

Kaino became the All Blacks’ first choice blindside in 2008. That was the year that he finally began to settle into some kind of consistency and fulfill potential that was ear-marked as early as 2004, when the All Blacks had taken him to Europe as an apprentice before he had even played Super Rugby.

He was in his early-to-mid 20s when he locked in the All Blacks jersey and the coaches could see, or at least they hoped, that they had a No 6 they wanted for the best part of the next decade.

That’s why when Kaino announced in early 2012 that he was going to play in Japan for two years, the All Blacks didn’t feel they needed to scurry around, panicking wildly about their options at No 6.

They saw Kaino’s venture more as a career break – a chance for him to rehabilitate a body that had been hammered and especially his shoulders, which had been through surgical trauma. They didn’t know he’d be back, but they were always confident he would be.

In the interim there were a number of alternate options to take a look at. There was Adam Thomson, the experienced Highlander who had come into the All Blacks at the same time as Kaino.

There was the emerging Victor Vito, a relative youngster who’d had a taste of the big time without quite showing he was ready for it, but an intriguing prospect nonetheless.

More on the fringes, but still in the frame, was Liam Messam. A contemporary and good friend of Kaino’s, but another who’d never quite progressed quite the way the coaches had wanted.