Let’s cut to the chase big man. When are you coming home? Carl Hayman knew the question would be on the agenda, although claiming I had travelled 12,000 miles to ask it fell on deaf, cauliflower ears, the moment he heard my English vowels. Mind you London to Newcastle is still quite a hike.
The All Blacks prop – nobody is calling him former when he is just 29 and still comfortably the best tight-head in world rugby – was polite, engaging, but firm.
“All my focus is on Newcastle and making us a really competitive force in the Guinness Premiership. That is all I am thinking about.”
Hayman, the ex-Otago Highlander, has just been appointed captain of the Newcastle Falcons in England’s North East and costing the club close to a million dollars a year, he was hardly going to say: “All I dream about up here in Newcastle is when I’m heading home, to farm the fields of Opunake, shoot some rabbits, catch a big wave and land a bigger fish.”
I was going to insist with some force that for the sake of his legions of fans back in New Zealand he gave a time and date when he would be available to pull on the All Blacks Test jersey for a 46th time. Then I remembered he is 6ft 4, nearly 19 stone and as therapy following the 2007 World Cup he docked lambs tails with a hot iron on fellow All Black Andrew Hore’s farm.
“I guess at some point later in the season I will have to give my future a bit of thought. I really do not know to be honest,” said Hayman, adding that he had not had any approaches from New Zealand, although Taranaki and the Hurricanes have probably got a stretch limo on standby at Wellington airport.
He does however keep in touch with the All Blacks coaching staff and Wayne Smith was over to stay earlier in the year. Surely Smith got down on bended knee and begged Hayman to return?
“We did not talk a whole heap of rugby,” smiled Hayman, whose Newcastle contract expires next May. It was time to give that line of questioning a rest.
He did not expect the drugs question. The Premiership has been rocked by a series of drugs scandals at Bath. This has led to five senior players at the famous English club, including former Crusaders wing Joe Maddock, forming a leadership group to ensure younger team mates do not stray.
Would Hayman, as the Newcastle captain, lead a similar group at Kingston Park?
“I think the players are big enough and old enough to make sensible decisions about their social habits and the consequences. I am not going to be preaching to them.”
This is his first professional experience of captaincy, but that does not worry Newcastle’s director of rugby Steve Bates.
“Carl is not captain because he is going to take loads of wonderful kicking options. He is captain because he is a fantastic leader in his approach and professionalism. And everyone knows he is one of the best, if not the best, player in his position on the planet,” said Bates.
Hayman is a man of few words, but all of them worth listening to and with a dry sense of humour. He takes his captaincy lead from his Otago hero Kelvin Middleton.
“He was straight to the point, no nonsense in attitude and with no hidden agenda. Some of those qualities have been lost,” said Hayman.
So New Zealand have the best tight-head on the planet – only he is not playing for them and they are hurting badly. But do not expect Hayman to join in the chorus of criticism of the All Blacks.
“I feel sorry for the guys and the management. I know how much work they are putting in and I know how hard it is with the weight of expectation in New Zealand and how difficult it is when things are not going well. It is a tough place to be at the moment.”
While he knew his tenure at Newcastle would cast him in the international wilderness, he is adamant that, far from simply cashing in, the move has improved him as a player.
“The Premiership is a big contrast from Super 14 and is great for experience and learning new things. There is more than one way to skin a cat on a rugby field and it is great to try the game on both sides of the world.”
Hayman is hardly homesick, with Jimmy Gopperth from the Auckland Blues the latest Kiwi recruit at Newcastle, joining Brent Wilson and Mark Sorenson, as well as former Hurricane Tane Tu’ipulotu from Tonga and Samoan loose forward Filipo Levi, who won the U21 World Cup with New Zealand alongside Jerry Collins and Rodney So’oialo.
“I might need a bigger barbecue to feed them all on Sundays,” said Hayman, settled in Northumberland with wife Natalie, who has been reporting for national television station ITV.
He has managed some shooting locally – a huge passion of his as a mad keen countryman – and is most effusive when talking guns and game, but he has yet to land a prized grouse shooting invitation.
He finally reveals his long-term goal, but it is when his rugby career is over. A farm in his Taranaki homeland somewhere and definitely bigger than the 20 acres he currently has down south in Dunedin.
Hayman loves deer stalking. But at the moment he must feel like the hunted not the hunter, with millions of New Zealand eyes trained on him, boring the message: “come home Carl. Your country needs you.” Well I’m not asking him again.
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