Description
More than 30 years after stepping off the international rugby stage, Colin Meads is still regarded as the embodiment of the New Zealand game. He is unquestionably the All Black for the ages.
When Meads speaks, New Zealand rugby listens. His first book, Colin Meads All Black, was released in 1974 and was a publishing phenomenon. It sold in enormous numbers and remains the benchmark by which all sports biographies in New Zealand are measured.
Now, renowned writer Brian Turner has combined with the legendary ‘Pinetree’ to produce a second book, Meads. The timing is exquisite. While the All Blacks have struggled painfully in the professional age to assert themselves once more as the game’s pre-eminent power, the fans have been forced to look back and seek solace in the deeds of their former heroes.
In this book, Turner revisits that golden age of All Blacks rugby when Meads strode the oval globe like a colossus — the days when a fearsome, but fair, reputation was earned and a legend was built.
Meads considers his life after he retired from playing and took up coaching and administrating. The highs and lows are examined in equal measure. Meads talks, too, of the modern era; of the fads and fancies of the professional game and of what lessons could, and should, be taken on board from his days in the black jersey.
As well, Meads deals at close quarters with his life away from rugby as a husband, father and farmer.
Like the man himself, Meads is honest and disarmingly frank. The anecdotes are delicious. The prose is sometimes earthy, but always profound, and the famous ‘Meads Speak’ is almost audible.
Meads is Meads – the life of a legend, the player of a century.
Hardcover. 246 pages.
In very good to excellent preloved condition, with the exception of some minor wear to the dustcover.