In another world, Jerome Kaino could have run out in Chicago on Friday in a USA shirt to face the New Zealand Maori. As it is, he is now 75 times an All Black, twice a World Cup winner and the flanker who was born 33 years ago in American Samoa is set to face Ireland on Saturday instead.
“I’m very proud of my heritage,” he says, “and yeah, I do feel American, in a way. I still have an American passport and I like it when I see rugby growing inAmerica.”
He and nine other All Blacks are in Chicago’s Smith Park as 200 locals run and pass around a ball, some not much older than Kaino was when he moved to Auckland aged four.
“The dominant sports [HERE]are baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer. But then you get a turnout like this at a rugby clinic and it’s awesome. I take my hat off to the local clubs and the union but also to [THE SPONSOR]AIG. You do get a feel that rugby is gaining momentum over here and it’s great to see.”
Much of the All Blacks’ visit to Chicago is an attempt to quicken that momentum. Kaino seems happy to apply his shoulder to the wheel. The All Blacks’ first visit to the city, two years ago for a 74-6 win over the USA at the home of the Chicago Bears, was “quite an eye-opener”, he says.
“Growing up you watch a lot of American football and you hear about Soldier Field and one thing that remains in my mind was walking out at Soldier Field for the first time. It was great to see how the [USA]Eagles played. It was a good contest and I really enjoyed watching it. I marked my calendar when I learned we were going to come back to Chicago.”
Kaino has duly returned, as part of an All Blacks team shorn of Richie McCaw and Dan Carter but one that is a World Cup richer and holds the record among major countries for successive Test wins in a row. The run has reached 18 and despite injuries to key players Ireland will have a job stopping the total ticking to 19. After games against Italy, Ireland again and France, it could well be 22.
“Fatigue shouldn’t be a problem,” Kaino says, and after watching the All Blacks trot through the Rugby Championship, concluding with a record 57-15 hammering of South Africa and another win over Australia, it is hard to disagree.
“We usually do this trip at the end of the year, and if anything we’ve come over a little bit earlier than we usually do when we go to London or the rest of the UK - we’ve got time to train and the team has a lot of learning to do. I have to accept the challenge for my position as well.”
Kaino is part of the All Blacks' leadership group but challenges come regardless. If he does fill in at lock with Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick injured - a possibility with which he professed himself entirely happy, contrary to the received wisdom of every shove-weary lock who ever yearned for the freedom of the back row - it may be that whoever wears No6 in his place, perhaps Steven Luatua, plays a blinder and causes him a problem.
Typically, Kaino is pleasantly equable about that. Though what really matters, he says, is “putting on that black jersey”, whether the number on it is four or five, the hallowed six or 16 to 23.
Kaino first put on the shirt in 2004, as a fresh-minted under-21 world player of the year and for a much-admired debut against the Barbarians at Twickenham. Growing pains followed on and off the field - it took two years to get a first cap, against Ireland, and there was some growing up in public to be done after a drink-driving charge.
But before the 2011 World Cup which New Zealand won at home, casting a particularly unwelcome monkey off their backs,, he had established himself in an all-time great back row with McCaw and Kieran Read, the No8 who has taken over from McCaw as captain of the best XV in the world.
The three of them were present again for the 2015 World Cup win at Twickenham. But now McCaw is gone and Kaino is 33, though says he wants to play for two more years. “Hopefully the form and the enjoyment continues,” he says.
“I’m taking it year by year, but I’ve really targeted the Lions tour next year. That’s where my goals are at the moment. If I’m enjoying rugby beyond that then I’ll set some goals further.”
The British and Irish Lions, likely containing some of Kaino’s opponents on Saturday, will play a brutal 10-game schedule in June and July 2017. A provincial selection, all five Super Rugby teams, the Maori and three Tests against the most successful All Blacks of all. The Lions have won one series in New Zealand and that was in 1971. Nonetheless, Kaino expects a challenge.
“You couldn’t help but see what the Lions could be just from seeing the four nations playing this summer,” he says. “Ireland played in South Africa and won a game, ran them close, we played a good Wales team” - and beat the Lions coach Warren Gatland’s men three times, and with increasing ease - “and England played really well and won 3-0 against Australia.
“This autumn is going to be no different. It’s a contest that we’ll start to have on Saturday and certainly in the other game against Ireland, to get something of a feel for how strong some of these guys might be in the Lionsteam.”
Kaino is too experienced, however, to say who in this Ireland team he expects to reach the Lions squad. Instead he reflects on his links to America. Family members have said that if he had not left American Samoa he might have followed many from the islands and joined the US army. He chuckles, and agrees that could have happened.
As well as soldiers, though, American Samoa is a talent factory for gridiron,and is sometimes known in the US as “football island”. “I couldn’t imagine playing [AMERICAN]football,” says Kaino. And anyway, maybe he’d have played rugby regardless.
"I have childhood friends who have put on the Eagles jersey. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Eagles playing well [against the Maori] and those Samoan boys they have" - the half-back Shalom Suniula from American Samoa, the highly regarded prop Titi Lamositele, the Olympic back Folau Niua and others of Samoan heritage - "playing well too.
“When you come here to Chicago and you see the game of rugby growing, yeah, you feel a link of sorts. I feel a bit American.”
With return visits from the Maori and the All Blacks, and as a pro league finds its feet, so does rugby.
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