All Black who was bristling with pride
PETER JACKSON
THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW
AREVERED corner of the All Black pantheon had been earmarked for Norm Hewitt ever since he took Old Trafford by storm and almost turned it into a raging tempest.
His resting place in the section reserved for those who achieved something unique had been guaranteed since that Saturday in Manchester 27 years ago and, for once, Hewitt's old sparring partner, Richard Cockerill, had nothing to do with it.
‘Stormin' Norm' remains the only All Black to have led the Haka before a rugby international at the biggest club stadium in British football. No amount of blows struck between the feuding hookers, at Old Trafford and again in a taxi half a world away in Dunedin some six months later, could mar what Hewitt treasured as the greatest moment of his rugby life. No All Black, and at the latest count there have been 1,214 of them, had done that before or since. When asked by the then captain, Zinzan Brooke, to lead the Maori war dance against England on November 22, 1997, Hewitt bristled with pride.
For one who often felt an outsider during the first half of an eventful life, acceptance had come all of a sudden in what he saw as the ultimate honour. That he would be leading the performance at Old Trafford made it feel all the more so, as if he was ‘on holy ground'.
“It was stunning, like being inside one of those amazing English cathedrals – which I suppose it was because soccer is Britain's only true religion,'' Hewitt said in his book, Gladiator, written by his close friendcum-saviour, Michael Laws.
“Soccer is more important to the average Pom than rugby is to us. That's how mad they are about the game, mad to the point that some of them should be locked up.
“You could feel that passion as you walked on to the pitch the day before and looked up at all the red plastic seats and the white lettering that spelled out ‘Manchester United'.
I knew that whatever else I ever did in rugby, nothing would match how I felt as I walked over Old Trafford. It was like I was on holy ground.''
“I just wanted to slug Cockerill,” said Hewitt, “but I knew I couldn't”
Richard Cockerill may not have thought of it in the same hallowed tones but the way Leicester's hard-nosed hooker saw it as a patriot he was most certainly on home ground. Hewitt was starting his fourth Test for New Zealand, Cockerill his second for England and, true to form, he was in no mood to be pushed around on his territory, even if he'd never been there before.
As a result, Hewitt's Haka on the halfway line rapidly escalated into an eye-ball confrontation with Cockerill. Caught in the middle, referee Peter Marshall from Australia, made a forlorn attempt to defuse a confrontation then deteriorating by the second. Perhaps Marshall sensed that he would have to send someone off before he could start the match. Cockerill ignored the referee's plea to step back.
“I just wanted to slug him,'' Hewitt said. “But I knew I couldn't. Not in front of that many people and all those on television. I knew there'd be a ruck or a maul or a little piece of action somewhere when I'd get the b*****d.''
And so it came to pass. “I did get a ‘shoeing' from Hewitt,'' Cockerill recalled. “He never said anything to me during the match. At the end we just shook hands and swapped shirts. The fireworks came the following summer out in New Zealand.''
Strangely given that he had felt the need to get Cockerill, Hewitt took a positively tolerant view in recording his verdict for posterity a few years after the event. “I didn't think he or the English players were disrespecting the Haka. People who say that miss the point of what the Haka is about. “It's a challenge, a challenge to war. And the Poms had exactly the right answer to it. You accept the challenge and throw it back. But, I'll tell you this, I was one motivated Maori boy that afternoon. And I made sure Cockerill knew it too.''
The incident prompted the world governing body, the International Rugby Board as it was then, to enforce a no-man's-land on future Hakas keeping a respectable distance between the Kiwis and their opponents.
The segregation did not apply to the re-match for the simple reason that it didn't take place at The House of Pain in Dunedin. Hewitt had been dropped and Cockerill's post-match jibes about the splintered state of his opponent's backside from sitting on too many benches did nothing to lift the All Black's mood.
Strictly unscheduled, the fight took place in a taxi taking the scrapping hookers from one public house to another. According to Cockerill “Hewitt gets in first, and as soon as I stick my head through the door to follow he leathers me. Suddenly it all kicks off, him and me going at it for all we're worth. My eye swells up and is a right mess. He's had a good cheap shot at me but it's far from over. When we reach our destination, I'm first out of the taxi and I'm waiting for him this time. When he gets out I smack him one and we end up brawling again, right down the street.''
Hewitt wound up in heap of big trouble, not for the fight but for defying management orders not to go out on the town. All too soon his fears became a reality, that he would never play for the AB's again.
His drinking, fuelled by a craving ‘to deaden my feelings', spiralled out of control. According to Laws, a politician, author and radio host, the schoolboy Hewitt ‘wanted to be a hit-man for the Mongrel Mob' (street gangs involved in organized crime).
“Norm reinvented himself after rugby. He had been to the depths of hell and then became the person he really was by showing his love for others, especially those in trouble. There are hundreds of people all over New Zealand whose lives have been changed for the better by Norm Hewitt. In many ways he represented the best of New Zealand.''
Norm Hewitt died last Monday from motor neurone disease, aged 55. He leaves a wife, Arlene, daughters Alexandra and Elizabeth. Richard Cockerill was among the first to send “heartfelt condolences”.
