'I know what it's like': How Richie McCaw's 'selfless' leadership rubbed off on a debutant

Having logged the most Test caps as captain in rugby history, one might expect Richie McCaw’s leadership skills to be fairly impressive, but rarely do we hear any specific example of his greatness in action.

James Parsons’ All Blacks debut was against Scotland in 2014 and came under the reign of Richie, the hooker recalled an interaction during the match that left a lasting impression on him.

The story came about on RugbyPass‘ The Aotearoa Rugby Pod as Parsons and commentary great Grant Nisbet discussed their favourite All Blacks of all time.

“I got presented my jersey by Richie,” Parsons said. “My first jersey so I’m fairly fond of him and the way I hold him in high regard, for the era I came through.

“I stuffed up a lineout on debut and he was the jumper, and he came up to me at the next scrum and he was like ‘mate, I was a bit slow across the ground’ and so all of a sudden, my debut, I’m like ‘beauty! that’s not my fault, skip’s got me!’ and packed down for the scrum.

“And after the game he goes ‘mate, I know what it’s like’ – this is the level of leadership and thought he had – he’s like ‘I wanted to take the pressure off you but it was overthrown so let’s just have a look at that during the week and rectify it’.

“I just thought that’s amazing, in a pressure situation, Test match, he has the ability to know that I needed that pressure relieved to get the best out of me for the rest of the game. It’s just things like that you’ve got to admire, he is quite a selfless player.”

McCaw’s career saw him claim two World Cup titles, seven Tri-Nations/Rugby Championship titles and 10 Bledisloe Cup series. For the Crusaders, he won four Super Rugby titles, three of which he was captain for.

Grant Nisbet delivered the name of the player who he believes to be the best he has witnessed in the 300 Test matches he’s commentated.

“I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the great All Blacks, If I’m asked a name like greatest ever All Black who I saw, it’s always Christian Cullen. He was an absolute freak. An absolute freak.”