It’s 4am on a Saturday and a teenage Sam Cane crunches through the frosted paddocks of his family farm in Reporoa, a tiny rural community in Waikato, New Zealand. Saturdays mean high school game day across the country, and every family has their own morning ritual. For some it’s as simple as marmite on toast; for the Canes there are eight lots of hungry animals to feed before the referee’s whistle blows to kick off the morning match.
Helping out on the farm was a matter of necessity for the kids in the Cane household. On Saturday mornings, with barely enough players to make up the Reporoa College 1st XV rugby team, it was the difference between Sam getting to the game on time or not.
“I know that every member in our rugby team was hugely important because we struggled to field a team each week. In a small region, you can’t let people down,” says the now 28-year-old Cane, who was last month handed New Zealand sport’s biggest job, the All Blacks captaincy.
Dressed head to toe in Chiefs regalia in a short window between training sessions, Cane is friendly and conversational, even when the conversation bleeds into his precious refuelling time – made more essential as players eye their first game back this weekend since mid-March.
Like former All Blacks captain Richie McCaw, who learned his craft on the pastoral planes of the Mackenzie Country, the freshly appointed Cane’s rural background has become a fundamental part of his present day.
He is quick to credit his farming upbringing for fostering the work ethic and readiness to “walk the talk” that he has brought from his days as a prodigious 20-year-old talent pulling on the black jersey in in 2012, to one the most coveted positions in New Zealand leadership.
To be the captain of the All Blacks is to be the face of the nation’s most popular sport, a team that has enjoyed a decades long run as the world’s most formidable rugby team.
“There’s pressure on any All Black because it’s such an important game in the eyes of New Zealanders, but there’s additional pressure on the captain to lead the team to victory,” says Matthew Cooper, a former All Black player who now coaches in Japan.
“That’s the expectation of any All Black: to win. A good performance, unless you win, is really not acceptable in the eye of many, so that’s an added pressure on the captain.”
With eight years, 68 Tests and two World Cups under his belt, Cane knows all of this. So does it make him scared at all? “Nah, not really to be honest. I’m excited to get in and play some rugby,” he says.
Despite often having to compete for his position throughout his All Black career – most notably when he started on the bench during last year’s loss to England in the World Cup semi-final – the self-assured flanker has proven himself to be a picture of stoic reliability on the field, his stony face often adorned by the bloody smear of an open wound.
He is a consistent weapon in attack, dotting down 13 tries as an All Black, but his greatest talent has shone without the ball in his large, calloused hands – his punishing breakdown work, sage field awareness and pounding defence.
“He’s clearly the defensive leader in the All Blacks,” says rugby journalist and commentator Jamie Wall. “The really telling one was last year in the World Cup [semi-final] when he wasn’t out there and they looked really lost, the defensive shape was gone right from the start there. It’s what ultimately lost them the game.”
Cane’s name was always in the ring for the top job, having already captained the team on three separate occasions, but many pundits had their money on veteran lock Sam Whitelock to take the honours.
While the decision was not one easily made, newly appointed head coach Ian Foster decided Cane’s more consultative style of leadership was best suited to usher in the next phase of All Blacks rugby.
“He’s not afraid to look at issues and debate them and challenge them and to try to win them if he thinks he’s right, but also to change his mind if he feels he’s wrong,” says Foster.
Foster also lauds him for his considerable “affinity with a wide range of people in the team”, which sees him connecting with rookies, seasoned veterans and coaching staff alike. It is something his Mum, Kathy Cane, noticed from when he was a young boy.
“He learned from a young age to be interested in other people, not just kids his own age,” she says. “His old school bus driver, Mrs G, still keeps in touch with him and he will take the time to contact her. She drove his school bus all through school. That’s what Reporoa is like, we’re a community of people and nobody is any better than anybody else.”
Cane’s ascension to captaincy is an unlikely turn of events for a player who, just two years earlier, was lying under the lights in South Africa, unsure if he’d ever be able to play rugby again. An awkward collision with a Springboks player had fractured his neck.
“We’ve had it drilled into us that things can change at any moment or be taken away from us at any moment,” Cane says. “It wasn’t until I was lying in bed with the injury that it really hit home. But to know that I was going to be able to make a full recovery and walk around and live a normal life, getting back playing rugby is just a massive bonus.”
The potentially career-ending injury stirred a recalibration for Cane, giving him space to balance the things that mattered in his life, like his longtime partner Harriet who he married earlier this year.
They spent the lockdown period together in their newly-built home on the outskirts of Hamilton. Asked about his impressions of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership style during the Covid-19 crisis, the usually fast responding flanker becomes more guarded, recruiting his training in the All Blacks’ tightly managed PR machine.
He is circumspect about whether New Zealand’s high level of strictness was absolutely necessary to achieve the outcome today, but has been impressed by the primer minister’s willingness to both listen and take charge – a leadership style with some echoes of his own.
“What I certainly admired is [Ardern’s] ability to make bold calls and stick with them and her transparency to come out and face those things. I think when you compare us to the rest of the world I think we’re pretty fortunate to be in the place we are right now,” says Cane.
The fortunes will play out in Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium this weekend, when the Chiefs face the Highlanders in the first professional rugby game in the world to take place since lockdown without crowd restrictions.
In a blow for Cane, a back problem has ruled him out but the injury is minor and should not keep him on the sidelines for long. When he will take his bow as the new captain of the All Blacks, given international rugby’s current hiatus, is rather more uncertain.
“It’s like getting a new job and not knowing when you start,” he says. “[Being a captain] won’t sink in until we arrive at camp.”