All Blacks legend: Teams talk about the Haka being an advantage, a Springbok would never say that

Legendary All Black Brad Thorn has revealed that he relished playing the Springboks the most during his illustrious career, calling it the “ultimate battle”.

The 50-year-old is regarded as one of the greatest to ever play rugby, given that he enjoyed remarkable success in both league and union.

In the 15-man code, Thorn won the Rugby World Cup with the All Blacks, Super Rugby with the Crusaders and Champions Cup with Leinster, while in league he claimed three NRL titles and represented Queensland in the prestigious State of Origin.

Despite all those achievements, Thorn stated that he particularly enjoyed the individual confrontation, highlighting the Origin games and the battles in South Africa.

‘Rising to confrontations’

The former lock told DSPN with Martin Devlin: “If I played the Bulls [for the Crusaders] in rugby, I wanted to be man of the match in that game.

“As you get battle-hardened and you come into your own, you look forward and rise to those confrontations – that’s what you look for.

“The ultimate battle in league was Origin, it’s the best of the best there, and the equivalent [in union] for me was a Test match at Loftus or Ellis Park – on the highveld going toe-to-toe with the Springboks.

“You had other teams spend time talking about the haka being an advantage; you would never hear that from the Springboks.”

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New Zealand and South Africa are both proud rugby nations who have great respect for each other, something Thorn echoed with his comments on facing the Springboks.

The physical battle

“I’ve always had this thought that when a New Zealand child is born, there’s a chip they put in his head which tells you that you want to be an All Black, and when he’s born he looks west towards South Africa,” he said.

“And when a South African child is born, he gets a chip and wants to be a Springbok, and they look east.

“When we come together it’s special. When you go to altitude, that dry throat, shorter recovery, but who cares. With the Springboks, we both know that we’re just going to get it on.

“Sometime you’ll see with UFC and in the last 10 seconds, they say: ‘let’s just go, let’s swing’, and that’s the mindset with how I used to feel with the Springboks.

“That’s why I loved testing myself against them and sending a few physical messages.”

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