A Kiwi legend in King Arthur's Court

Interview with Sean Fitzpatrick Keith Duggan listens to New Zealand legend Sean Fitzpatrick trace his life from overweight kid to All-Black star to charity ambassador.

On Remembrance Day in London, everybody wears red poppies. The busker belting out old Kinks classics deep in the underground has pinned one to his guitar strap. A blue-knuckled newspaper vendor has tucked one into the buttonhole of his coat as he sells issues of the Evening Standard with a front page still from the Somme in 1918. And on Jermyn Street, behind Piccadilly, an elderly man has placed his flower alongside some medals on his lapel as he escorted his wife along the splendid window displays of the shirtmakers and cigar shops and tailors.

They looked immaculate, wrapped in winter furs and gloves, poised and deliberate. They were like a museum piece, a throwback to the period of Wildean excess, at home on this hushed and expensive street while all around them, London roared on.

Jermyn Street is not somewhere that you would readily associate with sports people, less still a former marauding All-Black rugby legend. But this was where Sean Fitzpatrick had arranged to meet, at Dunhill, a gentleman's drapers on the corner of Jermyn Street. It seemed a strange choice for a man who in sporting lore will always be at the epicentre of those forbidding All-Black scrums and mauls where daylight did not trespass.

The name Sean Fitzpatrick conjures up a vivid memory of an authoritative, sombre figure, the leader and enforcer of the All-Black philosophy across the world's rugby fields through the late 1980s and '90s. Although he retired in 1997, long enough for the game to have changed significantly, you always imagined him out there still, fighting for territory, for possession, for the All-Black cause. Because becoming a former sports star is one trauma but becoming a former All-Black must be like having a small part of you die.

So you have vague expectations of a man half lost in past battles, like so many on Remembrance Day. Instead, on a crisp November 11th in the city, here is this sunny, smiling figure, waving at you as he speaks into a mobile phone, standing beside one of the old red telephone booths left in place for ornamental reasons. Sean Fitzpatrick: a Kiwi living in King Arthur's Court.

"I guess the game has been good to me, but you know, people forget you very quickly," he says at one point. We were taken to talk in the Bespoke Room in Dunhill, a common room with leather suites and cigar boxes open its customers delectation and a range of spirits or coffees. A young South African man, with whom Fitzpatrick talks rugby, is host.

"I came to the realisation early on in my career that just because you are an All-Black doesn't make you anything special. You treat people the way they should be treated. And when you are an All-Black, everyone wants to talk to you. But that only lasts so long and you have to be sure that you conducted yourself properly and respected people along the way."

This remark comes in the context of Fitzpatrick's life after rugby. One of those who made the transition from the amateur days, when New Zealand stormed the seas like pirates, he is a curious mix of traditionalist and new marketeer.

As the lone holder of 92 New Zealand caps, 51 of which were as captain, Fitzpatrick ranks as one of the all-time rugby gods. A part of him pines after the camaraderie and austere school of honour that informed the old way of All-Black life and yet he is grateful for the professional opportunities rugby has afforded him. Bright and articulate, he moved to London in January as his career as a television analyst intensified.

He is also a member of the Laureus World Sports Academy, a glitzy charity organisation with opulent benefactors like Richemont and Daimler-Chrysler. Laureus uses its financial clout and celebrated sports stars - Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, Pele and Martina Navratilova are in its stable - to raise money for a diverse range of projects.

This year, it meant Fitzpatrick travelled to Sierra Leone with the undisputed king of skateboarding, Tony Hawke. The pair were there to front the "Right To Play" project, which tries to bring former child combatants (the pc name for kids that were taught to kill in the name of war) back into the arena of childhood through games.

"None of these kids had ever heard of Tony or me," Fitzpatrick laughs. "And we were both just speechless by what we saw, the place was just ravaged like nothing we had ever imagined. But Tony had the skateboard there and he was doing all these tricks and we threw a rugby ball around and just helped get the thing up and running."

Laureus is the reason Fitzpatrick is at Dunhill. Richemont owns the tailors and he will be doing some work for them over the coming seasons. He is also a sought-after motivational speaker and has always harboured a natural interest in the symbiotic relationship between big-time sport and multi-national business. Many guys have played and feted as great All-Black rugby players only to disappear into the blue hills of New Zealand to drink beer and watch TV when it was all over.

Fitzpatrick, though, always looked likely to become an ambassador for his sport and with the temples beginning to grey, he looks like a debonair 41-year-old business graduate instead of a veteran of the most intense front row engagements of the modern game. Sean Fitzpatrick has made the transition from dressing-room to boardroom and, as was always the way, he has made it look easy.

Of course, appearances are deceptive. The way Fitzpatrick tells his story to this point, nothing was ever taken for granted. He tells this great story about his early days at Auckland, when he had a miserable lineout throw for an aspiring hooker.

Andy Haden, subsequently a friend, was the number one hooker and he left Fitzpatrick in such a state it reached the point where he was literally terrified at the thought of training. Which made throwing the ball smoothly rather difficult. So his throwing stunk and one evening, Haden told him, quite simply, to 'faaak off home'.

"And he wasn't even the coach! But he meant it. And I had no choice. I had to go. I can still remember how I felt walking away with all the others watching. So a week later I was back playing for the university and the only good thing about that was that when you threw it, the whole line jumped for the ball so you had a better chance of getting it to your fellas."

It was during one of these university games that he came up against Kevin Boyle, "a real gnarly old hooker who played for Auckland for years but really good, you know, an old-style classic hooker. Scary as hell."

In a pub after the game, Andy Drake advised Fitzpatrick to persuade Boyle to teach him how to throw. Scrubbed and nervous, Fitzpatrick approached the table where this Boyle character was supping and carousing like an old sea dog. He cleared his throat and made a polite and hopeful speech, which concluded in a request for some coaching. Boyle did not even turn his head.

"Faaaaak Affff." Fitzpatrick scurried back to the delighted Drake, who told him to try again. Boyle shot the youngster an exacting look and told him to bring his clobber to the Auckland training ground at five o'clock on Monday evening. "And bring yer own facking ball."

Once a week for six months, the veteran coached Fitzpatrick. By the end, Haden had heard about the extra sessions and came along to see for himself. Fitzpatrick was returned to the Auckland team. Three short years later, he was an All-Black. And the rest is history.

In a way, Fitzpatrick's All-Black career had a predestined look to it. His grandfather, Jimmy Fitzpatrick left Tipperary to take employment digging a gorge from Opotiki to Gisborne. He married a New Zealand lady who died when Sean's father Brian was just five. So Brian moved to live with his aunt, played rugby and went on to play with the All-Blacks from 1951 to 1954.

That was before his boys were born and when they grew up, in a cheerful, ordinary suburb, they learned about this side of their father's past when they were rummaging in the garage and found an All-Blacks jersey and a Springboks jersey in a box. They wore them playing in the back garden.

"Dad was terrific, he always told us he didn't care what sport we played. He was easy going, he liked a drop. And he was proud when I got to play for the All-Blacks, but we never made too big a thing of it. There was never any pressure. I mean, when I was a kid, I had it tough enough. I was the original fat kid, head flushed down the toilet and all that."

It is to this period in his adolescence that Fitzpatrick often refers to when he addresses business conventions of dinner gatherings. If he has a point to make about his career, it is that competitive instinct and hard work made things happen for him. As a child, he had ball player's ability, but he struggled desperately with his weight. At the age of 11, he suffered the humiliation of being "weeded out by this weight division called the Flying Squad" at an elite rugby camp for boys under 12. The maximum weight was eight stone: Fitzpatrick was then 10 and a half.

He was stoical or tough enough to recover from these slights, but even then was absorbing the importance of treating other people with a fundamental decency, deciding he never wanted to disparage others the way he had been. The same was true of his nascent throwing days with Haden. He understands that hardness was just the culture then, but it was not his practice as captain.

Fitzpatrick went through a brutal learning curve where the emphasis was on breaking the mind as much as the body. He recalls one of his first international caps when he came up against Tommy Lawton of Australia, a guy who looked like he was shaving at his First Communion.

"He wasn't much older than me, but had this big bristly face and his hairline was receding and he smelled like he drank a quart of XO before he came out on the field. At the first scrum he started rubbing the stubble against my head and of course I was getting all red and irritated. And we are still going at it hammer and tongs and he just booms at me, "YE SHOULD BE AT HOME WITH YOUR MOTHER! YER ONLY A BABY. And I was thinking: 'God, I wish I was at home with my mother'."

But it was as if events conspired to thrust Fitzpatrick into the role of leadership at which he excelled without ever coveting. He got his chance in 1986 as a member of the "Baby Blacks"; a group of young players called in to replace the suspended Cavalier players who had toured South Africa that summer.

In 1987, virtually on the eve of the World Cup, captain Andy Dalton got injured and Fitzpatrick played so well in the group games that Dalton could not regain his place as the All-Blacks went on to win the inaugural tournament. From that point on an entire generation of New Zealand number twos - including Warren Gatland - watched in frustration as Fitzpatrick, the iron man, became an All-Black frontrow institution.

Driving to the offices of Saatchi and Saatchi in a pristine, mahogany-tipped Mercedes sports car, Fitzpatrick recalls the old days with fond warmth. He is grateful and proud of what was a brilliant and, until the end, blessed career without being precious about it.

He cheerfully admits others considered him a dirty player, but does not feel that was the case; what he did do was talk a lot - to opponents, to referees, to anybody just to get a psychological edge.

Once described as "the hardest bastard of the lot", he laughs at the mention of the famous story told by Irish hooker Steve Smith that terrifyingly demonstrates his singularity of purpose. Smith recalled seeing Fitzpatrick unawares in the middle of an international game and landing the most fantastic punch he had ever thrown in his life. He expected Fitzpatrick to fall, but instead the All-Black captain took out his mouth guard, spat out a couple of teeth and smiled at Smith, who promptly turned as green as his shirt.

"Smithy!" laughs Fitzpatrick. "Yeah, that was pretty much it. I think I handed the teeth to the ref and said: 'You wouldn't just pocket those for me, mate.' And Smithy was just staring at me. He cracked my front teeth in half - I had to get crowns. But look, I went to the dentist, got fixed up and had a beer with Smithy that night. You gotta take the good with the bad - I didn't mind it."

Maybe because on some other field, Fitzpatrick had been afflicted by the same impulse as the Irish man? "What, did I ever throw a punch to knock a guy's teeth out? Nah mate, don't think so. I couldn't fight my way out of a paper bag."

Fighting was a distraction. Fitzpatrick's unvarying goal was to win. Ask him the most memorable game of his life and he distinguishes, without hesitation, the 1993 Test against the Lions when his dropped ball led directly to Ieuen Evans' 60-metre dash for a try. His mistake cost them the game and he never forgot the moment.

It was during that period that Fitzpatrick met Kevin Roberts. Now the world CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, the Lancaster man was then based in New Zealand heading up the Lion Nathan brewery, who were sponsoring the All-Blacks then.

Fitzpatrick remembers 1992 as a bit of a low point: the All-Blacks were clearly the best team in the world, but they were restless and complacent. Roberts, a rugby fanatic, came in to the dressing-room after witnessing a lacklustre performance and gave a blistering critique about how the team was conducting themselves.

"He didn't hold back, telling us we didn't know our business, that we went out to clubs and drank the opposition beer, that we didn't respect our sponsors and that he was gonna pull the plug on us and that we could bugger off. And it was an eye opener. So we started talking about this and realised that all these functions and what not were a chance to network and I suppose market ourselves as All-Blacks."

As it happened, Roberts, based in New York, was in London for a day or two and Fitzpatrick called around to meet him. The pair stayed in close contact over the years. Roberts recently wrote a book entitled Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Branding to which Fitzpatrick contributes. In Roberts' office, they greet like old friends and launch into rugby news and make plans for later.

"Yeah, Kevin had a big influence on me," he says over a coffee in the foyer. "At the time we met, what he had to say was like a reality check. It changed the way I thought about myself as an athlete, I suppose. And working with these guys here at Saatchi has been fantastic. And I would say that I became conscious when I was working with anyone, be it Coca Cola or whoever, that I held up my end of the bargain."

Sometimes he thinks back to the reaction of his father when adidas came to sponsor the All-Blacks. Traditionally, the All-Blacks had socks with two-stripes. You could not get a pair unless you were capped. With Adidas came the three stripes, which was blasphemy in the eyes of Fitzpatrick senior. Sean knows where his father was coming from, but is of a generation that grew up with the omnipotence of the logo. Yet, he remains a hoary old traditionalist in other ways and is surprised to hear himself express the views he does on television.

"Yeah, I am, I am traditional in a lot of ways. Like, for instance, on this tour, I think (Andrew) Mehrtens and (Justin) Marshall should be here because they are the best number 10 and number nine. So they should play for New Zealand. Instead, you have guys who are probably good players but not the best All-Blacks in that position. And then you have Marshall, supposedly resting, playing for the Barbarians. That kind of cheapens the jersey, in my opinion."

Living way up in Europe gives him enough distance to talk like that. At 41, he is young enough to be excited by the way in which rugby is charging ahead and cautious enough to pay homage to what has been left behind.

Right now, England seems like a good place to be though he admits he is surprised to find himself living in London, once just another city on the All-Blacks' global schedule. His wife Bronwyn and he regard this as the great backpacking trip - the New Zealand ritual - they never got to take when they were 20. Except now, they get to live in the countryside instead of a crowded house in Earl's Court. Their girls, Grace and Eva, love the adventure. It kills Fitzpatrick, but he has to admit the Brits are, well, pretty decent.

"You gotta be here mate," he smiles. "They got the World Cup and all."

Then he grits his jaw and the eyes narrow slightly and although he is sitting in an advertising house in Charlotte Street, he could, in that instant, be in the midst of leading his men through another fierce and immortal version of the Haka in some seething rugby ground.

"For now."

Sean Fitzpatrick will be one of the principal guests at the Legends of Sport annual dinner in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin, on December 2nd.

Details at www.thp.ie