This Tribute from the Ponsonby club website -
The Ponsonby District Rugby Club sadly acknowledges the passing of one of the great All Blacks, Andy Haden, who died aged 69 on 29 July 2020 at Auckland. Haden had been in failing health for some time due to his battle with cancer.
While Andy Haden was many things to different people, he is proudly remembered by his one and only Auckland club as a great contributor over a prolonged period, and a staunch Ponsonby advocate. He was, after all, the man whose response to an inaccurate story that he was transferring to East Coast Bays was: ‘There are two types of rugby player in Auckland – those who play for Ponsonby and those who wish they did.’
Haden was one of those who did. His club career lasted 16 years, from 1971 to 1986, and in that time he was instrumental in the first Gallaher Shield win for 22 years, in 1976, and then six more in the following decade. He was the first player to win seven Gallaher Shields – the trophy was first awarded in 1922 - and the first to win seven championships since Bubs Tyler of City in the Edwardian era. George Nicholson, a contemporary of Tyler’s, won eight championships with City and Ponsonby. By the time Haden had finished, he was one of a small, elite group to have played 100 matches for his club (the figure is around 200), for his province (157) and for his country (117). In a fluky coincidence, Haden was just one week older than his great friend who achieved exactly the same treble with almost identical numbers, Sir Bryan Williams.
When Rugby News carried a story in early 1971 that Alistair Haddon, a promising young lock, was transferring from Manawatu to Auckland, a few clubs began sniffing the wind. Haddon never turned up, but Ponsonby was glad that Haden did. His arrival at the club has been recounted many times: how his car was broken into, and the spare tyre, jack and radio removed as he attended his first training run. He mentioned it at the club on his second night, and suggested the neighbourhood was perhaps a little rough for his taste and he may look elsewhere.
‘Don’t be too hasty,’ he was told. ‘See what happens.’
What happened was that he returned to his car that evening to find the missing items magically back in their usual places. Ever the pragmatist, Haden didn’t bother to lock his car again.
His on-field introduction was similar. In his first trial he found himself being obstructed at every lineout. It took a while before he realised the obstructionist was Roly Rowlatt – his locking partner! Roly’s brother, John, was in the opposition and Roly figured neither would have their chances hurt if this whipper-snapper didn’t look good. Owen Donaldson took all four locks aside before the second trial, gave each the same lecture on fighting and team play, and let them get on with it. Haden won the berth alongside Peter Whiting, who was just about to make his test debut and had not been asked to front at the trials.
In 1972 Haden won selection for the New Zealand Juniors tour of Australia, dominated the lineouts in Auckland’s successful Ranfurly Shield challenge at Whangarei, and was chosen as one of many young players for the 1972-73 All Black tour of Great Britain. While never threatening a test place, he learned a lot on that tour which stood him in good stead later. In late 1974, disillusioned by the attitude he found in Auckland officialdom, he took a sabbatical in Europe. As part of his preparation for this sojourn, he and Trecha brought their wedding forward and the couple left for what proved to be 18 months away.
By 1976, when he returned to try and win a place in the All Black team for South Africa, he was a different proposition to the slightly callow youth of 1974. Now harder, physically and mentally, he was the outstanding lock at the trials (after coming into the early match as a replacement) but wasn’t chosen for the tour. If it was a punishment for his time away, the All Blacks suffered. Whiting suffered more than anyone, and would have loved his clubmate beside him as he took on the South African big men.
Haden showed just what the All Blacks were missing with a dominant domestic season in 1976, was a shoo-in to be named Player of the Year, and was equally certain to be chosen for the tour of Argentina undertaken by a new group of players – none of the South African tourists were eligible for selection. He became one of the most influential players and, with Whiting retiring, was the obvious choice for test selection in 1977.
That marked the start of Haden’s years of dominance. To beat the All Blacks in the next eight years, one had to beat Haden first – easy to say but very hard to do. He scarcely missed a test and sometimes hardly missed a tour game. His lineout technique, developed over time to combat obstruction, was almost impossible for opponents to nullify as he started outside the line, then leapt toward the centre line and forward, thus getting a clean jump in front of his marker almost every time. If the marker presumed anything, a delayed or lobbed throw was certain ball.
He demanded a lot of his throwers, reckoning that having the best lineout forwards in the world was useless without the feeders hitting their targets, and New Zealand was seldom matched, let alone bettered, during his era. For Auckland and Ponsonby, he applied the same skills with the same dedication and contributed hugely to the success enjoyed by both teams.
While the lineout he left unaided to finish in an untidy heap on the Cardiff Arms turf will be replayed ad nauseum, it was actually an insignificant moment in the game – the referee, Roger Quittendon, never even saw his dive. If anyone thought that was some concocted excuse, All Black halfback Dave Loveridge never saw it either; his focus was on where he expected the ball to be delivered from, and he didn’t realise Haden almost landed on his right foot. The TV cameras and about a zillion Welshmen did see it and some have managed to let it go, but not many. Haden’s contribution to the 1978 Grand Slam was far greater than that one incident, but the good stuff tends to be forgotten in the aftermath of the media beat-up
Haden and Frank Oliver, his locking mate on the day and the guy who was actually pushed in that infamous lineout, reminded the Welsh of the incident two years later by rearranging the ornate cake prepared for the 1980 Centenary dinner. The cake, decorated as a rugby field and with a lineout between teams in red and black, was spotted by the pair – who gently tipped numbers two and four on the All Black side onto the grass. Nothing like that had happened on the big day, much to everyone’s relief, and the humour wasn’t missed.
In the dying stages of the 1981 test against South Africa at Eden Park, as Allan Hewson was lining up that decisive kick, Stu Wilson was standing next to Haden. ‘You don’t have to chase this one, big boy,’ Wilson said, knowing what his Wellington team-mate was capable of. Haden wanted to believe him but chased anyway, because that was the way he played. Assume nothing, never stop working.
If Haden’s dive in 1978 had no effect on the outcome of the Welsh match, his storming recovery of Hewson’s opening kickoff in fourth Lions test of 1983 basically ended the contest then and there. The Lions, 0-3 down in the series, waved the white flag after perhaps ten seconds of play, and crashed to a record 6-38 thrashing. Fittingly, Haden scored one of the six tries in what was an overpowering individual display.
For all his on-field skills, and few in the world could match him, Andy Haden probably made his greatest contribution – certainly to the All Blacks - off the paddock. Fluent in French from his time there in the mid-70s, he acted as team interpreter on two tours and smoothed over a lot of potentially disruptive situations. He became Minister of Lurks and Perks, proving a tough negotiator on behalf of the team. He believed in a fair reward for a player’s effort, something administrators certainly didn’t agree with, and did a great deal to ensure he and his team-mates got it.
Despite being portrayed as such, Haden was never a Me-first guy. On the contrary, he was the perfect shop steward, wanting a fair deal for the players to distribute equally. He never took more than his share, be it one-fifteenth or one-thirtieth, even if he was the guy earning the money. He held those who did reward senior players more generously than newcomers in contempt.
He was one of the first to storm the bastion of amateurism and make some headway. Before Haden, dissidents could simply be ignored. Haden was too big for that; as his reaction to the car break-in all those years before showed, he felt barriers needed breaking down, not erecting. If someone tried to close a door on him, he shoved a size 13 in the gap and then kicked it open again. He was, at all times, a team man and those who earned his greatest respect were similar individuals. Guy Smith and Peter Fatialofa, two Ponsonby team-mates, were among his favourite players for their total dedication to the cause and effort given at all times. Fatialofa and Robert Scanlan, among many, repaid that loyalty, chairing Haden off Eden Park following the 1983 Gallaher Shield win.
His career ended just before the first World Cup was played; it was a tournament he had been a vocal proponent of and he was delighted to see it finally coming to fruition. Professionalism, which he knew was inevitable 20 years before it happened, was also too late to directly benefit the man who once listed his occupation as ‘Itinerant Rugby Player’, and ambition as ‘Becoming rugby’s first millionaire’. Players of today, however, should spare Haden a thought or two each time they ink another contract, because he did much to make professional rugby a certainty.
In retirement he occasionally made ill-considered comments that angered people, but even if there were consequences to be faced Haden was never repentant. He’d said it, he’d deal with it, life moved on. At other times he was a very perceptive critic; some of the passages in his first book, Boots’n’All, are as relevant now as when they were written in the mid-1980s. As he once said when Ponsonby was in disagreement with the Auckland Union – not that rare an occurrence – ‘A salmon that doesn’t swim upstream never spawns.’ Haden was happy to swim upstream.
Andrew Maxwell Haden, born at Wanganui on 26 September 1950, was a terrific rugby player, one of the giants of his generation. He was also a dedicated rugby man who gave great value to the game. He respected, and was respected by, his rivals. Administrators may have held dissenting opinions, but that didn’t matter. One thing Haden never forgot was that the game was all about the players.
His last public rugby appearance was as MC of Ponsonby’s luncheon late in 2019, to celebrate the club’s 50th Premier title. He was funny, caustic at times, witty and very much a part of the whole event. He was, in short, exactly what Ponsonby people remembered him to be.
The Ponsonby District Rugby Club wishes to acknowledge one of its greats and extends its condolences to Andy’s family: Trecha, their son Christopher and daughter Laura, at this difficult time.
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