Rugby writer, rugby fan, and an inspiration to so many, Mike Pulman has died aged 29. Jamie Wall pays tribute.

It’s less than a minute into the Chiefs versus Hurricanes game on Anzac weekend and Mike Pulman is fuming. I’m alongside him high up in the main stand of FMG Stadium Waikato, in the media box where we first met a couple of years earlier. It’s not actually the real media box, that’s down the hall full of fans necking Waikato Draught and talking shit. Despite being the layout of a uni lecture theatre, the Chiefs have turned it into a hospitality suite and relocated the journalists to a spare room barely big enough to fit four of us. The view is terrible, and if you’re unlucky enough to get the seat on the far right of the wobbly bench provided for us, you can’t actually see half the field.

I give Mike’s wheelchair a little nudge with my elbow. The Canes have scored already and they are looking good to knock over the home side, yet again. 

Mike just breathes a sigh of audible frustration. He loves the Chiefs, they are the team he’s grown up with and even though he’s up here with the media, he can’t shake the fact that he’s a fan, first and foremost. I’ve tried to tell him that he needs to be a soulless cynic like the rest of us. We always catch up when I come down from Auckland to Hamilton and cover the Chiefs games. It’s every fortnight or so during the Super Rugby season and I’ll wait in the central city mall cafe for him to arrive in the hours before kickoff.

I don’t know exactly why Mike is in a wheelchair. It’s never come up. All I know is what I can see – he has the use of his hands and forearms, but even then I can tell that using them takes a lot of effort. The wheelchair is massive, electrically powered and he controls it with his thumb and forefinger. He can’t turn his head, so when we sit next to each other in the media box he looks at our reflections in the window to gauge our expressions. He has a carer with him whenever he comes to the stadium, sometimes it’s his partner Jess. But ever since we met all he wants to talk about is rugby, cricket and writing about rugby and cricket, so that’s all we talk about. Sometimes he sends me messages to check in, for no other reason than just to see how I’m doing.

The Chiefs have accredited him as a journalist and he spends each game in our little room tapping away on his laptop, noting down the tries and kicks and letting out a small cheer every time they score. Even that sounds like it exhausts him.

Tonight it’s just the three of us in the box, Aaron Goile from Stuff is there too. It’s a bit of a comedown from the pre-Covid days, when there were around half a dozen of us in for every game. Despite our tiny room, FMG Stadium Waikato is a fun place to hang out. The Chiefs are good to deal with and there is a sense of camaraderie among the media, so much so that radio commentator Nigel Yalden started a baking roster. Even Ollie Ritchie from Newshub made an effort, although we all suspect he just bought some cupcakes from a bakery.

The game keeps moving along at a pretty good pace, the Chiefs edge ahead and Damian McKenzie is really pulling the strings. “DMac” is Mike’s favourite, he reckons he should be starting for the All Blacks. It’s only one of the things we disagree on, my lot is in with Jordie Barrett. But there’s more than just All Black selection we don’t see eye to eye on. Mike is a pretty conservative guy. I admire that about him, he never has a problem saying he doesn’t agree with things and that some people need to just harden up.

Jordie sends over a penalty goal from 63 metres out and I nudge Mike’s wheelchair again. Mike spits out an F-bomb. 

Mike’s always asked the rest of us about how he can be a journalist full time. We gave him tips, put him in contact with people, went on his podcast and told him not to worry about being in the daunting and pressurised media environment. We are just regular people at work. That’s how he was treated when he came into the environment too, one of the boys having a joke and not being afraid to pipe up. The only time his wheelchair was ever mentioned was when he bragged about being exempt from driving it under the influence, which led to a suggestion that he could tow us home at the end of a big night.

Deep into the second half and the Hurricanes go in front thanks to a try to Billy Proctor. Mike is gutted, he had to put up with the Chiefs going winless in Super Rugby Aotearoa last year. For the rest of us it was great, coach Warren Gatland’s woes were a constantly fruitful narrative, but Mike was watching the team he was devoted to turn into a joke. Gatland would attend each press conference with the demeanour of a funeral director who had just dug their own grave.

But this year was different. Gatland was gone, replaced by Clayton McMillan, a big former cop who dresses like a tradie uncle wearing his one set of mismatched nice clothes at a wedding. He liked Mike and his little digital camera recording questions and answers post match, but then again all the Chiefs players did too. They’d turn to their right, look down and make sure Mike got what he needed out of every press conference. Sam Cane, Anton Lienert-Brown, Brad Weber – it didn’t matter if they were All Blacks, they had time for him.

The Chiefs had repaid Mike’s faith in 2021, charging to an unlikely finals appearance. But they look to be coming undone tonight against the Canes, who lead by one as the hooter goes.

Penalty Chiefs. Forty metres out. Mike’s man DMac steps up and places the ball on the tee, then gives his trademark grin. I look at Mike, he’s transfixed by his team and the hope of victory. He’s clenched his fists in anticipation. The ball leaves DMac’s boot and never looks like missing, Mike is ecstatic, exhausted. It’s one of the best wins his team has ever had.

Later, we’re downstairs after the post-match chats, packing up and about to leave. It’s the final home game for the Chiefs so we’re all shaking hands and wishing each other luck. Mike rolls around and gives us all a fist bump, trying not to show just how hard it is for him to raise his arm to do so.

It would be the last time I saw him.

Mike Pulman died last week. It wasn’t due to the spinal muscular atrophy he lived with his whole life, but from complications due to injuries suffered in a car accident. He was 29, over twice the age his parents were told he’d live to be when he was born. His casket will be taken around Seddon Park and FMG Stadium Waikato, and he’ll be buried in his Chiefs jersey gifted to him by Damian McKenzie.

Mike wanted to be a sports journalist. He wanted to be an example to people facing challenges. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to be one of the boys. He achieved all of those things.

But he never stopped being a fan when he wrote about the Chiefs. I’m glad he never listened to me on that one.

A tough lockdown fitness craze has spread to eager cyclists around New Zealand – and even across the Tasman. Now, pride and prizes are at stake. 

Carl Wells was in the lounge of his home in Glen Eden, Auckland, when he saw a cyclist zoom up the hill past his window. A few moments later, he saw the exact same cyclist go back down the other way. He repeated the route again, then again. Finally, it dawned on him: that cyclist was competing in a lockdown challenge, one Wells had inspired, which had quickly gone viral. 

It started a week earlier when Wells, a French horn player in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, went for a bike ride during Auckland’s extended level four lockdown. He’d taken up cycling 10 years ago and discovered punishing mountain climbs were his specialty: the bigger the slope, the better. In summer, he and a group of friends go for extremely sweaty workouts at the end of the day across the steepest peaks they can find. “Once you start, it’s kind of addictive,” he reasons.

Under level four lockdown exercise rules, Wells isn’t allowed to cycle too far from his home. He realised the only way he could get his hill-climbing fix was to go up the same hill, over and over again. He challenged himself to cycle 1,000 metres vertically, an ascent charted through the GPS function on the cycling and running app Strava. It took him more than an hour to traverse Titirangi’s Atkinson Road – a long, steep and relatively straight piece of tarmac – 14 times, a distance of 23 kilometres. 

When he got home, Wells posted his achievement on Facebook. People started talking about it immediately. “It spun off much farther than I thought it would,” he says. Friends took up the challenge, and began sending him their own times. Wells logged them in a Google Doc, and started a dedicated Facebook group. A competition had been born.

Word kept spreading, the challenge quickly going viral through New Zealand’s cycling community. Wells was sent photos and videos of people competing from different parts of the country. During last week’s storms, three people went out and completed his “Vam (vertical ascent in metres) challenge” in the hail, wind and rain. More people sign up every day. He set up a leaderboard, and sponsors started getting touch. Prizes are at stake, including bike services, movie passes and cash, and money is being collected for the City Mission.

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The appeal, Wells says, is that it’s a simple challenge that can be completed by anyone. First-time cyclists are doing it, as well as the hardcore. Even kids are giving it a go. “For most people it’s, ‘How do you stack up against your mates?’” he says. “Can you just get out and do something that’s different in lockdown and test yourself a little bit?” 

Yes, it’s going to hurt. One competitor who took up cycling only last year took four hours to complete his run. But Wells says that doesn’t matter. “The sense of accomplishment is priceless,” says Wells. “It was huge for him.” The challenge has helped others get through lockdown. “It’s been a really tough time for Aucklanders. Maybe that’s why it’s felt surprisingly moving to see so many people putting everything on the line then revelling in the sense of shared accomplishment.”

Right now, dozens of people are testing themselves in Wells’ competition. They’re cycling up hills in Wellington. They’re doing it in Whanganui. Someone even found a decent hill in the relatively flat Christchurch. A father-and-son team has taken up his challenge. Someone from Melbourne even gave it a go. Runners have come on board too, trying to beat cyclists’ times.

It is, most definitely, a challenge. The average time is somewhere between one and two hours. Some have bailed out because of broken spokes, crashing on U-turns, and, for one, “chundering” at the halfway point. That, says Wells, is the moment many question what they’re doing. “It’s really hard when you get to halfway and you don’t know if you can make it the whole way,” says Wells. “But you can.”

Emma Porritt is one of those who decided to give it a go. A cyclist at school, the Massey resident says she rarely touches her bike these days, preferring the brute force of Crossfit classes. But she saw her old school friends posting their times on Facebook, and it sparked something. “I spent a day or so mulling it over,” she says. “The insanity of lockdown got me to do it.”

So, Porritt got her old bike out of the garage, fired up a Spotify playlist of bangers, and spent nearly three hours riding up, then down, and back up Waimumu Road. “There were a lot of people giving me strange looks,” says Porritt, who would stop, message her friends and eat snacks in-between circuits. “My aim was to enjoy it and try and not hate it.” Would she do it again? “Absolutely not.”

For Wells, it’s given him something to focus on during lockdown. With no audiences, his orchestra is out of action. So he’s spending his time organising the Vam leaderboard, encouraging riders, liaising with sponsors, and monitoring Facebook. “I’m constantly needing to do things and organise things,” he says. “People who are really into cycling are always training. They like to have goals. Those goals have been cancelled (by Covid restrictions).” 

It’s also keeping him in touch with his friends, something everyone is missing during Auckland’s extended level four lockdown. “It’s a very social sport,” says Wells. “People usually ride with their friends once a week. Because they can’t ride with their friends, it’s a way for cyclists to connect, be part of a community and take advantage of the empty streets.”

Wells is training for another run at the leaderboard, which has, during the time The Spinoff’s been monitoring it, changed its No.1 spot twice. The current record-holder took 43 minutes to do 11 trips up Auckland’s Point View Drive and complete his 1,000-metre ascent. If you think you can beat that record, you’d better get on your bike: the competition closes at 8pm on September 18. Says Wells: “We need to stop the madness.”