Dylan Cleaver speaks with the 153-cap All Blacks legend, who announced his retirement from professional rugby this week.

This is an excerpt from The Bounce, a Substack newsletter by Dylan Cleaver.

Sam Whitelock reckons he could have squeezed a couple more years out of his creaking body.

Speaking from Pau, where the mercury has started to nudge up near 30 and he’s beginning to see why people rave about the south of France, the 35-year-old said that he felt his game still stood up to the harshest scrutiny.

In the end, however, fear won out.

“This is the thing that was going through my head,” Whitelock said. “I’d hate for somebody to come and watch a game I was playing and say to his kid, ‘See that guy there, he used to be awesome.’

“That would really grind my gears.”

After consultation with his family, Whitelock decided he would rather “retire on my terms rather than someone else’s”.

“I’d rather go a year early than a year late.”

Dialogue regarding a return to New Zealand had remained open from the moment he signed a two-year contract to play in Pau alongside his brother, eight-test All Black Luke. The speculation only heightened when it became known that the second-year of the contract contained a player-option clause.

“I’ve had a few messages over the past week asking me if I was coming back and I’m guessing opinion was split on whether I should. That’s fine. I saw a few articles that I didn’t open.”

You can be sure he didn’t, either. Whitelock learned very early in his career that the best way to avoid worrying about what other people thought was to avoid what other people thought. He has largely remained faithful to that self-managed edict.

He takes his counsel from his family – parents Braeden and Caroline, brothers George, Adam and Luke, and wife Hannah – a few trusted rugby mentors, and very few others.

It’s a formula that has kept the largely inscrutable lock at the top of a brutal sport for a decade-and-a-half.

“I don’t think I’ll ever lose that competitive edge. I still feel like I am playing some really good rugby. I still feel like I am playing the lock position better than a lot of people around the world and that will be the hard one – watching a game and thinking, ‘Shit, I can do a better job’.”

Whitelock will spend a European summer with the family, that way avoiding three winters on the bounce. He owes sun-loving Hannah – “she’s been a single parent, really, to Fred, Iris and Penelope” – that much at least, before they return to a farm in Rissington with their name on the title.

It’s Hurricanes territory and there must have been a smidgen of curiosity as to what a return to the region he represented as an age group player would have been like?

Whitelock laughs at the prospect.

“It would look terrible if I returned to the Hurricanes now, when they’re top of the table and the Crusaders aren’t,” he said. “To be brutally honest, I feel like I’ve done Super Rugby. I’ve been a captain, I’ve been successful.”

It was the prospect of playing test rugby under his long-time Crusaders coach Scott Robertson, who last night described Whitelock as “an immortal” of the game, that was lightly pressing a few “what-if” buttons.

After a lifetime of playing for the Crusaders and the All Blacks, the transition to the Top 14 wasn’t without its challenges, especially the language barrier. He envied Luke’s fluency in French and was proud of the mana his little brother carried.

A second season was tempting, but the voice on his shoulder (and in his Achilles, and thoracic spine) grew louder.

He knew it was the right time and he has a simple message for those that will follow.

“If you’re named to play one test, give it your guts because it might be all over after that one. You can’t hold back. It goes so quickly.”

As it was, when Whitelock played one, he had more than 150 to go – the sort of territory nobody thought possible a generation ago.

The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains.

Links Avenue football ground sits nestled in a corridor of contradiction: Tauranga Airport and a perpetually gridlocked arterial road to one side, lush calm beaches where surfers roll in on cruisy waves to the other. This is the home of Tauranga City AFC, who last weekend hosted the highest level of men’s football in the northern region for the first time since 2016.

Following promotion last year, the Light Blues are back in the Northern League – from which the top four teams come the end of the season qualify for the National League, the zenith of domestic football in New Zealand. 

Their opponents last Saturday, Melville United, were last season’s beaten Chatham Cup finalists and have permanent bragging rights over Tauranga, having inflicted upon them their worst-ever defeat, a 10-0 chastening in 2017.

But just as Air New Zealand flight NZ5136 bound for Auckland shook the bleachers at 3.25 pm on Saturday, Tauranga’s season also took flight: Joby Reid opened the scoring in the 26th minute, before striker Jonty Bidois netted a hat-trick to secure a 4-0 win.

Neither player was born the last time Tauranga City played National League football in 2003. Now, their goals have put the club momentarily top of the league in pursuit of a return. 

Tauranga City enjoyed their nadir at the turn of the century, with consecutive Northern Premier League titles (1999, 2000) and a Chatham Cup final appearance in 2002. Back-to-back promotions in 2015 and 2016 returned City to the highest league in the region – but those successes only highlighted shortcomings with the club’s model.

Talented players left for greener pastures, and with no conveyor belt to replace them, City flirted with oblivion before a shift to a more structured approach under director of football Barry Gardiner and chairman Brendon McHugh.

“A big thing when I came into the club was to start an academy,” says Gardiner, a Scotsman who first moved to New Zealand to play National League in Otago back in 2008.

“Getting promoted [last year] was a success but I have worked with some of these boys since they were 12. Success is also about giving them opportunities. Maybe they get recognised in national teams or move overseas. Whatever they want to do in football we’re trying to provide the platform.” 

Gardiner and his team began initiating that change back in 2017, and with it also came a culture shift. What happens in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse, but it would be fair to say the team used to embody the “social” elements of the game more than they do today.

“There is certainly the case nowadays for a bit less socialising and not so much focus on rehydrating in maybe not the right way,” says Ron Boyle, who has been at the club since 1967 and acted as president for 20 years, with a wink.

Tom Pamment has also been a part of both cultures. The experienced shot stopper turned goalkeeping coach’s affiliation with the club stretches back to 2006. “There’s a lot more structure behind it now,” he says. 

“It was previously very much a sort of family-run club with a core group of really committed people that did everything. They all did fantastically well with it and kept it going now everything’s sort of turned a little bit more professional.”

It’s a word that comes up a lot in discussions around New Zealand club football: professional. The structure has shifted from one which personified an amateur ethos to something more akin to the UK’s semi-professional system. Yet Tauranga, like every other team in the nation bar the Wellington Phoenix (and their soon-to-be A League rivals Auckland FC) maintains amateur status.

New Zealand Football (NZF) governs the beautiful game in Aotearoa, and their rules are clear: clubs are not permitted to sign players as professionals. But there’s an elephant in the room, and it’s been there quite a while. 

“Some of the money that has been spread around at the moment is eye-watering,” says McHugh, Tauranga City’s chairman. “I have heard of players who, with all due respect, would not make our first team, and clubs are offering them money and promises of being in their first team.”

City have had opportunities to do the same, with phone calls and emails from players looking to marry the beachside lifestyle with paid football at New Zealand’s highest level. All, they say, were turned away. 

NZF is clear on this. Clubs in New Zealand cannot pay their players more for their footballing activity than the expenses they effectively incur. That would make them professional players, which is not allowed. 

“All of the clubs in the National League have to agree to the terms of the competition on entry,” said NZF when asked about breaches of this policy. “If we are made aware of any clubs who are reported to be breaking these terms we have an investigative process we follow and have the power to penalise clubs if required as well as restrict players from participating if they are professional.”

Yet, clubs finding ways to circumnavigate these rules is almost an accepted reality in New Zealand’s football circles. In 2022, Stuff investigated such claims involving two of the nation’s biggest National League clubs, Auckland City and Christchurch United. 

Neither has been found to have broken any rules, but the idea domestic football in Aotearoa has ever been amateur in practice as well as name is laughable to many involved in the sport.

“I think if somebody at New Zealand Football said that, then they had to speak with a long tongue and a big cheek,” says one Tauranga City patron.

Strong words, and words with credence given the patron in question is John Adshead, who led the All Whites to their first-ever Fifa World Cup in 1982. 

“I tried to sign players from the National League when I was with the New Zealand Knights [the last Auckland-based A League club, which folded in 2007] and we couldn’t afford them as a professional club. One of the players said, ‘My wife would kill me’.   

“That was a while ago but I don’t think too much has changed. I love the game but one thing I do know is this: football is not amateur in New Zealand, especially for the bigger clubs.”

For Tauranga and other clubs of similar size and location, the impact of not reinforcing this rule would be massive, especially when it comes to retaining players. Throw in university studies and it’s no wonder previous seasons have seen an annual exodus of talent up State Highway 2 or over the Kaimai Ranges.

NZF could argue the amateur system has been of benefit to clubs like Tauranga – being unable to chuck money at imports left no choice but to go all-in on its youth system. In some ways, Tauranga’s team comprised almost entirely of young local players is NZF’s amateur model dream come to life.

“Having a strong and sustainable domestic competition that also provides opportunities for young talent to develop is the priority for NZF and the National League delivers this,” reads a NZF statement.

McHugh doesn’t want a change in the model. He is happy for football in New Zealand to remain amateur. He just wants Tauranga, and similar clubs, to no longer feel like they are playing on an uneven field.  

“What we would want is for some of these clubs to be audited,” he says, only half-joking.

“I would like New Zealand Football to stand behind what they say. It’s very obvious it’s happening, everyone knows it’s happening, and they must know it’s happening.”

In a statement, NZF said that “no credible complaints have been received by NZF in the past 3 years in the NLS.”

Tauranga City has, for now at least, found a workable solution to the “shamateurism” suspicions that linger around New Zealand football. The result is a spot at the top of New Zealand’s football pyramid, but not even the most ardent fans believe that will still be the case come the end of the season. Boyle, the long-serving former president who has been with the club from its inception, took a picture of the league table this weekend as a permanent memento.

Easter Weekend will be a true test for Tauranga, with tough fixtures against the well-resourced Auckland United and Auckland City on Friday and Monday (the United match is streaming live on FIFA+ as the featured match of the round).

For club captain Campbell Higgins, it’s a chance to see how they stack up against the very best. 

“Most people I have spoken to in and around the football scene seem to think our goal is to survive,” he says. “But I think we can aim higher than that. We have seen other clubs promoted who have battled for the top four spots [newly-promoted Manurewa AFC successfully qualified for the National League last year], so I would love to be among that top half come the end of the season.” 

If successful, Tauranga City will be at once a middle finger to New Zealand football’s current framework, and at the same time a beacon of justification for the status quo. A corridor of contradiction indeed.