Albert Anderson and his secret champion

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 30

Albert Anderson and his secret champion

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

Somewhere, probably in Canterbury, there is someone, almost certainly male, whom Albert Anderson would like to meet. The chances are he would shake his hand warmly and offer to buy him a beer. Three years ago, in his first year out of St Andrew's College, Anderson was little more than just another young country rugby player. If he had a distinction it. was that he was bigger than most boys of his age. Albert “w-ho”? asked the townies when his name appeared in the New Zealand Colts team to tour Australia in 1980. Their wonderment became even greater when a week or so later he was named as the side’s captain. To this day, Anderson does not know how it was he came to be chosen. “I doubt if any of the selectors had seen me play and my only guess is that someone must have put a

good word in for me," he said last week. And despite his curiosity, Anderson has not been able to discover who this person was. “I just hope I have justified his confidence in me," he added. On this score he need have few worries. Anderson was the New Zealand Colts captain again last year and although he is still eligible for the Colts, this year he has been bumped up to New Zealand Juniors and will captain that team on its four-match internal tour beginning next week. Anderson has turned 21 (the Colts limit), but the good fortune of having a birthday early in the year (February) means that he will be available for the Juniors for two more seasons, providing he does not become a full All Black in the meantime — a possibility which cannot be ruled out on his rate of progress to date.

But going back to Albert “who?" He did have two years in the St Andrew’s first fifteen, the second as captain. and he might well have caught the eye of his unknown benefactor when he was in the South Island undef-18 side in 1978. And one just has to view Anderson to think of him in sporting teams. He is a big man and while there is plenty of flesh there is little flab on his 111 kg. 1.95 m frame. He is. naturally enough, a lock and has been since his early rugby days in Southbridge. His size makes him stand

out at home, as well as in a crowd. Neither of his parents is especially tall and he towers over his three sisters. "1 have been told that I get my build from’my grandparents." he explained. Basketball was an obvious sport for Anderson and he did play it at school. He eventually gave it away in favour of rugby, bqt ’ the lessons of the game are proving invaluable to a footballer whose prime task is to outjump and outcatch others in line-outs. Anderson is. by his own assessment, a “country boy” and when he finishes at Lincoln College this year he will

be back on the family farm, just out of Southbridge. He makes no claims to possessing an astute rugby brain, or being a speaker of note. How was it then that he was singled out for the cap-

tain’cy of first the Colts and now the Juniors? . "Search me." says Anderson with a certain rustic simplicity. “It was a job I was given and so I do it as well as I can." Graham Mourie, another "country boy," might give a similar answer to such a question. The departure of Graeme Higginson and the absence through injury of Dave White has left Anderson as Canterbury’s No 1 lock, something very rare for a 21-year-old in a major province. Last season it was intended to ease him gently into the Canterbury side, but he finished up playing 14 games and he is now probably the player Canterbury can least afford to have injured this year. Anderson accepts his rugby past, present and future with a shrug of those huge shoulders. Like a farmer acknowledging a good crop, he says he has just been lucky. “I guess I must have been in the right place at the right time, and that’s just luck.. But one should never count on it holding." Of the 1980 Colts team Anderson led in Australia, and which beat Australia. 10 -8, in the only “test,” about 10 members have come through to the Juniors with him, Robbie Deans and Victor Simpson being others from Canterbury. These men are undoubtedly being groomed as the All Blacks of the future and Anderson’s continued selection as captain strongly suggests that something extra is in store for him. .But 'ask Anderson about his rugby goals and he replies with a date. September 18. This, of course is the day Canterbury is down to’challenge Wellington for the Ranfurly Shield and after sharing in the disappointment of the unsuccessful challenge agdinst Waikato last season. Anderson is keen to see a different result this year. In addition to his other : credits. Anderson has already been in a champion-ship-winning team (Lincoln College last year), and this winter he gained New Zealand Universities selection and the virtual certainty of a trip to Japan with that side in September. So for Albert Anderson, the big “country boy" from South'bridge. a "lot has already happened in rugby. And at 21 his career has hardly begun.