Spennnn-cer. Spencer. SPENCER. SPENCER!”
All season it’s Carlos Spencer’s name that the commentators have been screaming. All season he has provided the kind of stand-up excitement that he’s been creating ever since he scored a try against Auckland for Horowhenua as a 17-year-old hotshot. But, suddenly, in the Super 12 final last month, they stopped yelling the first five-eight’s name.
And that’s because the talented Blues playmaker only ran six times. Instead, he kicked 22 times and passed 19 times. There was still the sizzling Spencer flair: the banana kick, the no-look backhand flips, the stratospheric snow-covered punts. It was still Carlos Spencer’s match. But the 27-year-old was playing – will you look at that – percentage rugby. He was playing for territory. He was playing his way into the World Cup.
Halfback Steve Devine, Spencer’s Blue colleague and All Black teammate, says, “Carlos Spencer pretty much won us the Super 12 title this year. He’s simply one of the best players in the world. When the forwards get the go-forward ball, my job is just to get the ball in his hands and let him do his magic.” Devine is still grinning a week later about the player now known simply as “the conductor” for his brilliant backline orchestration.
But it’s the unpredictability of Spencer’s audacious magic that has made All Black selectors so wary in the past. New Zealand’s best World Cup teams – the victorious 1987 team and the runner-up 1995 team – both added new dimensions of creative brilliance: in ’87, it was Michael Jones who thrilled with his dazzling displays. But Spencer, with his virtuoso performances but at times erratic form, has been up against Andrew Mehrtens, whose more orthodox team approach has almost always been preferred.
So, just how predictable is Spencer out on the field now? “Oh, occasionally we just have to remind Carlos what we’ve been practising all week, and make sure he does that,” says Devine. “He’s always trying to make new stuff up out on the field. But the advantage is that he sees opportunities out there that a lot of people don’t spot. He’s always trying to do something a little outside the square; always wants to play such an expansive game. I mean, it’s just great to see him running with the ball. People hang off. No one knows what he’s going to do and I don’t think he knows half the time. What I do know is that if he can carry on the form from the Super 12, this will be Carlos Spencer’s year.”
“To be honest, Carlos is in a zone where I don’t think he can play any better,” says Grant Fox, first five-eight for the victorious 1987 World Cup team and assistant coach of Auckland’s NPC side. “The only thing he could possibly improve is his goal kicking – it’s not bad, but it certainly could be a little higher, and he’s working on it,” says the man still known in rugby circles simply as “God” for his own goal-kicking form in the first World Cup. “But right now Carlos is just in unbelievable form. He’s damn near got everything you want in a rugby player, but Carlos is always looking for improvements in himself: he’s a guy who’ll look for a new trick every year. He is a very talented, very clever player who can identify mismatches extraordinarily quickly when he gets the ball as a first receiver off second phase: he sees some forwards standing in front of him, but the backs are gone and it’s like, ‘Right: here’s my licence, I’m gone.’ What really sets him apart is that he is prepared to try anything. A lot of players don’t have the balls to try some of the things he does. He’s not afraid, Carlos.”
But don’t call Spencer a loose cannon. “He’s not,” says Fox. “Yes, he calls moves on the hoof, that’s a sign of leadership. He did a couple of things in the NPC last year where he assessed a situation and said, ‘Look, here’s the move we’ve got, we can just tweak it a little bit. We’ve never tried it, but it’ll work.’ He did it against Canterbury in the NPC semi-final. He scored a try off it. It was a particular set-up we had as the scrum went down, but he saw something in the way they stacked their defence and just tweaked the move on the hoof, just like that, and we scored. I just thought, ‘Wow!’” Auckland won the NPC, just as the Blues have the Super 12.
Ask Fox, as he sits in a Viaduct Basin boardroom looking out at the America’s Cup village, whether we’ve got a better chance of success in the World Cup with guys such as Spencer than we did on the water and he says, straightening his Canterbury logo shirt, “Oh, I’m quietly confident we’ll do this. I really am.”
Graham Henry, now technical analyst for the Blues, rates Spencer as the best player in the world in that position at the moment. “I think he’s a great creator and I think in our World Cup campaign we need players of his ability to win. We need players who are going to push out the boundaries, express themselves and create opportunities. He’s that sort of player. He’s not a maverick. I find him an absolute pleasure to coach: he’s always looking to extend himself and I don’t think the public has any idea how hard he’s working. He’s very influential now; one of the key leaders of a team. When Carlos speaks, guys listen.”
Andy Haden believes that “if he finds the sort of pace he found with the Auckland team, he could set the tournament on fire. He has to be able to kick goals like Mehrtens does, but if he’s enjoying it, my gut feeling is he’ll be right up there with the best.” He possibly already is the best, adds Haden, who compares Spencer with the natural athleticism of Tiger Woods. “But if the All Blacks don’t deliver a happy environment, then expect him to go right back into his shell.”
“He’s a confidence player,” adds Marc Ellis. “Carlos is a cocky bugger when he plays and when he does something brilliant, he’ll let you know all about it on the field, which I think is bloody good. We’ve got to have that attitude to win the World Cup. The Aussies are brash and arrogant compared to us, but that self-belief is why they’re so successful. You shouldn’t be like that off-field and Carlos isn’t: he’s a laidback character; a good dude. But he’s a really exciting player to watch, he’s positive, he’s gives it a crack and that’s what we need to win.”
With guys such as Spencer, says Fox, “If he doesn’t enjoy it, it won’t work. He can play the game plan, but he’s also a very good strategist. So you’ve got to make sure that whatever you do, that it’s something that caters to the needs of Carlos as well, to get him motivated. Remember, this is the guy with the smartest box of tricks, right. So I always say to him, ‘The first time you get the ball, do what’s best for the team. Whatever move we call, do it the simple way, right. But then go and get the ball again. Go and support and when you get the ball again, I don’t give a rat’s arse what you do.’ So that’s the challenge for Carlos. Get yourself involved again, then you can pull the box of tricks out. Then it’s up to our players to react off you. And the team knew that. That was part of our plan,” says Fox. “And we always had this theory that if Spencer touched the ball two or three times in a movement, if we didn’t actually score, we’d go pretty close to it, because that’s how good the guy is.”
SPENCER, when we meet, has a quiet authority. He wants to answer questions at a separate time from our photo call with him, so while the photographer sets up we stand in companionable silence. Or uncomfortable stillness. “He’s actually quite shy,” Devine says. “On the field he pretty much runs the show and he shows it, the way he smiles and carries on, but off it, he’s quiet and keeps to himself a fair bit.” Fox: “Carlos is basically shy. He came to Auckland a shy Maori boy from Horowhenua and in many ways he is still that person. Everyone respects him, but he doesn’t put himself above anyone in the team, not at all. The rugby world is his stage,” says Fox, who points out that when Spencer runs out with the team from the dressing room, he always stops and walks onto the field while everyone else charges past. “It’s his stage. He’s taking it in. Maybe there’s some last-minute stuff going through his mind and he feels calmer when he’s walking: you know, ‘This is my stage; I’m getting ready to go.’ He’s a huge talker on the field. He changes. He goes out there and showcases his skills. But away from that, he’s not talkative at all. People misinterpret it as arrogance. It’s not. Even with me some days there’s not a lot of conversation going. And if you don’t understand the guy, you’ll actually be confused. ‘What have I done, Los? You’re not talking to me.’ He’s just shy.”
Spencer, once a Toffee Pops pin-up boy, has always had a reputation in Canterbury as an arrogant pain in the neck – in fact, to be anatomically correct, it’s a lower opinion. But he doesn’t come across in person as a guy who has got tickets on himself. At social functions, he’s often got his arm around his mum, Wiki. He’s clearly extremely happy with his sales rep fiancee Jodene, who has supported him back from devastating injury twice now. Away from rugby, he enjoys landscaping. He’s modest. Talks about the tattoo on his arm, the family kowhaiwhai pattern he had done last year and which replaces the more amateurish one he had done years ago as a teenager in Levin. He talks about his Harley Davidson. Even in jeans, he’s a stylish dresser: he and Justin Marshall have the best shoes: his are a soft creamy caramel. He’s very laidback walking past the other guys; particularly those from Canterbury: he and Reuben Thorne don’t make eye contact. But Anton Oliver walks in and it’s a big smile: “Ants!” Later, Spencer reports that he’s excited about the whole team; especially an All Black backline including guys such as Tana Umaga, Ma’a Nonu and Doug Howlett. “Of course. Doug is a freak and it certainly made my job a lot easier in the Super 12 having him in the backline. Ma’a and Tana are both dynamic and have had a fantastic season – but I believe the side really has been picked on form and the whole squad offers something to get excited about.”
About himself, he says, “Maybe I have been a ‘loose cannon’ in the past … I must say, though, that I’ve been playing senior representative rugby for about 10 years now, so hopefully I’ve learnt a few things over those years and I think I’ve matured a lot as well, both on and off the field.”
Joe Rokocoko, the young Blues winger and new All Black, reports that Spencer is “always helping me, talking to me on the field, asking me if everything is all right – which is very good if you’re a youngster on the field and don’t know what you’re doing right and doing wrong and you’re too shocked if you are doing the wrong thing”. The Fijian-born Rokocoko says: “He’s always coming up and asking if everything’s sweet.
“He’s the playmaker, directing people where to go. But, no, you never really know what he’s going to do,” says Rokocoko. “Every time you look at him and he’s looking the opposite way, you know he’s going to come the other opposite way. He’s full of surprises, Carlos. But the good thing about the boys is we just give him options and it’s up to him. He’s got the experience. But he tells me angles of run when he kicks it, the right lines to run inside a move, a backline move. He’s helped me very much.
“And he sets the example,” says Rokocoko. “The first time I ever saw him was in the gym. And the last time I saw him was in the gym.”
Spencer has a huge work ethic. “I’ve done a lot of work on my kicking game – both in play and goal kicks,” he says. “Finding touch is something I have struggled with at times in the past few years.” But he’s put a “lot of effort” in. “My kicking has improved immensely. Foxy is the best there is. To be able to learn from him is a privilege.” Best advice he was ever given on kicking? “Grant Fox told me to relax and try to focus on the kick rather than the score.”
“One thing I know he’s done this year,” says Fox, “is make an adjustment in his kicking technique that I have been asking him to make for five years. In 1997, he was kicking for the All Blacks when Mehrtens was injured and I remember spending some time with him and at a particular practice session we had asked him to make certain adjustments and he kicked particularly well. But he didn’t feel comfortable with it, even though he kicked well. You’ve just have to get over that mentally. That’s difficult. It’s not easy to do that. You’ve just got to keep on repeating it. But of course when he went to kick, he went back to his normal way and actually had success with it. So that was fine. But part of the change was borne out of the NPC, where his success rate was very low last year: it was down to about 55 percent. And Carlos had re-signed with Auckland, so now it was “time for the chat, Los”:
“You want the All Black No 10 jersey?”
“Yeah, desperately.”
“You know what you’ve got to do?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to kick goals at the level they need me to kick at test level.”
Fox: “He’s made that adjustment this year and it’s no surprise how well he’s done.”
So what’s the adjustment? “No, that’s a trade secret. Look, it’s just a little thing in the way he sets the ball up and in his run up. I can’t go into details.”
Yet Fox is confident now that Spencer can kick “with precision” at test level. He kicked three penalties and a conversion for the Blues in the intense pressure of the Super 12 final. “Carlos hasn’t played a lot of test rugby recently,” says Fox, “but he played a lot in ’97 and what people tend to forget is that he was successful.”
In fact, Spencer cleared any initial doubts about his test goalkicking ability with a polished seven from seven attempts in the All Blacks’ 33-18 win over Australia at the MCG in July ’97. A week earlier, he shot six from seven in the cauldron of Ellis Park to help New Zealand snatch a nail-biting 35-32 victory over the Springboks. At just 21, Carlos Spencer had amassed 101 points from five tests, meaning he equalled Simon Culhane and Andrew Mehrtens in achieving the fastest century in New Zealand test rugby.
But, in 1998 his five misses from five kicks contributed to the loss to the Springboks. Mehrtens was regarded as having a more hard-nosed approach to the game, ready to play the percentage game when the pressure is on. But, by the time of the last World Cup campaign, Spencer was talking percentage: “taking the right options and cutting the error rate”. And yet, on the morning of October 5, at what was meant to be a light training session in Surrey, his world changed. Spencer was holding a tackle bag to protect him during tackle practice. For a second, he looked the wrong way and wasn’t braced when team-mate Dylan Mika hit. The impact ruptured the medial and anterior cruciate ligaments in his right leg. Spencer was “devastated”, he says. “Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t had that horrific knee injury and got his opportunity then,” says Fox. “I’m sure if he’d had his chance in ’99 all this talk about the ‘mercurial Carlos Spencer’ and ‘is he the guy you want at test level?’, all that would have been answered.” Spencer was absent from the test side for two years until a recall for last November’s short tour, in which he suffered a shoulder dislocation. Mehrtens is still highly rated and aiming to make the second squad selection, but Spencer is the new supremo. Spencer, says Fox, “hasn’t conquered anything yet. He knows that. He won’t throw this chance away, I’m telling you.
“Spencer has been a reluctant kicker in the past. But his Super 12 success rate was over 70 percent. And it’s no surprise to me,” says Fox, “that he’s the best tactical kicker in Super 12 by a long way. It was him first and daylight second.” In fact, after last week’s selection, selector Kieran Crowley commented on Spencer’s ability to set up a kick-and-chase game that gains field position and sets up the ability to attack. “In the Super 12 final, every time he put in an up and under, as an opposition guy went up for it, so did one of his guys. So his precision there has been huge.”
“The other guy in world footy who’s a great tactical kicker of course is Jonny Wilkinson,” says Fox. “Depending, of course, on the style of play the All Blacks choose in Wellington, it’s going to be a fascinating battle against England,” he says of Wilkinson’s radar boot. It’s no small thanks to millionaire Blues backer Ballu Khan that Spencer is available to play for his country: Khan reportedly put up the extra money to keep him here when he was offered big bucks – reportedly $3.5 million – to play for Leicester. But Spencer also wanted that All Black jersey. “Carlos Spencer is our point of difference,” says broadcaster Martin Devlin. “No other first five in the world plays like he does. He’s outstanding. I wrote a column a couple of years ago in Rugby World where I was critical of the Rugby Union re-signing him because he wasn’t playing at top level and he has certainly made me eat my words. He’s doing everything right.”
Not quite everything. But dropping the ball to allow Mark Hammett a soft try in the Super 12 final was possibly the best thing Spencer could have done: he was annoyed with himself, but, as sports journalist Phil Gifford points out, it showed his ability to keep cool under pressure. “I don’t know that he could have done that five years ago.” So, how will Spencer cope with the “SOS” from opposition teams – “Shut out Spencer” – at the World Cup? Richie McCaw targeted him twice in one move in the Super 12 final; the first time a trip, the second time a late tackle. “If you’re tentative, there’s no point being on the pitch,” says Spencer.
His 1st XV coaches Taane Whiley and Hoko Gardiner, from when he was at Waiopehu College, have no doubt how he’ll go. “This guy was so unbelievably talented right from the start,” says Whiley, “that opposition teams have always tried to take him out. In the secondary schools final for Manawatu, a huge game, a guy from Hato Petera actually said to Carlos before the game, ‘We’re going to do you, mate.’ And I can remember they kicked a little chip kick to him and he took it right under the posts of his own goal line and he looked up and the whole team was charging at him. Well, he went the whole bloody length of the field!” Says Gardiner: “He had this impish grin, which always used to piss the opposition off completely, and he just played a magical weaving and stabbing and elusive speed move and went the whole length of the field. If you put Carlos under pressure; hey, that’s what he’s loves!”