Fourteen years ago, Sir Graham Henry stormed out of New Zealand to coach the Welsh rugby team, after being overlooked for the All Blacks coaching job. Fast forward to 2012 and the now-legendary former All Blacks coach is again at the centre of controversy following his allegation that the 2007 France-New Zealand World Cup quarter-final was fixed.
While Graham is the epitome of the ultimate Kiwi guy, it’s fair to say the 66-year-old coaching great has had his share of ups and downs. But Graham reckons he’s a very lucky man because despite suffering public and professional criticism, intense pressure to perform and a serious bout of depression, he has a tight-knit family who he credits with being the secret behind his success.
“I’ve been married to the same woman for 42 years and I’ve got three kids I’m immensely proud of, who all live close, and five grandchildren too,” says Graham, whose wife Raewyn is a respected netball coach. “I’ve got a hell of a good wife and a family that’s really supportive, just as I am of them. It’s during the difficult phases that you find out who your mates really are and my family has stood by me the whole time.”
It’s not just his looks that Andrew has inherited from his father – he’s also highly competitive
While Graham is proud of all his children, it’s his youngest son, Andrew (31) – an accomplished break dancer and professional shoe designer – who he says has inherited his competitive nature. “Matthew’s in finance and Catherine, who’s a stay-at-home mum now, used to study kids with psychiatric issues, but Andrew’s the most competitive of the three for sure,” Graham smiles proudly as he shows off Andrew’s shoes – which he wears almost every day.
“Andrew was a really good athlete. When we were in Wales, he played rugby professionally for a while. But it’s always been really important to me that my kids do their own thing. I’m very proud of him.”
It’s a feeling that’s clearly mutual. Andrew is the spitting image of his dad and just like him, he’s learned to handle pressure – most of the time. “It’s never been an issue, growing up with a dad in the limelight. I’ve only lived one life and he’s the only dad I’ve had so I wouldn’t know any different!” he says, with more than a hint of his dad’s humour.
And there have been moments when Graham really needed his family around him – like the time he admits to “hitting the wall” when coaching both Wales and the British and Irish Lions team in 2001, while Raewyn was in charge of the Welsh netball team.
“Everyone goes through ups and downs in their lives and this was a rough one for me, but it toughened me up,” says Graham, who is remarkably honest about his struggle with depression. “I took on two teams at once and it was too much. I was so determined to show the New Zealand Rugby Union what they’d lost, I took on something I wasn’t ready for. I was a spoiled brat – and I paid the price.”
Despite obvious signs that Graham wasn’t well, it took a while for him to accept he was suffering from depression. “I tried to work my way through it, but the fire had gone,” he says. “I had to get out of there, so I rang Raewyn, who was in Singapore with the netball team, and got on the next plane to see her.”
Graham and wife Raewyn at the 2011 Rugby World Cup
The pair escaped to Phuket to get the break Graham desperately needed, but despite long talks with Raewyn and endless walks on the beach – “I always head to the water when I need to think” – nothing changed. So with Raewyn still entrenched with the Welsh netball team – for the next year-and-a-half she lived month on, month-off in New Zealand and Wales – Graham hopped on a plane and came home. Since then, it’s been everything he could have hoped for – almost.
“The book is a 101,000 word account of my life in rugby,” says Graham of the strong reaction, both positive and negative, to his admission he always suspected the All Blacks’ ignominious exit from the 2007 Rugby World Cup was due to match fixing. “At that stage, I had coached about 250 first class and international games – 249 of them were reasonably similar. This one was totally outside the normal frame of reference.”
And to allegations he’s just trying to plug his book? “It’s an honest, factual statement of how I felt at the time,” he insists. So what now? “I’m doing a lot and I’ll carry on doing that. If you slow down, you die,” says Graham, who’s being kept busy with public-speaking, business and rugby engagements in New Zealand and around the world.
“While I miss the challenge of coaching, there’s still a lot to do. I’m still doing too much though – even now, I still don’t have the balance right.”
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