By Dale Budge
Former All Black John Spiers has one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rugby and yet you’d never know it by talking to him.
The prop forward played five tests and 28 matches for the All Blacks in the 1970s and early 80s, 153 matches for Counties and a whopping 402 premier games for his beloved Pukekohe club in a career that started in 1967 and lasted until 1991.
Then for good measure he played a couple more seasons in reserves as well as various other invitational tournaments.
That is well over 600 top level games of rugby as a tight forward where there is nowhere to hide.
A quiet and humble man that never sought limelight, Spiers has battled poor health over the last decade or more but has come through the worst of it and is living comfortably in Pukekohe with wife Jewel.
He reluctantly agreed to talk to Counties Sports Hub about his astonishing career.
“No one really knows [how many games] I think,” Spiers said of his rugby career.
“I think it became a bit of a habit in the end. Your mates were at the club, and you just kept doing it. Possibly I kept doing it a little bit long. A lot of the guys I played with, I ended up playing with their sons,” he laughed.
Spiers is Counties Manukau through and through. He grew up in Orton, near Pukekawa, and attended Onewhero Area School.
It was here where he first started playing rugby.
“I didn’t really play much until I got to high school,” he explained. “I went to Onewhero High School and their 1st XV was really only a 2nd XV and they had a weight limit, so I didn’t really play for the school, but the Onewhero Football Club had an U16 grade, and we used to go and play for them.
“Then I came to Pukekohe when I was about 17 and started playing for Pukekohe.
“We were living in Pukekohe and at that stage while there were other clubs, I was pretty happy with Pukekohe.”
Spiers was phenomenally strong and became more so while growing up on his father’s dairy and sheep farm and then during his late teens by hauling wool all day in his father’s Pukekohe-based wool business.
It was while he was working there that Spiers was first selected for Counties in 1970 and he became a fixture of the side throughout the next decade, winning the 1979 National Provincial Championship with the only Counties side to have achieved that feat.
“Barry Bracewell got me more interested really,” Spiers said. “I think getting into Counties – I would have only been about 23 – that is what started it. From there I was just lucky to get selected for the All Blacks.
“The [Counties] team stayed the same for about 10 years – there weren’t a lot of new ones coming in, so it was more like a club feeling rather than a rep team. We got on so good really.”
His All Black call-up came in 1976 and while the drums were beating for his inclusion, Spiers himself had no idea he was in the frame.
“Jewel and I were driving to Papakura to look at a skyline garage and we heard it on the radio, and I thought it was a mistake so we sat in the car and waited for the next news bulletin, and it came over again so she said we should go to the Jolly Farmer for a drink.
“It was a great feeling.”
That first tour was a trip to Argentina, and it didn’t include players that had toured South Africa earlier in the year. There were no official test matches and he had to wait another three years for that opportunity to come about.
He earned selection for the 1979 tour to the United Kingdom and made his test debut against Scotland at Murrayfield and would also play in the win over England at Twickenham a fortnight later.
“The first test in Scotland I was pretty happy with that,” Spiers said. “It was a real good feeling. But over in Romania and France with the Counties front row playing together was one of the best times.”
The all-Counties All Black front row saw Spiers, Rod Ketels and Andy Dalton play together in back-to-back tests in 1981 against Romania and France. The second test against France would prove to be Spiers’ final test.
While he continued with Counties until 1982 at the age of 35 and finished as one of the Union’s most renowned players.
But his rugby career was far from over. Spiers continued for the best part of another decade with Pukekohe.
He finally retired from playing for Pukekohe’s top side in 1991 but gave a couple more years of service for the reserve side, playing club rugby well into his mid-40s.
Spiers was lucky during his playing days and suffered very few injuries despite the phenomenal amount of football he played. But he has endured a tough run with health later in life.
In the mid-2000s Spiers was diagnosed with Leukaemia and underwent treatment for it.
He has had a triple bypass and was forced to have both legs amputated below the knee, which forced him into a wheelchair for a while.
“I started losing a bit of weight about 14 years ago and didn’t do much about it,” he explained. “Jewel sent me to the doctor, and he checked me over and sent me off for a blood test. The next day he rang and said you better come down and see me. I went down and he said I have got bad news for you – you have Leukaemia.
“That was the start of my health decline a wee bit.
“They put me on a trial with some drugs and one of the side effects is that it could block your veins a bit, which is probably what has happened with my two amputations.
“Everything is pretty good now and I am getting around and that.”
He has prosthetics now and is a lot more mobile than he had been.
The passion for rugby is still there and he watches rugby on the telly these days and has picked up archery as a bit of a hobby, while Jewel continues to be right there next to him as always.
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