Pope’s rugby pilgrimage

When you think of him you instantly think of him smiling, his head and body tilted back in his chair, either sharing a joke with his old partner George Hook or maybe even having one at Hook’s expense.

It shouldn’t surprise us so that he’s smiling on the cover of his new book. That’s how we picture him, that’s how we perceive ‘Popey’, the genial Kiwi who your mother — that doesn’t even like rugby — seems to like.

But inside the book and inside the man it’s another story, as the title in small print on the front suggests. ‘If You Really Knew Me’. Open it up to see how he’s opened up and you and your mother will probably like him all the more but to do so is to dispel almost everything you assumed about ‘Popey’ and to discover the tormented and generous soul that is Brent Pope.