The Mitchell Plan

JOHN MITCHELL is on the phone as he swings his car into the driveway of his suburban Hamilton home. New Zealand’s head rugby coach is hardl ever off it these days. Eventually, he ends the call and we head indoors.

Mitchell drops the mobile on the chest-high kitchen-dining room divide where, instantly, it starts to vibrate, dancing across the bench top before coming to rest perilously close to the edge.

The house phone begins to ring but Mitchell chooses to ignore it as he does every time it rings over the next hour-and-a-half and he busies himself making cups of tea and coffee, hunts out a packet of chocolate chip cookies and then settles himself down on one of the two comfortable couches in the family room.