Why former All Black Oliver is now firmly in green corner
The former All Blacks captain and hooker is still only 35, three years younger than Ireland replacement prop John Hayes, yet even attending today’s game is an exception rather than the rule.
And having turned his back on rugby and a lucrative contract with Toulon two years ago, the exiled Kiwi is getting on with the rest of his life, as he explained from his City of London office.
“Once you’ve made the decision to go, that’s it. I was lucky I had 13 years on the team and I’d had my fill,” Oliver said this week. “It does bring back a lot of memories. I haven’t been to a Test in a long time so it’s a bit weird going to a game.”
Oliver says the game is far too quick for him now, but he admires Hayes’ longevity.
“Well, if he’s still good enough, he’s there and I congratulate him. I think one of the biggest things at that age is motivation. I take my hat off to him. I couldn’t do that.”
In fact, Oliver turned his back almost completely on the game that had provided his living for the previous 15 years and returned to life as a student, completing an MSc in Biodiversity at Oxford University.
“I’ve finished at Oxford and I’m working in the City here, working for a very small, esoteric tech company, in the management of that company. I came to this company because they were looking to do something with an environmental edge.”
That pretty much marks your card on Anton Oliver.
He’s not one for the well-trodden career path, as he explained further.
“I first came over and got a job in the City in a bank and it became apparent to me, and I should be old enough to know myself now and what I react to and what stimulates me, that there was no environmental or social function or utility to what I was doing in that bank. So that was never going to be of any interest to me. I got headhunted for this job here and I left.
“There are no hard feelings. You keep learning but one of the things you learn being a professional rugby player, you get thrown out in your mid-thirties and if you choose, like I have, a life that’s not rugby-related you have to start all over again.
“I know this sounds silly, but you don’t know what you don’t know. One of things about being good at anything is that you have to focus and be 100% committed which means you don’t have much time to do other things.
“I only constructed a CV to go into Oxford. So I was 33 and never had a job interview. My job interview was 80 minutes every week in front of millions of people. That’s a different kind of job interview but I never had the requirement to construct a CV.
“So that’s unusual. It’s not normal but then again what I was doing was not normal.”
So breaking free and embracing the student life suited Oliver in terms of becoming a well-rounded individual.
“On reflection, yes. I’d been playing professional rugby for 15 years so it was just to download all of that really.
“I’ve done a 180-degree turn and I didn’t even know what I was going to do when I was doing that. It was just a transition year.
“Rugby players don’t earn enough money like football players where you can just stop and live off your earnings. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
“So I wanted to do something productive.
“Oxford was more about not so much what I studied but making the transition.”
Oliver was also persuaded to return briefly to the rugby pitch, just long enough to help Oxford score a rare win over Cambridge in the annual Varsity Match at Twickenham, but for the most part it was quite a change in lifestyle, from life in Toulon to Pot Noodles and ketchup sandwiches.
“Yeah, it’s funny. When I was in Toulon I had a two-bedroomed house by myself and a car and all that and then at Oxford I was sharing a house with six people who were all basically 10 years younger than me.”
He added: “I had a little bike and was eating with everyone in the main dining hall. It was quite good.”
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