‘I became a machine’: How Brad Thorn’s dad helped turn him into an All Blacks great

I didn’t display that X factor. I stood back. My mindset was negative – and because of my feeling of anxiousness, I would not promote myself. That was me.

I didn’t make state under-15s, but I did make a Southeast Queensland composite team, which played New South Wales in a warm-up before they played a full Queensland side.

The game was reflective of where my head was at. I was playing lock, sometimes known as a loose forward in league – number 13. During the first half, I was dominant. If you were watching it, you would have been thinking, How did this kid not make the state team?

At a training session for the Queensland Australian Rules U12’s Primary Schools Team in 1987. This is me on the left, wearing my silky yellow league shorts, competing in the air for the ball against one of the coaches. I played as a Ruckman and I loved the game. My primary school motto was ‘Reward For Effort’. Dad pointed it out to me one day. He said, ‘Look up there mate, see that motto? Apply that to the rest of your life and you’ll do great. The greater the effort, the greater the reward.’ Photo / Brad Thorn

That’s what I should have been thinking, but even now I can hear the voice in my head as we ran out for the second half: Pull back now, you’ve done enough, just finish the game out.

Why was that voice there? Why was it delivering the sort of message that contradicted all my ambitions?

It was the voice of a guy who didn’t have belief. It was a passive mindset. I should have attacked the second half and left an indelible impression, but instead I went through the motions.

Dad was on the sidelines watching. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a sideline shouter, but he was taking it all in. He knew what was happening.

My brother was doing well in basketball and his studies. My cousin in New Zealand, who I’m close to, was captaining rep rugby teams. I had this achievement happening around me. Dad knew I had talent, and he wanted me to reach my potential in order to experience some of the pride that came with that. Instead, he saw me get in the way of myself time and time again.

A year later, during an under-16s game on the Gold Coast, I’d gone into my shell again just as I needed to make an impact on both the field and the selectors’ minds. I can’t tell you exactly why I would do this. I wanted to play well. I wanted to dominate. I wanted to be noticed. I was a big kid, and I stood out because of my size. I could make a big hit or do a good run, but then you wouldn’t see me for another 10 minutes. By then, I was more than 1.9 metres tall, weighed north of 90 kilograms and was really athletic. If you wanted a prototype teenage league player to come out of a box, it would have looked something like me – but it wouldn’t have played like me. It was a contradiction I struggled to recognise, let alone do anything about.

Life as a country kid in New Zealand taught us a lot of things. We ran around in bare feet so much that we were proud of being able to run on gravel without our shoes on. This photo is from the early 1980s, when my dad liked collecting vintage carts and machinery from the old days, and putting it in our paddock. I’m sitting on our pet ram, Sooty. Photo / Brad Thorn

I’d messed up a golden opportunity to make a name for myself, and the drive back home from the Gold Coast was painfully silent. It was an hour and a half back home through the traffic, so Dad had a long time to think about what he wanted to say. He sat there stewing. I could only guess what he was thinking about, but I suspected it was about me and my performance.

Finally, as we walked through the front door, Dad let me have it: ‘Look son, I’ve had enough of driving you all around the place when you don’t have it. You’re not fit enough. You’re not driven. You don’t have it in you to front up. You have all this talent, but it happens again and again and again. It’s so frustrating, and I’ve had enough.’

Every one of his words landed.

Dad could pull out the tough-love card when he needed to, which I’ve always been grateful for. I was wasting his and my time not fulfilling my potential, and he was sick of waiting for me to figure it out on my own.

‘There is Bunyaville State Forest over there,’ he continued. ‘You know the run I do, not the one you do, but the one I do with all the hills. I want you to start doing that run. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you to do it. If you don’t, that’s it. I’ve had enough of driving to all these places to watch my son constantly fall short of his potential. I’m not doing it anymore.’

Dad was a fit guy. When he was younger, he’d run around Mosgiel in bad shoes so much that he wore out his knees, but he still went running in the state forest near our home. He wasn’t training for anything, but he wanted to keep fit and in good shape.

I could see that he was serious. We were tight. We got on well. I was still at that age where I was not my own man. I really looked up to him, so these barbs stung. This was a tune-up like I had never had before.

A photo of the Thorn family back in 1991. Dad and Mum with her permed hair, and me and my brother in our stone-washed jeans and basketball shoes. These were good times. Mum is a salt-of-the-earth type, a country girl from Milton, who lost her mother to cancer when she was 8. Mum had to grow up fast. She was also tall and sporty, but the most important thing she passed on to us was her work ethic. Photo / Brad Thorn

If he’d waited a few more years, it probably would not have had the same impact, but at that stage of my teenage years, the thought of letting Dad down was about the worst feeling I could have had. He knew it was time to deliver a kick up the arse. But more importantly, it worked.

It was around that same time that I first heard Dad say, ‘Champions do extra.’ He’d read in the paper that Ricky Stuart, who was playing for the Canberra Raiders at the time, did an extra 30 minutes’ kicking practice after every training session.

If you think about it, it seems pretty obvious that champions do extra because it’s hard to imagine champions doing mediocre, or champions doing less! But it’s something that has always stuck with me because I was someone who wasn’t doing extra. Once I heard it, I started to apply it to everything.

(A few years ago, I met Ricky Stuart. I told him that, as a kid, I had a Ricky Stuart kick – a long and low torpedo – and I asked if it was true what Dad had told me about him spending that extra half-hour doing kicking practice after training sessions. He said, ‘Yeah, it is.’ After all those years, it was nice to tell him that story and how it had helped inspire me as a teenager.)

Dad was working as a real estate agent by that time, and he must have been doing pretty well, because my parents bought a block of land in Albany Creek, which was a suburb or two further west, and built a home there.

Brad Thorne playing for the All Blacks. He played 59 tests, and won the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Photo / Photosport

Mum and Dad wanted me to go to the local high school, which was a couple of minutes away from home, but given how long it had taken me to make friends when we’d moved to Australia, I didn’t want to have to do it again. I was shy and didn’t want to go through the ordeal of making a whole new set of friends. I wanted to stay at school in Aspley, so I cycled the round trip – 17 kilometres a day – for five years.

By the time I got home from school, I’d done more exercise than most people would do in a day. Then I had to prepare myself for this run that Dad was demanding I do.

I headed over to the forest, and halfway through the run I had Dad’s words ringing in my ears: ‘Anything flat or down, you can jog; anything uphill, I want you to sprint. Recover while you’re running and don’t walk.’

I ran up those big hills, got puffed, slowed down on the flats and downs, and regathered for another push up the hills. It’s hard to explain how I felt, but after a while it was just awesome. I felt so invigorated that, as I stopped to turn back, I said out loud, ‘This feels good!’ The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was fizzing.

I was a fit, active kid. I wasn’t overweight. I was cycling every day, playing sports and games whenever I could, but this run activated something in my mind that was so powerful. I didn’t cotton on to this until later, but this was doing as much, if not more, for my mindset than it was for my physical fitness.

Former All Black Brad Thorn’s book Champions Do Extra.

When I ended the first run, although I felt really good about it, I honestly thought: I’ve done this to please Dad but, knowing me, it won’t last. I may come back and do it another time or two, but I know me, it will eventually trail off like it had in the past.

The opposite happened. Let’s say my team training days were Monday and Wednesday. By the time Tuesday and Thursday rolled around, I’d be sitting there thinking, I’ve got to go and run.

In the past, I would have thought, I could go for a run, but you know what, I’ve already done enough fitness this week. I don’t need it.

Not anymore, though. I wasn’t just committed to the run, I was looking forward to it.

This forest run became my foundation, my rock. The single most important piece of training equipment I had was my running shoes.

That moment as a 16-year-old in the middle of my first forest run was so significant that it helped change my mindset into that of the driven athlete I would become.

Most of all, I built mental fortitude by pushing myself to the limit time and time again. There were no encouraging words or pats on the back, but in my solitude with the feeling of burning lungs and heavy legs, there was the satisfaction of knowing I had given it my all. From the day of that first run, I became a machine. I only went forward, and I never stopped. I was athletic and had some natural ability, but it was really my mindset that helped me to achieve what I did.

That same year, we had a visit from my uncle and auntie, Robin and Virginia Gamble. During their stay, Dad pulled Robin aside and asked him to have a chat with me. When I was young, I was slightly scared of my uncle. He was a gruff man-of-the-land sort of guy, a stock agent from Otago. He’d played many years of rugby and done some coaching while raising his family. I had a lot of respect for him.

‘Brad, if you want to take that next step in rep rugby, you need to get your hands on the ball as many times as you can,’ he said. ‘You need to stand out. It’s actually your teammates who are your real competition. You need to find a way to get that ball when you want it, as you’re all fighting for a spot.’

The message was received loud and clear in my mind: If I wanted to progress and achieve my goals, I needed to look after number one. That suited me fine. Training on my own brought so many positives, but that drive to achieve success also instilled in me a natural inclination to have a strong focus on myself and the goals I wanted to achieve.

Whatever it took, I was prepared to bite and scratch my way to the top, and in doing so I would often lean towards playing more as an individual. Yes, I loved the camaraderie and mateship, and I wanted the team to win, but my biggest focus was on me playing well and progressing. And progress I did.

The Queensland Reds, coached by former All Black Brad Thorn, won the Super Rugby AU title in 2021. Photo / Photosport

By the time I was four weeks out from a state carnival – a three-day, four-game sports tournament – I was running twice a week in the forest. I was doing the run at full noise, going as hard as I could on flats and the hills and recovering on the downhills. I was addicted.

During the next school holidays, I was in the city hanging out with my mate Schmidy and, even though we were having fun, I spent the entire day thinking about getting home so I could go on my run. I caught the train home and, by the time I got back, it was dark, but I headed into the forest anyway. I couldn’t even see where my feet were landing on the bush track. I didn’t care. I had to do it. Things had changed, and I wasn’t going back.

By the time the carnival rolled around, everything about my attitude to footy had changed. My goals were immediate and all-consuming. I couldn’t see past the carnival. That’s how zoned in I was.

We got to the last game on the Sunday, and Dad said to me, ‘Son, if you front today, you make the team.’

It was a big call. We both knew these were the games where I’d failed to front in the past, and I was desperate to make the team. But I believed him, and this time I didn’t disappear. I put in a strong performance.

After the game, I sat in the stand as they named the 17-man Queensland rep squad. They named the starting 13 first, and my name was not called. Finally, though, I heard them say ‘Brad Thorn’. It was one of the best moments of my life.

The one word that I could cling to after that: belief. It was crucial. Nothing in my life after that happened without that moment in the forest; without that realisation, as Dad had said, ‘Champions do extra’.

Sitting in the stands that day, I thought back to my old school motto: ‘Reward For Effort’. I realised that it was the first time I had put in the effort, and the first time I had got the reward. I was satisfied, but I also knew I still had a hunger for more.

In my first game for the state, I came off the bench in our one-off game against a Newcastle rep team at Marathon Stadium, scored a try, and we won.

From that moment, the forest was more than a run for me – it was a mentor. I was a different guy after that. I can recall sitting down outside my house with my dog and dreaming big after that. There, I would map out things that I wanted to achieve and how I was going to get there. I’d never done that before, but I’d made one team and my entire outlook had changed. That was a big moment, that belief that came from making the state team.

As a boy, living in Brisbane, Dad made a photo of me as an All Black, with a fern on my chest, cut out of paper. This photo is the dream realised, the boy with big dreams, grown into a man, in the black jersey, ready for battle. The two photos side by side in my book meant a lot to me. I would look at them before every test match in my room, before getting on the team bus. The photo of me as a kid reminded me of where I had come from, and the photo of me as an All Black was who I had become. This was my time in the jersey, and the expectation I put on myself was always the same, give everything I’ve got, no backward steps. Photo/ Brad Thorn

The following year, at state trials, my mindset was that of a completely different animal. I knew I’d done the work. I was not wondering what was going to happen. I was just thinking about how I was going to make it happen. And I did. I made the Queensland Schoolboys team and I played really well at the state carnival, then went on to the national carnival.

Dad was pumped for me. He had come out of state housing to live comfortably in Brisbane thanks to his and Mum’s hard work. As a guy who loved his family, his plan to provide the sort of platform that would allow me and Aaron to chase our dreams was coming together.

Champions Do Extra, published by HarperCollins New Zealand, is on sale from January 28.