There must have been 200 kids out on the playing fields at Christchurch Boys’ High School when I visited in 2015, all hitting tackle bags, or practising lineouts, or working catch-and-pass drills. The first XV had just finished their session on the main pitch and the headmaster, Nic Hill, and his head coach, Danny Porte, were talking about the rugby culture at the school. “Our resources are our kids,” Porte said. “Hundreds and hundreds of tough kids.”
There was one in particular, Hill said, they were really excited by, a 17-year-old who had scored four tries in an 80-0 win against rivals Christ’s College the previous week. Well, I thought to myself, just about every first team in every top school in New Zealand has its own hot prospect. There is never any way of knowing which ones will kick on into professional rugby.
But Hill and Porte seemed pretty sure what they were talking about. Christchurch Boys’ had already turned out 45 All Blacks, whose names were listed on big wooden boards inside the school corridors. The only real doubt they had seemed to be whether the kid was going to take up cricket instead.
He was, Hill explained, the No 3 batsman in their first XI and playing above his age group. The school had also produced 11 Black Caps, including current vice-captain, Tom Latham, and he was just about as good as any of them. Later that year he would make a century off 83 balls against Palmerston North in the national schoolboy finals, an innings the school’s cricket coach, Matt Parr, described at the time as “one of the best schoolboy knocks I’ve ever seen”.
Either way, it seemed like it would be worth remembering the boy’s name. So, of course, I immediately forgot it.
Will Jordan needs one try in the final to stand alone as the highest try-scorer at a men's World Cup. The winger's three tries against Argentina added to scores against Uruguay (two), Italy (two) and Ireland.
Eight tries: Jonah Lomu, New Zealand (1999); Bryan Habana, South Africa (2007); Julian Savea, NZ (2015); Will Jordan, NZ (2023).
Seven tries: Marc Ellis, Jonah Lomu (both NZ, 1995); Doug Howlett, Mils Muliaina (both NZ, 2003); Drew Mitchell, Australia (2007); Josh Adams, Wales (2019).
It came back five years later, watching the highlights of the All Blacks’ 38-0 victory against Argentina in the Rugby Championship in 2020. In the 66th minute this kid in the 23 jersey, who had been on the pitch a couple of minutes, gathered a stray pass and went steaming towards the tryline. “And away goes Will Jordan,” the commentator shouted. “They won’t stop Will Jordan. And that’s his first try for the All Blacks.”
Two minutes later he got a second, and this one was even better, a cute, jinking run-in from an interception.
There have been another 29 since, including three in the semi-final against Argentina in the Stade de France on Friday night. He is the third man to score a hat-trick in a World Cup semi-final, after Jonah Lomu in 1995, three years before Jordan was born, and Adam Ashley-Cooper in 2015. He has scored eight in the tournament and if he grabs one more in the final he will break the World Cup record. He would have done it already had Richie Mo’unga chosen to throw a pass when Jordan was unmarked on the right rather than cut inside.
Given that Jordan is in the thick of one of the game’s great hot streaks, and now has 31 in 30 Tests, you would not bet against him getting there next Saturday. The only man who has scored more than 30 tries at a strike rate of better than one every game is the former Japan winger Daisuke Ohata, who once put eight past Chinese Taipei in a single match.
Not that Jordan is counting. He does not even really see himself as a finisher. He is a different sort of winger, and in the end, you guess he may end up playing at full-back. “I’m not one to track numbers,” he says. “I’ve always enjoyed support play, trying to be in the frame and read the game, so that is what I concentrate on. It’s not so much scoring tries because you have a few, like last night, where all you’ve got to do is dive over.”
It is true, his first two were simple finishes. His third, however, involved cutting in off his wing, slipping two tacklers, rounding the Argentina wing and gathering his own kick. “It’s more about involvements in the game, trying to pop up and give us an extra number in attack.”
“He can see the picture so early,” says the All Blacks assistant coach, Scott McLeod. “He understands where the space is and where it is going to be and then he positions himself really well, so when he does get the ball he knows what he has to do. And the exciting thing is that players around him now are starting to read off him as well, they get excited when he gets the ball.”
It was no accident Jordan was unmarked for those first two tries, McLeod explained. In fact the reason those finishes were so simple was because that is how the All Blacks planned it. “If you take the ball to a different part of the field, and get the defenders over there, and then get it to him, then he can pretty much make something out of nothing.”
But Jordan wouldn’t be an All Black if he didn’t add: “I’ll be very happy to take a zero on the scoresheet in the final if we get the job done.”
