Richie McCaw unsure if he’d be as good playing in today’s era

Universally recognised as one of rugby’s greatest ever players, Richie McCaw isn’t sure whether he would have the same impact were he playing in today’s generation.

The former All Blacks captain was asked the question in Chicago last week, and he responded by reflecting on his playing career and the evolution of the game that he had witnessed firsthand.

The great openside flanker debuted for New Zealand in 2001, assuming the captaincy in 2006, and leading his team to the first-ever back-to-back Rugby World Cup titles before retiring in 2015. The game evolved significantly in those 15 years, as the mechanisms of professionalism expanded and new strategies emerged.

In 2025, 10 years on from McCaw’s last game – the 2015 Rugby World Cup final – the game is in a new era, and what McCaw sees has him uncertain of how well he would fare.

“The game’s certainly changed,” he said. “It looks way more physical than when I was playing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. It looks like that.

“I reckon you just adapt. I look at my career, from when I started to when I finished, the game had changed quite a lot. If you don’t adapt, you end up not surviving, so you’ve got to adapt. I’d like to think that you’d adapt.

“It’s a bit like if you look at players, maybe going back to the 90s or 80s, there are athletes there who were good in those days, they would have adapted because they’re athletes. If you give them all the same stuff we had, they would’ve had no trouble. I guess that would be the same.

“Maybe body types have changed. I even noticed over the years how strong and powerful these guys were – big, 110 kg guys who were as fast as some of the backs. I was never that.

“But that’s what I liked about rugby, is that you didn’t necessarily need to tick all of those boxes; you obviously had to work at it. But the athletes now, I don’t know if I would have kept up in that regard. Maybe I would, I don’t know.”

Along with the on-field evolution, the game has changed off the field. Players are now more accessible than ever on social media, and that comes with its own highs and lows.

When asked whether he would enjoy playing the game as much nowadays, McCaw answered, “I don’t see why not”, before addressing the many demands of being a professional athlete in the 2020s.

“Times are what they are, and you adapt and whatnot. Some of the different things you have to deal with off the field when it comes to social media, I hate doing it, but I do it. It would have been the same; you do what you have to do. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be similar.

“I talk to some of the players who I played with who were still playing up until recently, and they say the younger guys coming in had a slightly different outlook on things, which is just natural. And maybe there would be a different way of doing things.”