Chasing Great: How farm life, a fast-food napkin and the 2007 All Blacks' World Cup defeat led to Richie McCaw's quest for sporting perfection

• e-mail

A complicated rooster. A reluctant hero.

The words of All Blacks coach Steve Hansen as he sums up the man who captained New Zealand to two World Cups.

And in typically abrupt fashion, he cuts through to the core of Chasing Great: The Richie McCaw Story.

A 12-year-old Richie McCaw conquers a peak in a home video. It was at this age the future All Blacks captain decided to live his life with no regrets

McCaw grew up on a farm in rural south Canterbury on New Zealand's South Island 

Famously guarded and focussed on a career that earned him 148 New Zealand caps, it may come as something of a surprise that McCaw let the cameras in, coupled with giving directors Michelle Walshe and Justin Pemberton access to home movies which help document his entire life.

McCaw told Sportsmail: ‘It was quite a big thing to get involved with really but I was pretty proud with the result.

‘It’s been in New Zealand and aired in September and I’ve had some good feedback which is a cool thing.

‘I guess I wanted to inspire kids, to show that you don’t have to come from anywhere special to achieve something you dream of and the feedback has been pretty good in that regard.’

But how much input did McCaw have? Quite a bit, it seems. He said: ‘I had to film it so there was a year's worth of footage plus some stuff from younger years and then there was how to put it together.

A nervous McCaw waiting to find out if he had made the All Blacks squad for the first time

‘It wasn’t so much I was worried about stuff I didn’t want in there but it was more, there was so much stuff we filmed, it was fitting it all in but they did such a good job of capturing the stuff that went in the end of it, the final result, I was pretty happy with.’

Starting with his formative years on the family farm in rural south Canterbury, New Zealand, a pattern is quickly established.

Amid beautifully shot footage of the South Island's mountains and plains, the young McCaw, aged just 12, decides to live his life at full throttle, pushing against the prospect of regrets in old age.

Captain Richie reveals his pre-game routine, including writing his thoughts down in a hotel

Man in the mirror: McCaw before winning one of his 148 caps, a world record 

And winning is everything. He wants to beat his classmates in a foot race, be the best at tackling at rugby practice, the top of the class.

Boarding school is where his rugby develops rapidly and the whirlwind of his early professional career which quickly brings an All Blacks debut is astounding - the speed of his rise is comparable with NBA great Lebron James.

Yet the film manages to capture the values that clearly underpin this wise head on young shoulders – the re-created scene of McCaw writing out a career plan at the behest of his uncle on a fast-food napkin is utterly compelling and returns as theme throughout.

The mainstay of Chasing Great is several interviews with McCaw in his final year as a player, culminating in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final.

McCaw's hockey-playing wife Gemma speaks about how ordinary she believes her husband is

McCaw speaks candidly about the difficulties of the 2007 World Cup exit and how he dealt with them with the help of a sports psychiatrist 

This leads to encounters with friends, family, his sportswoman wife Gemma and top players including Dan Carter and journalists. 

For rugby fans, what may appeal most is the stunning close-up footage of games during that year, shot in slow motion and concentrating on players rather than the ball, capturing the bone-crunching, kit-tearing intensity of test rugby.

As the narrative skips between that final year and the past, what stands out most is not the many victories produced by the All Blacks machine but the devastating blow to the nation that was the 2007 World Cup.

Going out to hosts France at the quarter-final stage was viscerally painful to New Zealand as a nation with headlines such as ‘an embarrassment of Richies’.

But it was to prove pivotal to McCaw’s captaincy after he is forced to front up to media in an emotional press conference alongside former coach Graham Henry.

The scenes in which McCaw, a trained pilot, takes to the skies in a glider to represent the aftermath of the defeat are truly jaw-dropping.  

McCaw poses for a selfie in the changing rooms after winning the World Cup for a second time

Flying winger Julian Savea leads the celebrations after the 2015 World Cup win 

Even in the good times it seems as if McCaw is constantly fronting up, showing his toughest face and embodying his team and its heritage and the obligatory haka scenes are quite something to behold.

But although never completely unguarded in this film, viewers find they know and understand so much more about a man who set the global standard in rugby for so long, both personally in his position and in the success of his team.

We all know how the story ends, with a joyous, free-running defence of the Webb Ellis Trophy culminating with the evisceration of trans-Tasman rivals Australia at Twickenham.

But Chasing Great reveals a lifetime spent attempting to hit sporting perfection.

And no-one has come closer to that than McCaw.  

Chasing Great: The Richie McCaw Story is be available via download on February 3 and on DVD here on February 6. 

The team behind Chasing Great at the London premiere: (Left to right) Leon Kirkbeck, Michelle Walshe, Richie McCaw, Cass Avery and Angus McNab