Description

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Lelei Lelei Jnr (aka Machete) and Neil Turnbull (aka The Ghost) came from very different backgrounds but when they eventually found each other they became the 2nd five/center combination that ruled world rugby. On the pitch they were an unorthodox and mostly unstoppable team. On their day, when they were on the same wavelength, they were world beaters and very possibly the two best All Blacks ever to play in their positions. Then there were the days—on and off the pitch—when they were like fire and ice. Theirs was a passionate friendship/kinship/borderline love affair. Sometimes they were of one mind, other times they would do things so stupid it was like they had only one mind between them. Needless to say, trouble had a way of finding them, following them and even moving in to the spare room for a while. Machete and The Ghost is the book that charts the careers of the two greatest All Blacks who never existed. It chronicles their mythical on-field achievements; tells invented stories about the behind-the-scenes goings on of professional rugby; and also makes up their troubles and triumphs off the field, in their tabloid-worthy private lives. This is the book that takes all the tropes you’ve read in every other rugby biography and twists and turns them for shameless comedic benefit. Machete and The Ghost—totally made up, but by people who know and love the game of rugby enough to make all the bullshit sound entirely plausible.

About the Author

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James Griffin is a writer who has invented and written heaps of television drama and comedy including Outrageous Fortune, Westside, The Almighty Johnsons, and 800 Words. When he’s not writing TV he writes plays like Serial Killers; he helped Oscar write the two Sione’s Wedding films; for years he wrote a weekly column for the Weekend Herald paper; and he’s also managed to write three books for Upstart Press, two about rugby and one about beer. He has no medals from the Queen, as yet. Oscar Kightley is a Samoan-born writer whose critically acclaimed collaborative work for stage and screen has helped change the face of popular culture in New Zealand. This includes such awesome works as the stage stuff he did/does with the Naked Samoans; the legendary TV series bro’Town; and the two Sione’s Wedding movies he wrote with James. His first job when he left school was as a journalist and in the intervening decades has worked as a television presenter, sportscaster, playwright, actor, screen-writer and director—including that flash All Blacks documentary they made not so long ago. And one time in 2008 he got a medal from the Queen for services to theatre and television.