Rugby has always been a game of two halves, and for former Rugby World Cup head Martin Snedden, he’s never relied on his better half more – his wife Annie. In their 29 years of marriage, the Wellington couple has never been tested as much as they were when Martin was tasked with organising the biggest event New Zealand has ever hosted – the Rugby World Cup.
However, despite tremendous ups and downs during the wildly successful tournament – which are documented in his book A Stadium of Four Million – they’ve emerged stronger than ever, and say the 45 days of rugby were some of their best.
“As a family, we had the best time,” smiles the former lawyer and New Zealand cricketer. “Looking at it a year beforehand, I thought it would be the most stressful 45 days of my life, but it really wasn’t. It was just so much fun.”
A year beforehand, Martin thought the Rugby World Cup would be the most stressful 45 days of his life.
Martin, Annie and their kids Lucy (24), Stephanie (22), Michael (20), and Ella (18) were able to enjoy game days as much as the rest of the country. But it came after many long and stressful months leading up to the tournament which saw Martin forced to take a holiday after becoming exhausted with the worry and stress of the planning process.
“It was Christchurch that got me down,” he says. “It was heartbreaking. It took a lot of people around me to shake me out of this huge low that I was feeling and tell me to get on with it, but the decision to not have games there after the earthquake was so hard.
“New Zealand was really down in the dumps too at that stage, with the earthquakes and Pike River and the economy, and I was feeling all that too. It was just hard to be up. “With 100 days to go, I was just exhausted, and my senior manager Therese Walsh told me to go and take a holiday, and then start acting when I got back – and that’s what I did!”
With Martin absorbing the worries of an entire country, it was up to Annie to be there and support her husband through the biggest challenge of his life. “It was just a lot of listening and talking through options,” she says. “It was hard, but that was only part of the whole [world cup] experience. “It really was unforgettable and it was quite neat it worked out the way it did!”
Annie supported Martin through the stresses of the world cup.
With the Rugby World Cup over and Martin in his new job as CEO of the Tourism Industry Association, he and Annie, who’s a primary school teacher, are enjoying being at home. “We absolutely love Wellington,” says Annie. “People grizzle about the climate, but there’s just so much it has to offer.”
From their gorgeous home overlooking Oriental Bay, Martin and Annie are just “buzzing along” as Annie puts it, as they get used to being at home without their four children. “They’re almost all gone!” laughs Annie. “It’s quite a strange feeling.”
With perhaps the most exciting chapter of their lives so far done and dusted, the couple – whose 1983 wedding featured on the cover of New Zealand Woman’s Weekly – say that despite the challenges, the tournament brought the entire family closer together.
“It wasn’t easy to balance the work and the family, but if I’m being absolutely truthful, you don’t find the perfect balance,” says Martin. “Annie sort of knew it was going to happen in 2011. [She said], ‘Let’s bunker down and deal with it.’ She’s amazing.”
With a history in cricket – playing for the New Zealand team from 1980 to 1990, before taking on the role of chief executive of New Zealand Cricket – Martin was initially criticised for his involvement with the Rugby World Cup campaign.
Despite having criticism thrown his way when he was announced as the head of the world cup due to his cricket background, there were never any doubts he was the man for the job in Annie’s eyes. “He has just fantastic integrity,” she says. “He can come across as quite abrupt, but he’s just honest.
“As his wife, he’s quite hard to argue with actually, because he’s generally right,” Annie grins. “We balance each other out. He thinks things through; I tend to fly by the seat of my pants.”
The two met when they were both attending law school at the University of Otago, marrying shortly afterwards. “We were lawyers in Auckland for 20-odd years, before moving to Christchurch for cricket,” says Martin. Now in their dream home in Wellington – “it’s ugly on the outside, but great on the inside”, says Annie – it’s almost back to normal.
“I felt this huge gap after the world cup finished,” explains Martin. “I was like, ‘What now?’ “So here’s the book. It’s not just a rugby book, it’s about New Zealand and how I felt being in the middle of the biggest event we’ve had. It’s a magical feeling. A true stadium of four million.”
