Rugby Union: Bunce blessed with a good sense of balance: Martin Johnson meets one All Black centre not about to complain at the rough and tumble that is all part of the game

HAVING decided to rid themselves of their po-faced image (you would have wrung more smiles from a gravediggers' convention when they were last here for the World Cup) the closest New Zealand currently get to an all black mood is when someone brings up the Philip de Glanville affair.

Having pleaded not guilty to the charges of GBH, they cannot quite understand why it is still rumbling on, but privately, what really irks them is their belief that the English are throwing stones from a particularly large greenhouse. If they ever decided to throw a brick or two back, they would merely point to Frank Bunce's right ear.

It is very nearly divided in two by a vivid white scar that is the product of 13 stitches - one more than the All Black try count against South of Scotland on Wednesday. Dean Richards was the alleged miscreant, on last winter's Lions tour to New Zealand, and, as one New Zealand journalist put it: 'They really cracked down hard on him. Geoff Cooke made him captain for the next match.'

Bunce, like de Glanville, is a centre who had the misfortune to be lying on the ground amid two sets of international forwards who were attempting, not terribly politely, to locate the ball. Short of taking a moonlight stroll in Transylvania, there are not too many surer ways of losing blood, and Bunce duly fell victim to what rugby players euphemistically refer to as a spot of tap dancing.

Did he think it was an accident? Bunce is not saying, but the area in which England and New Zealand differ on this issue is that the All Blacks blame the head rather than the boot for being in the wrong place. 'I was lying on the wrong side and getting rucked,' Bunce said, 'and without condoning any deliberate or even careless use of the studs where the head is concerned, things are different in New Zealand. You're fair game if you're lying there, and if you've been caught doing it once, it's highly unlikely that you will ever do it again.

'In any event, I've never taken grudges off the field with me. I didn't see Richards again until after the first Test, when we were both chosen for drug testing, and bumped into each other in the sample room. He just smiled and said: 'How's the ear?' I grinned back, we had a chat, and that was the end of it.'

Bunce, who lines up alongside Matthew Cooper in the centre for the All Blacks against Scotland A in Glasgow today, first sprung to attention in this country during the World Cup when he played outstandingly well for Western Samoa, helping them beat Wales and reach the quarter-finals. Samoa is a fertile nursery for the All Blacks, and once Joe Stanley's retirement left a vacancy at centre, Bunce did not require much persuading to take advantage of the none too stringent qualification rules.

'My grandfather was born in Samoa,' Bunce said, 'but having been overlooked by the All Blacks for so long (he is now 31 and was just turned 30 when he played the first of his 14 Tests in 1992), I'd given up hope and was actively considering offers to play rugby league in Australia when I got back from the World Cup.

'Anyway, the phone rang and it was Laurie Mains (the current coach) on the other end, and he told me that he'd heard the league rumours, but that I ought to know that the union selectors were taking an interest in me.

'That's all I really needed to hear, because as most people know, there is not much of a contest between the codes in New Zealand.'

He meant, of course, the gap in prestige, although it was too much to resist asking whether it also meant a gap in wages. Bunce smiled: 'Let's just say the money in New Zealand rugby league is laughable.'

Bunce's powerful running has already brought him eight tries in his 14 Tests, and the odds against him adding to that tally against Scotland at Murrayfield next Saturday would not, given the All Blacks' present form, be over-generous.

Bunce, who totally outshone the Australian centres, Tim Horan and Jason Little, in New Zealand's Bledisloe Cup victory earlier this year, said that the All Blacks rated the internationals on this tour against Scotland and England as equal in importance, and that their players were 'as keyed up for this tour as they were for the World Cup.

'I think that's probably the biggest difference between All Black sides and other international teams,' he said. 'Apart, perhaps, from a Lions tour, which has that extra special buzz, we want to win every single game we play just as badly, and that's probably why we gave the South of Scotland such a going over this week.

'Some teams are not worried about their midweek results, but we certainly are. We owe it to our supporters for one thing (there are six coachloads from New Zealand travelling with the team) and we get a real bagging back at home from the people and the press if we're not doing well. There's nothing quite as depressed as an All Black after a defeat, but happily we don't have too many of those.

'If people describe us as blinkered, that's fair enough. They're probably right. I've got a wife, two kids and another child on the way back at home, and I can't wait to get back to Auckland and the family.

'On the other hand, while I'm on tour I don't think about anything other than rugby. I eat, sleep and drink it. Nothing else matters, and that's part of the All Black make- up.'

(Photograph omitted)