Bradley Slater earns All Blacks call-up and admits he is not the best hooker in the squad

Bradley Slater was asleep with Do Not Disturb switched on when the All Blacks came calling. The Taranaki hooker woke on a Monday morning to a string of missed calls, learned that George Bell had been ruled out of the South Africa tour, and was on a flight from Auckland to Cape Town via Singapore within hours — arriving on Wednesday with a Stormers fixture two days away.

“It was a bit of a mad dash,” Slater told RugbyPass. “I arrived on Wednesday. The first game was against the Stormers on Friday.”

His debut came against the Sharks, entering the field for the final 20 minutes of a comfortable All Blacks victory. Slater described his brief as straightforward: do his job and not complicate things. A second appearance followed in the 41-35 come-from-behind win over the Lions in Johannesburg, where he said the key was adding impact without forcing play when his side were behind.

The tour’s most vivid memory, however, had nothing to do with his own performance. When Māori legend Ma’a Nonu responded to the All Blacks’ haka alone before the Lions match, Slater was among those caught off guard.

“None of us knew what was going to happen. When he responded alone, it was like, wow. This is serious,” he said.

The All Blacks lost the Test series 3-1 to the Springboks, a result Slater took hard. He praised South Africa’s execution and the intensity of rugby culture in the country — shirts, posters, radio — but stopped short of blaming preparation. “We had the game plan and the players. They just executed better than us,” he said.

Honest about his standing in a competitive hooker group that includes Bell, Asafo Aumua and Samisoni Taukei’aho, Slater was refreshingly direct. “I’m not as good as them, but I bring a big work rate, anticipation, and do my job as best I can.”

Slater kept his call-up private until he was already on tour, a detail that speaks to a grounded character shaped by a rugby family. His father Andy Slater played 183 games for Taranaki between 1989 and 2001, while his uncle Gordon Slater — All Black number 980 — captained the Hurricanes in Super Rugby and earned three Test caps on the 2000 Northern Tour. Rugby, for Bradley Slater, has always been serious business.