All Blacks feel for loved ones left in Christchurch

STACEY SQUIRES/The Press

EYE ON THE BALL: All Blacks No8 Kieran Read doesn't believe experiencing the devastation of Christchurch's earthquake will prove a distraction in the Bledisloe Cup buildup.

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As the All Blacks arrived in Sydney yesterday for Saturday's Bledisloe Test, they made no attempt to camouflage the horror that those among them experienced in the Christchurch earthquake.

The quake, which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, struck Christchurch in the early pre-dawn hours of Saturday.

Eight players in the 27-man squad are from Christchurch: Corey Flynn, Ben Franks, Owen Franks, Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Brad Thorn, Sam Whitelock and Colin Slade. All of them made the trip to Sydney, as did their Auckland-based head coach Graham Henry, whose 94-year-old mother lives in Christchurch and also survived unscathed.

But All Blacks assistant coach Steve Hansen and some team management staff from the South Island city did not arrive due to the extensive damage on their houses. They are due to arrive in Sydney today.

Read says the ordeal won't disrupt the All Blacks before a match that will take their unbeaten run of tests to 15 should they win - added to the Bledisloe Cup and Tri Nations titles that are already theirs.

"I don't think it will be a distraction. A lot of the guys have gone through it," the back-rower said yesterday.

"It's nice to talk about it and I know it's a lot scarier for the guys with kids at home, especially us with partners. It's scary, but I suppose you just have to get on with it. You think it's not going to strike twice, so that's probably the feeling we have got now."

Read, who lives near the city centre in Richmond with his wife Bridget, who is six months pregnant, said their house had little damage.

But he described the quake as: "pretty freaky experience, pretty terrifying. So we just popped under a doorway and tried to ride it out.

"The house was moving a lot. We were calm and quiet. But when it stops you kind of realise how big it was. Because it was still dark, it was hard. It wasn't until the sun came up that we realised it was a pretty big thing. Because the power was out, [it was not] until we heard from family up in Auckland that it was a pretty massive earthquake."

Read smiled when he said his wife was the one he looked to to understand the gravity if the situation.

"She is a geography major and kind of knows about these sorts of things," he said with a laugh. "I don't know if that was a good thing because she was pretty scared. A lot of people went outside right away, but we felt safe under the doorway and wanted to stay there. She moved like a cat. She was pretty quick. I was just following her."

Did he question leaving her in Christchurch while he flew to Sydney?

"The aftershocks weren't as heavy as they maybe could have been," he said. "The big issue is the water and the fact we don't have clean water and the sewerage. She is going to have a cousin come and stay so it worked out fine for me to come over."

Slade, called into the squad in the absence of five-eighth Dan Carter, who is having an operation, said the house that he and his partner Emma share in St Albans, also near the city centre, sustained damage that included the chimney falling off.

He said seeing the devastation "was like that movie '2012', going out there ... police everywhere, everyone just walking around. There were cracks and water spurting up through the ground."

- © Fairfax NZ News