To Kiwi eyes there are some unfamiliar names in the England team to face the All Blacks on Saturday. Topsy Ojo? Mike Brown? Richard Wigglesworth? For Richie McCaw, though, one opposing player needs no introduction. Twelve years ago a teenager from Scotland travelled to New Zealand on an 18-month exchange visit and enrolled at Otago Boys' High School. Residing in the same boarding house was a country boy who, like him, showed a bit of rugby promise. This weekend the pair will be reunited at Eden Park, one as All Black captain, the other as England's latest second-row heir to Martin Johnson. It is a small world sometimes.
As with Johnson, who spent a formative season playing for King Country and played junior representative rugby for New Zealand, the 29-year-old Tom Palmer could conceivably have worn a black jersey at senior level rather than a white one. During his spell in the South Island he was picked for New Zealand Schools and played alongside the likes of McCaw, Jerry Collins, Carl Hayman and Aaron Mauger. Two weeks before returning home to take up a place at Leeds University he was asked if he fancied staying on. At such a late stage he was committed to leaving and politely declined.
More than a decade later, that decision is belatedly paying off. At an age when many All Blacks are either packing their bags for Europe or winding up their Test careers, Palmer finally has the chance to nail down an international place in the absence of his Wasps' club-mate Simon Shaw. He made his international debut seven years ago but this will be only his fifth start and ninth cap in total. In many ways his itinerant youth - he lived in Kenya before his family moved to Edinburgh when his father was appointed chief executive of the Citizens' Advice Bureau - has reflected itself in his sporting life. He even represented Scotland U19 and U21 before pledging his allegiance to England, for whom he was capped before playing a single Premiership game.
Switching to Wasps from Leeds in 2006 has also proved a shrewd move. Much time has been spent with Shaun Edwards trying to enhance his defensive game and work-rate and early-season injury frustrations have now eased. He was part of a magnificent Wasps forward effort in the Premiership grand final against Leicester last month and was one of the first players to get a call from Johnson following the latter's confirmation as England's new supremo. Palmer had a habit of playing well whenever he faced the former England captain and memories of those encounters seem to have stuck. Does Johnson have a soft spot for him? "Perhaps he's just a connoisseur of good second-row play," retorts Palmer, displaying a dry wit which should also endear him to the boss.
As for his former mate McCaw, the two remain good friends. Palmer is the first to admit he "learned a lot" from his time in New Zealand after swapping Boroughmuir High School for a radically different environment. "My school in Edinburgh was a normal comprehensive and we tended to play the local public school second XVs. In New Zealand it was the opposite: the other schools saw us as privileged boys and were quite keen to give us a kicking." The young Palmer had only two choices: toughen up quickly or do something else.
He opted for the former but eight years at Leeds did not dramatically enhance his international prospects. The intensity of the Wasps dressing-room has clearly encouraged a sharper focus and made him more consistent. As a physics graduate, he is more aware than most that for every force applied there is an equal and opposite reaction. "My job is to make sure I hit some rucks, make a nuisance of myself at the breakdown, put myself about a bit and get the backs some quick ball," he shrugs. It is a beautifully simple description of a lock forward's art, although Palmer stops short of proclaiming himself as England's tough-guy enforcer.
He is also conscious the All Blacks lose precious few Tests at home, certainly not in the wake of a World Cup tournament exit which still tugs at the nation's self-esteem. Nothing in last weekend's rainswept victory over Ireland convinced him this is a moderate Kiwi pack. "It didn't really look like they were a pack of forwards who hadn't played together," he muttered. Old school ties will be irrelevant when the first whistle sounds.
