Mealamu the silent menace eager to keep England quiet

There is only one thing worse than a ruthless, ultra-competitive, blabbermouth All Black hooker from Auckland, and that is a ruthless, ultra-competitive, silent one. Keven Mealamu, probably the finest exponent of the hooking art in world rugby, is currently following the trail blazed by Sean Fitzpatrick, who may well have been the best in the history of the game.

Mealamu has the same physical resilience, a comparable range of footballing skills and a similar penchant for scoring important tries in tight matches. As he also possesses at least some of his predecessor's renowned leadership skills, England would prefer him to be elsewhere this coming Sunday.

What Mealamu does not share with Fitzpatrick is an overpowering urge to talk the hind legs off whatever donkey might be within earshot. This makes him more threatening, not less. When the most decorated hooker in the union game was in his pomp between 1987 and 1997, he made it his business to bombard referees and touch-judges with running commentaries on who was doing what to whom, and frequently appeared to influence their decisions as a consequence.

Mealamu has yet to learn this trick, but if his quietly decisive performance against the red-rose army at Twickenham this time last year was an anything to go by, he scarcely needs to bother.

Born in New Zealand to a family of Samoan descent - his brother Luke played for the old country in 2000 - the 27-year-old forward is already 38 caps into a Test career that began with a 40-point hosing of Wales in Cardiff in 2002. His principal rivals in the hooking department, Anton Oliver of Otago and Andrew Hore of Taranaki, are older men, so there is a strong possibility of Mealamu continuing to play at this level until 2011, when his country hosts a World Cup tournament for the second time. This could conceivably put him in sight of Fitzpatrick's record of 92 Test appearances - quite an inducement, given the esteem in which the very greatest All Blacks are held.

"Our paths never really crossed, unfortunately," Mealamu said yesterday. "I didn't play with Sean, or against him. He was just a little before my time. But he was managing one of the Auckland teams when I first arrived at Eden Park, and as a hooker looking to make his way in the game, I took as much from him as I could. If I have anything in common with him, it's that captaincy has given me a wider appreciation of the game than I might otherwise have had. Sean was a genuinely great captain and I think the responsibility helped him achieve a fantastic amount. I was given the job of leading the Auckland Blues in the Super 14 this year and it did me a lot of good."

There was a time when a leading coach would have awarded the captaincy duties to the deputy groundsman ahead of Mealamu, whose discipline was far from his strongest suit. As recently as 2005, when the Lions toured New Zealand under Sir Clive Woodward and Brian O'Driscoll, he was involved in the most controversial moments of the 12-match itinerary - the rough-house tackle on O'Driscoll in the opening minute of the first Test in Christchurch, which resulted in the Irishman hitting the ground shoulder-first and being forced out of the series, and the strange affair of Danny Grewcock's alleged misuse of the teeth.

The Bath lock was cited for biting Mealamu on the finger and suspended for the duration of the trip, a verdict that infuriated those of his colleagues who considered him the innocent party, not the guilty one.

Apart from finding himself at the centre of an All Black scrum frequently accused by the English of indulging in sharp practice - "If the referee says what we're doing is OK, it's OK; if we start getting penalised, it's not OK," the hooker responded - Mealamu is now regarded as a model professional. Steve Hansen, the New Zealand forwards' specialist, describes him as a "fully-rounded individual" whose contribution is crucial to the team's chances of recapturing the World Cup in France next year.

This disciplined approach will be tested on Sunday, for Mealamu is up against George Chuter, the wilfully aggressive Leicester hooker, who plays in the absence of the recently injured Steve Thompson.

"I'm doing some homework on Chuter," he said, "but this much I already know: he's an English hooker, so he'll be a pretty tough customer. He's about half the size of Thompson, but then, most people are. The really big boys can cause problems, but the smaller guys tend to have the technique. How unsettling is it, facing a new opponent? Let's just say we'll find out this weekend."