McKenzie shows strength and selflessness when dealing with outrageous fortune, writes Andrew Webster.

Some people go home in the back of a paddy wagon. Ewen McKenzie met his wife in one. It was 1989 and life was simpler. Roxette had The Look. The Fitzgerald Inquiry confirmed that Queensland coppers were bent. Bob Hawke broke down on national television and admitted he'd done the dirty on Hazel.

And it was perfectly reasonable for a mutual police friend to drive the young prop on the verge of Wallabies selection and Sally Crawford from one eastern suburbs watering hole to another in a divvy van. Two years later, a month after McKenzie had helped Australia to a World Cup victory at Twickenham, the pair married.

"He took a bit of prodding to start with," recalls Sally, who has three daughters with McKenzie: Hannah (14), Molly (12) and Claire (10). "As anyone who knows Ewen will tell you, he's not the most emotional person. He goes with the flow. He's a big softie."

A big softie? It's hardly a description that will have every Sharks player dropping their square jaws into their bowl of cornflakes in fear this morning ahead of the Super 14 semi-final against the Waratahs at the Sydney Football Stadium.

But they - like you - should realise looks are deceiving when it comes to Ewen James Andrew McKenzie. "He has so much strength of character," Sally offers. "Because of what he's been through."

Told on April Fool's Day that this season would be his last, the Waratahs coach approaches tonight's match knowing he could soon be without a job despite his stocks never being higher.

He's been offered the gig at French glamour club Stade Francais, sounded out by the Crusaders as a replacement for Robbie Deans and been linked to Irish powerhouse Munster. Nothing's confirmed.

Meanwhile, NSW Rugby Union scrambles for a replacement. Some directors believe it should be McKenzie.

"Sport's a funny thing," the big man says, leaning back in his chair in the office he'll be vacating in July. "It's always timing. Getting jobs is about being in the right place at the right time. Hanging on to it is the same. There's politics involved."

The chair groans.

"I feel like I'm coming off a high base instead of a low base. For me, it was about getting credibility back after last year. Credibility and respect."

Those within the Tahs organisation - and beyond - will tell you that McKenzie is held in high regard, although the excrement thrown his way at times during his five-year tenure suggests not everyone loves him. "Rugby, in Sydney, is a perception-based business," he says. "But we have to deal with reality. The reality is we've finished second [on the Super 14 table]. The perceptions of how you get there, people have no idea about that. NSW has been historically cursed because of the lack of success we've had. People have ideas of why that's so and if you have three losses, those comments come straight out. We could win for five years straight but still never put that to bed.

"If we don't win [on Saturday night], I hope we aren't pilloried. People will say we choked. You can't win. The reality is that we've done something right."

McKenzie barely flinches at the barbs. His pain threshold is so high that when a kidney stone flared in February, he responded by stretching out on the floor in his office hoping the pain would go away before it was removed later that night. Insults in ink hardly hurt.

"I find it very upsetting," Sally says. "But the support for him is unbelievable. The phone calls and faxes and texts … He has done more than coach this side. He put so much time into Mat Rogers, who had much more than rugby to worry about. People are so critical but they don't realise what he does."

"She gets a bit more fiery about it than I do," grins the coach, who during his interview with the Herald laments how his playing and coaching career has limited his time with his family. What he doesn't reveal is how he attended parent-teacher night the day NSWRU chief executive Jim L'Estrange told him this season would be his last. Or how at the end of that week, he fronted a fathers-only barbecue at his daughters' school, where former Wallabies doctor Michael Jameson noted it was the most relaxed the former prop had looked in years.

Or how he diligently fronts junior water polo and basketball and taekwondo and tennis each Saturday morning and remains the model sideline parent. This morning, before arguably the biggest game of his coaching career, it will be hockey. Or even how the the delicate school age of his girls will probably mean he won't be quaffing the French red wine he dearly loves anytime soon. "He's the only man in the house," Sally laughs. "Even the cat's a female, and he thinks he's allergic to her … Poor Ewen. We're in the middle of renovations and the colour of the new bathroom is hot pink. He doesn't get a say in anything."

Indeed, they have a good chuckle at the coach's expense in the McKenzie abode. About his car full of McDonald's wrappers. He'll tell his daughters he's on a diet and they'll dig out a receipt from one of the empty brown bags and point out yesterday's date. He's been known to sneak out of the house in the midnight hour to a nearby 7-Eleven. The evidence - sausage roll, Chokito bar, chocolate Moove - is sometimes next to the bed the next morning.

"[Waratahs assistant coach] Les Kiss faded away to nothing last year," Sally says. "But Ewen put more on."

She laughs but the great unknown is starting to weigh heavily on the family. Paris is considered almost no chance; Christchurch "doesn't really appeal to me", says Sally; and Ireland "sounds OK".

"It is a worry," she says. "You don't know when the next pay cheque is going to come along. I think Ewen's preferred option is to stay in Sydney."

To that end, McKenzie might return to the place where he and Sally first met. Not a paddy wagon but a job as a town planner.

"I read the other day that there was a shortage of town planners in the private sector," he says. "You can write that if there's a big construction company out there who's interested, I'm available. That's what I do by trade. I deal in grey. If you're a doctor, you work in black and white. A town planner finds the middle ground. I can create harmony. I can find the things that matter to people."

It probably explains why this big softie matters so much to them.