No glass jaw for Oz hooker

For those bracing themselves for the mind-numbing prospect of another Rugby Championship in which the immediate future is likely to be All Black, the story of Nathan Charles should alleviate the sameness of it all.

It probably sounds unfair to be having a go at a tournament in only its third year of existence, but there is no escaping that the old Tri-Nations, in its current incarnation that includes Argentina, has been boring, unless you're from New Zealand.

The All Blacks have won it twice by winning all 12 of their games. While they were good value for the championship status, the opposition also took turns being atrocious (the Springboks in 2012, the Wallabies last year and the Pumas both years).

The dead giveaway that the powers-that-be aren't that happy with their latest brainchild was Sanzar chief executive Greg Peters, who wished out loud that he hoped the Aussies would beat the All Blacks in their opening match this weekend.

But in the event that the competition ends up pretty much the same way it has in the last two seasons, one hopes that Charles's story will go some way towards restoring the soul of rugby in our hearts.

Charles, a 25-year-old from Sydney, will start for the Wallabies after injuries to Stephen Moore, Tatafu Polota-Nau and Tolu Latu paved the way for him to face the Haka against a world championship side looking to break the tier one world record for most successive wins.

In fronting up to the All Blacks' Darth Vader-esque aura, Charles is believed to be the only professional sportsman in the world who plays contact sport while suffering from cystic fibrosis.

According to the Australian media, the Western Force hooker's parents were told he was unlikely to live beyond his 10th birthday after he was diagnosed with the disease as a three-month-old.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder which affects the lungs, the pancreas, liver and the intestines, the most prominent symptom of which is difficulty in breathing.

Not only has Charles confounded all by living beyond 10, he has had a thriving career as a rugby player with the help of a reported 28 tablets a day. Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie had it about right when he said Charles had "defied science and logic".

Anyone who has reported for duty at the touchline of a rugby match knows what bravery that usually entails.

You've gone through your paces nervously during the warm-up and seen how much bigger the opposition is, yet you still avail yourself to be repeatedly run over by dump trucks disguised as human beings in public.

Charles does that knowing he should actually be in cottonwool on the sidelines. And that doesn't take into account the countless hours of training.

So when the All Blacks go through Kapa o Pango with another routine victory in mind on Saturday, some of us will be hoping the Aussies will tap into Charles's refusal to understand when he is supposedly beaten.