MY LIFE IN RUGBY

AS a player I made over 250 appearances at full-back for my local club, Tawa, in the Wellington club competition, but with players of the calibre of Bernie Fraser, Stu Wilson and John Kirwan around there was little chance of me reaching a higher grade.

At 78 kilos (12st 4lbs) wringing wet, if that, I was probably too small anyway. What I did have was pace though. Being able to run sub-11 seconds for the 100m enabled me to run away from people which was good because I was never a particularly big fan of contact!

I worked for Murray Mexted in the motor trade, but I wasn’t interested in cars and hated my job so at the age of 36, with my playing days behind me, I decided I needed to do something different with my life. I’d grown up in Tawa, played rugby in Tawa and worked in Tawa – it was all I’d ever known.

With the support of my wife I decided to try out as a professional rugby coach, but I knew I needed to get out of my comfort zone. So, as a family, we relocated to Westport, a small isolated community on the coast of the South Island.

In my three years there, I coached the provincial team to the semi-finals of the National Championship (Division 3) for the first time in history. But, with my three daughters growing up fast and the need for better schooling, we headed back to Wellington where I coached Wainuiomata RFC.

I brought in players like Earl Va’a, in an effort to get them back to first division, and we achieved that, for the first time in 27 years. At the same time I coached a Wellington Colts side that included a number of now Hurricanes and All Blacks such as Dane Coles.

The move to Cornish Pirates came about after Dicky Evans rang me to check out the credentials of a one-cap Samoan called, Ati Olive, who he was thinking of signing and I was one of the referees listed on his CV. A couple of months later, Dicky got back in touch to ask if I had any experience of the ELVs (Experimental Law Variations). Once I told him yes, he asked me to come over as a consultant and I ended up staying in Cornwall for the best part of four years.

We had a wonderful group of players, including former Wellington Colts Blair Cowan and Jonny Bentley, who really bought into everything we set out to do. A lot of my ideas were foreign to them, Paves (coach Alan Paver) especially, and asking him to change his attacking structure and the way he defended after two decades in the game was a big ask. But he gave it a crack and I take huge satisfaction from seeing him and Gav Cattle use many of those methods to this day.

We won the B&I Cup and reached the Championship play-off final but without the Stadium for Cornwall, there was a ceiling to how far we could go. I decided to return to New Zealand, first as talent ID manager at NZ Rugby and then General Manager at the Hurricanes.

People may question why I left a Super Rugbywining organisation for a Championship club in England, but I’ve never been one to take the easy option in life. When I returned to Wellington I chose Wainuiomata over Marist St Pats, who were top of the First Division, because I wanted the challenge of getting the club back on its feet.

Wainuiomata had a track record of producing good players, but they tended to go off and join other clubs. In that sense, there are similarities with Yorkshire Carnegie. I first heard about what the club was trying to achieve in identifying and developing talent across the Yorkshire region through Sir Ian McGeechan who spent a day with the Hurricanes on the last Lions tour.

My job now is to create a culture and environment that means we can retain players we want to retain as well as attracting those from outside to join us. These are exciting times.