Darren Shand

And he said, you know, my whole career, I've never had anything.

He was so excited, you know, by it.

I said, oh, we get that every day at the All Blacks, you know, we get given stuff all the time.

But that was sort of the person he was.

And, um,

So I guess probably subconsciously didn't even realize I took that with me.

But I think that always was my way.

Always believed in people.

If you made this team, I believed in you even more because you had the talent.

And if I could walk beside you and help you grow that, then that was part of what I was there for too.

It was almost one of those childhoods that was unremarkable, but it was remarkable, if that makes sense.

Very safe house.

Every Friday, the teachers from the school used to come round to our house.

We'd have a barbecue Friday night.

We had a tennis court, a grass one.

So I'd go race home after school, get it mowed and marked.

We'd always have people around.

In those days, when you sat at the dinner table, you connected, and you had conversations, and we always had conversations about life, about what they were doing and teaching.

When Dad was teaching, tomorrow's schools came in, so it went from suddenly you had boards of trustees, and Dad really struggled with that because he was like the board of people that know nothing about it to tell us what to do.

So I remember him talking a lot about that.