Darren Shand

Anyhow, I missed the team that year.

I think I ended up being a non-travelling reserve.

I remember going to that tournament just feeling pressure, like, I've got to do it.

And I started looking at everybody else thinking, oh, he's playing, he's playing, rather than what can I do?

And I just wasn't ready.

I just didn't have the... Gosh, I wish I knew what I knew now around the mental side of the game and how to self-talk and prepare yourself for that and believe.

And so I missed and...

I really fell apart after that.

At the end of that season, I went to the New Zealand Men's Nationals with the Otago team.

The year prior with Hawke's Bay, we'd made the semifinals of the Nationals, just Little Hawke's Bay.

We beat Canterbury in pool play, and we're playing Auckland semis.

I'm marking Ramesh Patel, one of our Olympians from 1976.

I scored a goal in that semi.

We lost.

We finished third, I think, or fourth, which was great for Little Hawke's Bay.

and actually here I'm playing for Otago in Division 3 we're playing Southland I've got some scrub hacker marking me and I just lost it mentally I actually got my stick out and smashed him around the legs because he just was annoying me and he's in my head he's living as Mark Watson would say living rent free in my head and

And mum and dad, I was just so ashamed.

I just stopped playing.

I never picked up a hockey stick after that again.

There was no love.