Darren Shand

I was like, what am I doing this for?

And yeah, that was the pivot moment for me.

I never played team sports again after that moment and discovered some other things and some individual sports that I had a real passion for that were part of the next series of things I did.

And she's actually following the same journey.

It's actually really, you know, she did really well really young, has been part of the sort of New Zealand Under 21 programme and the Under 18 programme.

But, yeah, she's a different kid from me.

And she, while she's, you know, she's a medical student, she's really committed to that.

She's won medals in surf lifesaving at nationals.

You know, she's just one of these amazing kids.

But,

I think what for her is more important is the community of people that she's part of.

And I've learned that with her.

And I've tried to remove the pressure by saying, a few times she said to me, I don't think I'll go and do those trials.

I'm like, tell me who's in the teams, who are the girls that you might be playing with?

She reels all these names off.

I go, oh, have you still got that WhatsApp group where you all connect?

She goes, oh, yeah, we connect all the time.

I said, well, why not just go and treat it as a time of connection to get away from study for a while and just be with your mates?

I don't care if you don't make the under 21 team or whatever, just go and play.

And so we had an incident like that last year.