Darren Shand

the club rooms was an idea that smithy put to the team that once a week we'd meet as a group purely with social intentions to decompress in the middle of the week so typically sunday monday heavy days a lot of training getting ready time to get to tuesday night we had wednesday off and so we decided we'd always bring the team together we'd meet put on our club jerseys

We would have a club captain, a club president.

We'd have an auction.

No, sorry, a raffle, not an auction, a raffle.

That became a point of contention in who could run the best raffle.

And actually, we ran the raffle at this, and there was a number of people that had run the raffle, so that was a contention.

Who would be allowed to run the raffle at this reunion?

Hopefully it was a meat pack.

Yeah, what was the prize?

No, no, no, we're way past meat packs.

We're talking like, you know, a slab of Steinlager, gym equipment for your home, cash prizes.

The funny thing was every Tuesday we'd have two meals a week on tour where I'd give the players cash.

It'll literally go straight into the raffle.

I'd head out on a Tuesday night and I'd just go straight into the raffle draw.

And there were lots of special, we'd have often special guests, other players would come, other sports people would come in.

And you have this dynamic of the mutual, I call it the mutual appreciation society.

Like we're overwhelmed that they're in our room and they're overwhelmed that they're in our room.

So some special moments there.

A great way of bringing our young players forward and understanding their journey, particularly in rugby.

So using the club.