Jeff McTainsh

The college footy's great.

I mean, there's just so much passion, obviously, in seeing –

seeing schoolboy rugby and the way that the games are set up, the way they start, the challenges, the haka, the school right on the sideline coming down that the old boy's watching.

So there's a lot of responsibility to make sure you get college rugby right.

And for a lot of these kids as well, they're not going to get the opportunity to be necessarily on the TV all the time.

So

you're always making sure you have a few things prepared for each player and making sure you get the pronunciation right too.

And it's funny because you often see a surname and you think, oh, I wonder if he's related to this player.

And sure enough, it's a nephew or that's his old man who played for Bay of Plenty or whoever it may have been.

So the other thing as well, which it just, I guess it reminds you how quickly some of these young guys progress is, or I remember,

calling Westlake Boys High School against Whangarei Boys a few years back now, but Caleb Tangitao was playing for Westlake Boys.

And I remember watching him play and thinking, like, you know, he just stood out.

He just stood out, obviously, for his speed.

He was a little bit bigger as well, but you just thought, yeah, he, this kid, I reckon, is going to go far.

But like, you know, so and now to see him doing what he's doing with the Highlanders and chat of, you know, higher honours is awesome.

And so it's kind of cool that, you know, that I got to call some of his games at school.

Exactly.

Still calling him.

And I think that's, it is a, and this is why I never begrudge, you know, players for deciding what they do and going overseas because it is a fairly short career for a lot of players.

So that just reminded me, this guy was just playing schoolboy footy not that long ago and now he could be an All Black this year.