Jeff McTainsh

experience i suppose for you know nine or ten years was it intimidating being in that environment with all those guys and you're like you say pretty fresh faced in there a little bit yeah i think so and i think you learn pretty quickly to uh to adapt and and to get on with it and you know you need a thick skin in this industry too so i think having had that experience of working at tv3 for you know nine or ten years was um was good for me going forward yeah um

Certainly learnt a lot.

I worked at Radio Live at the same time, so I had that opportunity to work in TV and radio, which I think really helped develop the voice for me as well.

And just working around different people, writing sports stories, going out in the field, interviewing people, working on air a lot, reading news, reading sports news, all of that kind of stuff.

helped, uh, yeah, I guess, develop me professionally, um, to a point where I got to in 2016 when I came back from the Rio Olympics.

And that was an incredible experience in Brazil.

Like it was, uh, it was one of the highlights of my career so far, without a doubt.

Certainly being at the Lagoa, seeing Lisa Carrington storming to gold and, um.

just kind of having that freaky surreal moment going wow we're here this is pretty cool so professionally that was a bit of a highlight but came back in 2016 and really needed a change I think I sort of felt like I was ready to do something else and work somewhere else and I think Sky was always somewhere that I looked at and thought if I'm going to potentially crack into sports broadcasting that's obviously where you want to be that's where the content is that's where the rugby is and

And, yeah, so I went over to Sky in 2017.

Yeah, they certainly weren't picking me for the social touch team based on speed or ability.

But, no, look, they had a position available for highlights producing, mate, which was kind of a –

Kind of a change of pace for me because I'd sort of come out of being a reporter and being, I guess, a sports news reader on radio going into something like that.

And I thought that would be at least a good way in the sky.

So I was cutting sports highlights for a couple of years.

And...

Yeah, I really enjoyed that.

It was, as I say, it was a change of pace.

It was something slightly different, but I knew that I was kind of where I wanted to be under the roof at Sky and, and working with the team there.

So yeah, I cut, cut sports highlights for a couple of years.