Kieran Read

I was 30 years old.

I'd been around, you know, a number of tests.

Captain the side before.

Like, oh, I'm...

similar to rich but i'm also quite different and our upbringing is a difference we're different people um you know and so yeah i think it for any leader it's like don't chase the leader you want to be or you think you should be it's you know be who you are and be authentically that person common mistake eh yeah it is a common mistake and i went through that early on yeah um

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I was in a position where I could fully be myself.

I knew my strengths.

I knew the ability, uh, that I had to influence people around me and, uh, stuck to them.

Um, you know, cause we're a different side.

We couldn't, we couldn't do the same stuff we'd been doing for the last five years.

Um, cause we had, you know, most of our guys were 20, 21, new players.

Um,

Even the guys who had won the World Cup the year previously hadn't established themselves as a great all-back yet.

So putting the pressure on them in terms of all those expectations we had in 2015 and 2016, no, you couldn't do that.

So you had to do it slightly differently.

Didn't lose the expectation of who we are, you know, but obviously just make sure you just do it differently and look who's in front of you.

Lead them.

Toughest opponent.

Yeah, I get asked this a lot.