Seamus Marten

No.

The role of a manager is such an interesting one because it's a social but lonely existence.

And by no means is the all-whites beast anywhere near the all-blacks beast.

But there are little things I could imagine that would chip away.

I mean, you're a constant across 20 years and you've got coaches coming and going.

You've got players coming and going.

You're constantly having to build new relationships and start from scratch.

It's really...

It makes sense to me that it would erode your sense of who you are and what you're doing, plus all the time you've got alone to think and reflect.

I can't think of a comparable job to what you do in terms of a manager of a sporting organisation moving around the world for so many months of the year.

That's nice.

That's nice.

Yeah, I was curious, because do people come and just want the All Blacks playbook and expect they can get all the guidelines, drop it in your lap, and then you will be as successful as you are?

Welcome to the club.

Yeah.

The soft skills in particular and the ability to...

read a situation or it was explained to me by another member of support staff and it didn't really make sense at the time but I've kind of reflected on it makes way more sense is that the support staff or however you want to place it are like the night sky and the players are the stars and everyone sees that but the dark matter in between is what the support staff does to allow the stars to shine and it was interesting listening to you say how if you take away

the players need to do everything, you're crippling them in a way.

And I feel like in our sport, sometimes in football, perhaps there's an over-pandering to that, which has depowered some of the players to be able to make some of those decisions or to stand on their own two feet when difficult moments come in games or in life.

I've heard you use that number analogy, I think it's Sam Whitelock's last test, where he was number 19, and it was about being the best number 19 the All Blacks had ever seen, or he could be, versus the best number four, and not starting.