The story of ‘The Bus Stop’

The importance of Rugby

“Rugby for me has been a big part of my life growing up, watching the All Blacks. I’ve seen how it can change an environment. Every Saturday you have a whole community come to your rugby games and that’s where the love of the sport grows. My parents, my family are there for that short 80 minutes and you meet a lot of people.”

His failure in Canterbury

“I didn’t make the Canterbury ITM team and that’s when I started putting on heaps of weight. I was just eating, drinking, I was pretty depressed about how I didn’t make the team. My parents told me, ‘Get back into rugby, don’t waste your talent.’”

Becoming a prop

“Meeting Mike Casey, that’s where it all started. I learned the basics of scrumming, what a tighthead or loosehead does. They told me I needed to lose the weight. I didn’t know how technical a scrum could be and there’s more to a scrum than any other players will know. The tight five know, but there’s more than just pushing forwards and backwards! Your position, your body height, just using your body weight as well if you have it. It’s all technical. I started putting in the hard yards and never missed a training session with Mike. I wrote in my book every day, and they mentored me into being the player I am today. ”

The death of his sister

“When my sister passed away, it was a big loss for me. I didn’t want to get distracted from rugby or get pulled away, but she has helped me push so far in this game. I reckon she has pushed me to my limits in games. I write her name on my wrist, and when everything gets hard for me in a game I look down at my wrist, I look at her name and I need to do more, run more, tackle harder. Her passing away was really sad for me and my family, but I remember one of my coaches told me, ‘Why don’t you use that as a motivation for you to get places?’ I guess I turned all the hate, the sadness, and put it all into my rugby game. It’s still hard but I take each day as it comes.”

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