# #75 | Brad Thorn | All Blacks Culture, 4x NRL Premierships & World Cup Pressure

An episode of [Backstage with Cooper & Matty Johns](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1729949087), 1 Feb 2026, 1 h 20 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/d7a60aed-0ec1-4a17-9f87-b248003b7796/cc346575-8358-4fc4-9bdd-b3e4003affb7/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=676e8df2-b284-47a4-9fbd-b248003b77ad

Brad Thorn joins us for a deep dive into winning, pressure and elite sporting culture. From the ’98 Kangaroos tour and Wayne Bennett to All Blacks standards, SBW, Carter v Lockyer and World Cup glory. A rare look at mindset, anxiety, leadership and why the job — always — is to win. Brad Thorn Book - Check It Out Below https://www.booktopia.com.au/champions-do-extra-brad-thorn/book/9781775542735.html Subscribe, Watch, and Follow Catch the full episode on YouTube and stay updated by following us on social media: Linktree: Backstage with Cooper & Matty Contact Us For any enquiries, email us at: contact@johnsmedia.com.au Timestamps 0:00-Welcome Brad Thorn 5:30-Australian Tour 98’ 9:00-Wayne Bennett & Craig Bellamy 14:00-Alfie Langer 16:00-Kelvin Giles 18:00-Broncos Success 25:30-High Stakes 30:00-Culture & Physical Shift 38:00-Different Games 44:00-SBW & Crusaders 46:00-Job Is To Win 49:00-All Blacks Culture 53:00-Carter v Lockyer 55:00-2011 World Cup Pressure & Success 1:01:00-Coaching 1:06:00-Anxiety 1:14:40-King Of The Ring See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: You've had the most amazing decorated career. It is phenomenal.
[0:08] Speaker 1: Twenty two year playing cool started ninety four one review
[0:11] Speaker 1: of the year. You won four nur Old titles with
[0:14] Speaker 1: the Bombs, you won Test series with the Kangaroos, Origin
[0:17] Speaker 1: Series with coins, Land, switched to Union, won everything, won
[0:20] Speaker 1: World Cups and you all blacks win rate there was
[0:22] Speaker 1: eighty five percent. We won Super Rugby titles. You won
[0:25] Speaker 1: titles in Europe, the only man in history to win
[0:27] Speaker 1: an URL title, Rugby World Cup, Super Rugby Title, Heineken Cup,
[0:31] Speaker 1: and then put on top of that all the Origin
[0:33] Speaker 1: series wins. Thorny, great to see and thanks for making
[0:36] Speaker 1: me feel like coops. We don't usually do intros, not really,
[0:44] Speaker 1: but today I'm going to make an exception because I
[0:46] Speaker 1: must say, Thorny, You've had the most amazing decorated career.
[0:51] Speaker 1: It is phenomenal. I think of anyone that's been on
[0:54] Speaker 1: a field, but they'd be Rugby legueor Rubby Union. So
[0:56] Speaker 1: for people, you know, just to let people know, because
[0:59] Speaker 1: we can't go through everything. You like, you know, your
[1:02] Speaker 1: book of your lot, war and Peace. But twenty two
[1:05] Speaker 1: year playing career started ninety four with the Bronx. You
[1:09] Speaker 1: won Rookie of the Year. You finish twenty sixteen or
[1:12] Speaker 1: forty one playing for Queensland Country after stint in Europe
[1:15] Speaker 1: with Lester Tigers. You won four NRLD titles with the Bronx.
[1:20] Speaker 1: You won Test Series with the Kangaroos, Origin Series with Queensland,
[1:24] Speaker 1: switched to Union, won everything, won World Cups with the
[1:27] Speaker 1: All Blacks. You win rate there was eighty five percent.
[1:29] Speaker 1: You won Super Rugby titles, You won titles in Europe.
[1:32] Speaker 1: You're the only man in history to win an URL title,
[1:35] Speaker 1: a Rugby World Cup, a Super Rugby title, a Heineken Cup,
[1:39] Speaker 1: and then put on top of that all the Origin
[1:40] Speaker 1: Series wins. Thorny, great to see again. Thanks for making
[1:44] Speaker 1: me feel like a what's your secret?
[1:50] Speaker 2: Thorny.
[1:51] Speaker 3: It's very easy, play with very good teams and you
[1:54] Speaker 3: win a lot of stuff. So yeah, yeah, I can.
[1:58] Speaker 3: You know, I often say that because often, you know,
[2:01] Speaker 3: if I if I have spoken in the past, I
[2:03] Speaker 3: do speaking or whatever, Often that stuff gets read out
[2:06] Speaker 3: and it's not like I play tennis or you know,
[2:10] Speaker 3: it's you're in these great teams. If you play with
[2:12] Speaker 3: Alan Langer, Steve Renuth, Glenn Lazarus and the rest of them.
[2:17] Speaker 3: If you play with Richie mccallordy and you get to
[2:20] Speaker 3: win some stuff. So do you know the thing that's
[2:24] Speaker 3: cool about it, mat is being your part in that team,
[2:28] Speaker 3: being a part of that group that get those things done.
[2:33] Speaker 3: That that's the cool part about it. And you know
[2:36] Speaker 3: you care about each other enough, and you and you
[2:40] Speaker 3: play to the potential that you have, you can have
[2:43] Speaker 3: some good days.
[2:44] Speaker 2: Thorny, Can I ask you, like when you're obviously your book,
[2:47] Speaker 2: but when you're when you're in a moment, like when
[2:50] Speaker 2: you're doing these achievements, winning Grand finals, winning World Cups,
[2:54] Speaker 2: you never really like take a moment to sit back
[2:56] Speaker 2: and think of all the achievements you're doing, I suppose
[2:59] Speaker 2: right in the book and get reliving all of those moments.
[3:02] Speaker 2: Now you must have just been like, holy shit, I've
[3:05] Speaker 2: got I've done some good stuff.
[3:07] Speaker 3: Yeah. For me, I was always like the next thing
[3:10] Speaker 3: and the next thing, just so driven from a younger age.
[3:15] Speaker 3: You know, I had a real turning point when I
[3:17] Speaker 3: was a sixteen year old with my dad, you know,
[3:20] Speaker 3: helped motivate me to get a bit of work ethic
[3:23] Speaker 3: and potential and worker that came together to get, you know,
[3:27] Speaker 3: something that was reasonable so to go through my career,
[3:31] Speaker 3: Like if I was to go back into my career,
[3:33] Speaker 3: I'd probably try and enjoy a little bit more. Yeah,
[3:38] Speaker 3: But on the other side of that, you also wonder
[3:41] Speaker 3: that's maybe that's why you got to do those things
[3:43] Speaker 3: because you were forever driven. There was forever a fire. Yeah.
[3:47] Speaker 3: I remember, you know, winning second Grand Final at the Broncos.
[3:53] Speaker 3: It must have been ninety eight. Within three weeks after
[3:58] Speaker 3: the Grand Final, I wanted to start training again and hungry.
[4:02] Speaker 3: So I guess that's the way of the competitor, and
[4:07] Speaker 3: that was built into me from birth with a very
[4:10] Speaker 3: competitive family, very similar imagine to you guys, and with
[4:14] Speaker 3: my father, my brother two years older, six foot eight guy,
[4:18] Speaker 3: when he was fully grown, just competing, and then, like
[4:24] Speaker 3: you said, Cooper, getting to a place where I finally
[4:27] Speaker 3: got to have a breath, and the last couple of
[4:31] Speaker 3: years where I've done coach first fifteen and just slaid
[4:34] Speaker 3: the pace a little bit. You're right, it has been
[4:36] Speaker 3: good to process it to think. Probably a thing I'd
[4:40] Speaker 3: say is I always dream big. I always dream big,
[4:44] Speaker 3: but not that big. And it sort of just played
[4:48] Speaker 3: out you know, I had no idea of be playing
[4:51] Speaker 3: at professionally at forty. I thought I would finish in
[4:56] Speaker 3: the North of England playing league, maybe mid thirties. So yeah,
[5:02] Speaker 3: I thank god for everything that played about.
[5:04] Speaker 1: Talking about dreaming big. We're just talking with this upstairs.
[5:07] Speaker 1: We played against each other in one of your first
[5:08] Speaker 1: ever games in ninety four Newcastle, but in ninety eight
[5:13] Speaker 1: we're in the Australian side together. I was ating this man,
[5:17] Speaker 1: as was normally the way, but anyway, nonetheless in Australian team,
[5:22] Speaker 1: I'll take Laurie just wouldn't retire. But we're sitting on
[5:27] Speaker 1: the bus and there's myself and Andrew and Nick Coseph.
[5:29] Speaker 1: And Andrew and I are trying to talk Nick Coseph
[5:31] Speaker 1: and becoming to Newcastle and he wasn't giving us anything.
[5:34] Speaker 1: So then sort of have a little skin around the
[5:36] Speaker 1: bus and you're sitting behind us, and I said, Thorny,
[5:39] Speaker 1: what's your plans the next couple of years? And you
[5:41] Speaker 1: said I'm going to play for the All Blacks one day.
[5:43] Speaker 1: And me and Joey looked at each other and went, fuck,
[5:45] Speaker 1: good luck with that, mate. But incredible that.
[5:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, that was that was never possible because the game
[5:52] Speaker 3: wasn't professional. There were rumors that the game was going
[5:54] Speaker 3: to go pro in the early nineties. Yep, And I
[5:58] Speaker 3: remember my dad had a chat around. He said, have
[6:01] Speaker 3: you get some stuff done on the league, maybe maybe
[6:04] Speaker 3: you could go back and chase that that goal and
[6:09] Speaker 3: the game to go professional ninety six. So the opportunity
[6:11] Speaker 3: did arise, and you know it was you know, it's
[6:17] Speaker 3: part of our DNA in New Zealand, one hundred and
[6:19] Speaker 3: twenty odd years of excellence. You know, you put on
[6:23] Speaker 3: the black jersey. Understand, your job is to win, you know,
[6:28] Speaker 3: and I mean that, you know, so you know there's
[6:32] Speaker 3: a pressure that comes with it. You know, that's where
[6:36] Speaker 3: you got to decide you want to put the jersey on.
[6:38] Speaker 3: The whole country is behind it. It's sort of the
[6:40] Speaker 3: big identity of us in New Zealand all around the world,
[6:43] Speaker 3: even Americans. You say that all blacks, you know. But yeah,
[6:47] Speaker 3: to to go back to you know you were talking
[6:51] Speaker 3: about this before. To have said that to you, you know,
[6:55] Speaker 3: I didn't remember that, but yeah, I guess it was
[6:59] Speaker 3: in there. On top of what that is, I was
[7:03] Speaker 3: actually also super proud to be representing Australia. In that team,
[7:07] Speaker 3: I was pretty much in awe of everyone, like Glenn
[7:11] Speaker 3: Lazarus and or Harrigan and you and your brother and
[7:14] Speaker 3: Lorie all these sort of guys, and I was very
[7:17] Speaker 3: proud to represent the country had come to. So yeah,
[7:21] Speaker 3: it's an interesting mix, you know, it's it's not necessarily
[7:25] Speaker 3: people probably haven't understood because you go hocking, you play
[7:29] Speaker 3: for them, and then then sort of like two identities.
[7:32] Speaker 3: I never heard of league when I came to Australia,
[7:35] Speaker 3: didn't know anything about it.
[7:37] Speaker 2: When did you come to Australia.
[7:38] Speaker 3: And then early four, Yeah, we're just starting from Cameravan
[7:42] Speaker 3: Park and then rental in a house and we went
[7:46] Speaker 3: to a state school and the kids played league. And
[7:49] Speaker 3: after a couple of years the family trying to of
[7:51] Speaker 3: course immigrants or whatever, we're trying to get established. After
[7:54] Speaker 3: a couple of years, Dad said you can go and
[7:57] Speaker 3: play some club weekend sport and all my mates played league.
[8:01] Speaker 3: So I went and played league and that's how that
[8:05] Speaker 3: sort of played out. But that that that when you
[8:09] Speaker 3: were born in New Zealan, you know, you it's like
[8:13] Speaker 3: as a little baby they put a computer chip in
[8:15] Speaker 3: your head and you just want to be an all
[8:17] Speaker 3: black like you've got three million now, it's probably that's
[8:20] Speaker 3: what we do. That's what we've been about, and you
[8:25] Speaker 3: know it's there's just something personal about it, you know,
[8:31] Speaker 3: so that yeah, it was. Yeah, it's interesting that I
[8:37] Speaker 3: brought that up. Then it's pretty upfront to say that.
[8:40] Speaker 2: While you're wearing Australian jo, it's very bald.
[8:43] Speaker 1: I want to talk about the first I want to
[8:46] Speaker 1: ask you about because you've come and you've gone into
[8:48] Speaker 1: some sides with massive personalities. To go into that Bronco
[8:52] Speaker 1: side in ninety four, they're looking to win three titles
[8:54] Speaker 1: in a row. You've got alf you got Kevy, you
[8:57] Speaker 1: got Pearl, you got Laza. Would be quite a cervic,
[9:01] Speaker 1: but you're waye catching. What was that like for him?
[9:04] Speaker 3: Intimidating? Yeah, but I was. I was also driven and
[9:11] Speaker 3: I wanted to be there and I wanted my shot.
[9:15] Speaker 3: I was determined to play out ten years. You know,
[9:18] Speaker 3: that's the mindset I had. I was just I get
[9:21] Speaker 3: one shot. It's you know, I know that probably sounds
[9:24] Speaker 3: cocky or whatever, but you know I was driven. I
[9:27] Speaker 3: had my father, great mother. I don't want to not
[9:30] Speaker 3: talk about her. But my father really passionate, drove me
[9:34] Speaker 3: and my brother and I was so proud to represent
[9:37] Speaker 3: Brisbane too. Imagine for Newcastle, you know, it would have
[9:42] Speaker 3: been something really special. But you know, I just loved
[9:48] Speaker 3: playing for the Broncos. When I went across to Rugby,
[9:50] Speaker 3: I had seven seasons with the clubmen. I remember saying
[9:55] Speaker 3: I won't play against this club. I actually had Craig
[9:58] Speaker 3: Bellamy give me a call and the only two thousands
[10:01] Speaker 3: around two thousand and four, I think when did he
[10:04] Speaker 3: go to the Storm was two? Yeah, so he gave
[10:07] Speaker 3: me a call because I don't know if you guys remember,
[10:09] Speaker 3: but he was our s and c. Yeah. We loved Bally,
[10:12] Speaker 3: We loved Bally meet. We love them. We have these
[10:17] Speaker 3: we're younger crew coming through and we won a title
[10:21] Speaker 3: with him. Did he go Was he there in ninety
[10:23] Speaker 3: eight or was he there the Storms? Yeah?
[10:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah he was.
[10:29] Speaker 3: So was it two titles that he was part of
[10:31] Speaker 3: or was it.
[10:31] Speaker 1: The Yeah, yeah he would have been. He would have
[10:33] Speaker 1: been there for two He went from Canberra to there.
[10:36] Speaker 3: He's done everything. He was in essence, he's a player.
[10:41] Speaker 3: He was so overqualified. I had such respect for him
[10:45] Speaker 3: because he held back until I remember the Tigers were interested.
[10:50] Speaker 3: I really cared about him, and he landed at Melbourne
[10:54] Speaker 3: and look what he have. A look at the guy,
[10:55] Speaker 3: what he's achieved.
[10:57] Speaker 1: I think even Canbra.
[10:58] Speaker 2: But he was in the last running sit camera.
[11:01] Speaker 1: He got the job. He actually got the job at Canberra,
[11:03] Speaker 1: but Cambra said, we just want to we've we got
[11:06] Speaker 1: one more interview. But I don't worry. You've got it.
[11:09] Speaker 1: Maddy Elliott, even Madda Elliot laugh at he walked in
[11:14] Speaker 1: and anyway that they rang belly out the next day
[11:16] Speaker 1: and said, I was so sorry, but we're going the
[11:20] Speaker 1: other way. I mean, what a moment. But you know
[11:21] Speaker 1: he was talking. I was talking to Billy about galling
[11:25] Speaker 1: to the Broncos and I said, what did you learn
[11:27] Speaker 1: from Wayne? And I'll ask you that in the second
[11:29] Speaker 1: thorning about Wayne and Jack played under Wayne. But he
[11:32] Speaker 1: said he remembers the first training session and went to
[11:35] Speaker 1: you Blakes and he was s and C and he said,
[11:37] Speaker 1: he said, right up, boys, let's go, let's get it.
[11:39] Speaker 1: Let's warm up right over and he said everyone's stretching,
[11:41] Speaker 1: you know, And he looked over and Alice just leaned
[11:44] Speaker 1: against the pick at fence and he looked over and
[11:47] Speaker 1: he said, I was getting more and more aggravators. He said,
[11:50] Speaker 1: after about five minutes, he said, Elf is leaning on
[11:52] Speaker 1: there talking with some old fellow and he said, I
[11:55] Speaker 1: start to walk over it ourse to give him a
[11:56] Speaker 1: bit of a serve. And Wayne grabbed me and said,
[11:59] Speaker 1: what the fuck do you think? Well, he said, I'm
[12:01] Speaker 1: going to grab alf and you know, he said, are
[12:03] Speaker 1: you just leave him alone? That's what he does. So
[12:06] Speaker 1: to be in that culture with Wayne, I mean it
[12:08] Speaker 1: can be very easily sometimes. Imagine when you got Wayne
[12:10] Speaker 1: at the starter career, you almost get spoilt a little bit.
[12:13] Speaker 3: But what influ incredible his background, you know, I think
[12:18] Speaker 3: they did Australian story and if you ever saw that,
[12:20] Speaker 3: but you know, his dad battled away I think with
[12:22] Speaker 3: alcohol or whatever, and very simmar to my father's upbringing,
[12:27] Speaker 3: and him and his brother joined the police force. He
[12:30] Speaker 3: was a policeman for a period of time, but he
[12:34] Speaker 3: took over the academy, so you could see him in
[12:36] Speaker 3: that role. That's coaching, you know, and we often we
[12:40] Speaker 3: go out there and train. But yeah, he was a winner.
[12:43] Speaker 3: He knew people hard work. Playing for your mate was massive.
[12:50] Speaker 3: Having a real pride in the Jersey. We used to
[12:52] Speaker 3: pride ourselves on winning away from home. If you needed
[12:56] Speaker 3: a tune up, He's happy to give you one. But
[12:59] Speaker 3: it was in the team. Alfie was a great balance
[13:03] Speaker 3: because he's such an alaric and he used to sit
[13:05] Speaker 3: next to me. I used to I used to battle it.
[13:09] Speaker 3: You know, I still probably do this stay with a
[13:11] Speaker 3: bit of anxiety. I used to sit right next to
[13:13] Speaker 3: the door. That's why I felt Cantor was very not
[13:16] Speaker 3: much bigger than That's the video Wayne's doing fast forward
[13:19] Speaker 3: and rewind and Alfie be going big is you know?
[13:24] Speaker 3: I used to sit there with my hat and I
[13:28] Speaker 3: just had my hat lower because I'm like, please one
[13:31] Speaker 3: ask me a question.
[13:32] Speaker 2: You know that's the worst?
[13:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, and then but what's cool to say right now?
[13:40] Speaker 3: And getting to play for the length that I did
[13:44] Speaker 3: and who I got to play with, I would I've
[13:47] Speaker 3: always said Alfie is the best I played with in
[13:50] Speaker 3: either code and cut all those sort of guys. Right. Yeah,
[13:53] Speaker 3: he couldn't tackle, he tripped, he wasn't the fittest in
[13:58] Speaker 3: the preseason, all that sort of stuff. When I say that,
[14:01] Speaker 3: what I mean is his influence on Sorry, I'm not coo.
[14:04] Speaker 3: Both need to talk to you.
[14:12] Speaker 1: About the cameras best.
[14:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, but he he just has influence over such a
[14:18] Speaker 3: long period of time. He was a winner and he
[14:21] Speaker 3: just took over in won games. And so this you know,
[14:24] Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty sending me a guy you know,
[14:28] Speaker 3: to get to the end of the career and to
[14:30] Speaker 3: play with so many great players to say, you know,
[14:33] Speaker 3: that's the biggest sort of thing I can give to
[14:36] Speaker 3: credit I can give to while he was the best.
[14:39] Speaker 3: I saw this once again just as influence and origin
[14:42] Speaker 3: and all that stuff. For me personally, that's how I
[14:44] Speaker 3: think it is the best I ever saw once again.
[14:47] Speaker 3: You know, rugby people might like that necessary, but that's
[14:50] Speaker 3: how I saw it. Alpha is the best I saw
[14:53] Speaker 3: in the both codes as far as influence on games
[14:57] Speaker 3: and just it just felt so good having him out there.
[15:01] Speaker 3: And he's you know, he's a smaller guy, but far
[15:05] Speaker 3: out as a winner for competitive for.
[15:07] Speaker 2: A young guy goes into that Broncos side with all
[15:09] Speaker 2: those champions, what was their training level like, Like what
[15:12] Speaker 2: when you when you first chat the boots off your
[15:14] Speaker 2: first training.
[15:15] Speaker 1: Session obviously when you first went there would have been
[15:17] Speaker 1: was Calvin Joels still Jesus.
[15:20] Speaker 3: First memory of Calvin is it's so cool talking about
[15:23] Speaker 3: all these memories. We're talking upstairs before even came in here.
[15:26] Speaker 3: But first memory of Calvin Giles, like you trained, you
[15:30] Speaker 3: know how they were a bet upset last year because
[15:33] Speaker 3: Madge they had smew buckets and stuff. And yeah, guys
[15:37] Speaker 3: from our era probably thinking what are people caring on
[15:40] Speaker 3: about because we used to turn. One thing about League
[15:43] Speaker 3: is you train hard. Man. It's rugby got tougher and
[15:47] Speaker 3: better as the years that I went there, more professional,
[15:50] Speaker 3: But like League was hard training and it's endurance sports.
[15:53] Speaker 3: Repeat f at sport you have to be, especially as
[15:56] Speaker 3: a bigger guy. So before training you would say you guys,
[16:00] Speaker 3: I don't know if it was down in newcasts, you
[16:01] Speaker 3: see guys try and reaching you him and there'd be
[16:04] Speaker 3: like five guys spewing before you even train. Anyway, I'm running.
[16:08] Speaker 3: We had this run that's at the Naga Reservoir. I
[16:12] Speaker 3: don't know if you heard about it, but it's tough
[16:15] Speaker 3: run out there, and this guy was running next to us,
[16:20] Speaker 3: battled away and I'm probably thinking, good, you know that's
[16:24] Speaker 3: another guy you can go for us. But m Calvin
[16:27] Speaker 3: was running next to us, and this guy was going
[16:29] Speaker 3: to stop and throw up, and Colvin's like you spew
[16:33] Speaker 3: on the run, and this guy's like running along, you know. Yeah,
[16:37] Speaker 3: so he was He was a big had a big
[16:40] Speaker 3: impact at the Broncos. You know, I guess league was
[16:44] Speaker 3: becoming so professional. A tena turner, you remember those nineties.
[16:48] Speaker 3: It's probably it's my favorite time in the league. It
[16:52] Speaker 3: was was the nineties, the guys that I watched in
[16:55] Speaker 3: the early nighties and then what I got to be
[16:57] Speaker 3: part of and against whatever. It was such a cool
[17:02] Speaker 3: game in my opinion at that time. And but yeah,
[17:06] Speaker 3: he he helped the Broncos get more professional. We had
[17:11] Speaker 3: a gym guy called Dan Baker who was world class
[17:14] Speaker 3: came in. He was really good. But yeah, Wayne, Wayne
[17:17] Speaker 3: was the dominant force. And you know, he actually has
[17:24] Speaker 3: there's a piece that comes from one of those books
[17:27] Speaker 3: that's in my book. And I sent him an email
[17:31] Speaker 3: just to thank him, and and just as I was
[17:33] Speaker 3: writing the email, just realizing how many he always liked quotes,
[17:38] Speaker 3: you know, and then you know, like winners have parties,
[17:42] Speaker 3: losers have meetings, you know, all these you know, if
[17:46] Speaker 3: you're prepare to f I you know, you prepared to prepare,
[17:51] Speaker 3: you prepared to far all these sorts of things. He
[17:54] Speaker 3: just had that all that perfect balance and we wanted
[17:58] Speaker 3: to play from Like for me the stands, he was
[18:01] Speaker 3: the general and as a player, my result was Wayne
[18:06] Speaker 3: the studying guys in the team. He has to worry
[18:08] Speaker 3: about twelve, not me. I'm going to give him even
[18:11] Speaker 3: more than what he wants for me, And I felt
[18:14] Speaker 3: good when we won for us, but also for him
[18:18] Speaker 3: as the he's our coach. I wanted him to you know,
[18:24] Speaker 3: you wanted him to get the win as well.
[18:26] Speaker 1: So you winn in ninety seven, you're sort of young
[18:29] Speaker 1: player there, really starting to step ninety eight years go
[18:32] Speaker 1: back to back and you're really established and you're in
[18:34] Speaker 1: the side. You win in two thousand, incredible win that
[18:37] Speaker 1: year without our alf retired further way through the year
[18:41] Speaker 1: the year before, sorry, and then you win on the
[18:43] Speaker 1: return in two thousand and six, which one thorny is
[18:46] Speaker 1: your best memory.
[18:48] Speaker 3: Best memory is two thousand, like you said, And it's
[18:51] Speaker 3: cool that you remember that because that was like I
[18:55] Speaker 3: just said, Alfie is the most influential that time. We transformed.
[18:59] Speaker 3: Like if you think of the ninety two ninety three
[19:02] Speaker 3: Laso came to the club for some size. They were
[19:04] Speaker 3: a smaller pack. Gil mister Tough Soldiers, great guys, gil
[19:09] Speaker 3: mister Alan Cann who was awesome, he was killing it
[19:12] Speaker 3: back then, Terry Madison, all these sort of guys. Gavin
[19:15] Speaker 3: Allen was like a bigger guy, just at one hundred
[19:18] Speaker 3: kilo and they brought Laso in and so. But they
[19:21] Speaker 3: had this awesome backline as well. So they were they
[19:24] Speaker 3: were an awesome team, but they weren't went by ninety seven.
[19:28] Speaker 3: Ninety eight was sort of like these two teams came
[19:31] Speaker 3: to groups came together, so the Gordon Tallis, Shane Wiky,
[19:36] Speaker 3: I guess myself a lockeyar whatever came together with the
[19:39] Speaker 3: Alfie and you know Kevy and the stevenof whatever. And
[19:44] Speaker 3: then two thousand was fully our crew and Keevy was
[19:48] Speaker 3: the last remnant with mc hancock and we just bashed
[19:52] Speaker 3: our way. We're just dominant that year. It was a
[19:55] Speaker 3: different style. It was a big forward pack. Petra Webke myself, Gordy,
[20:02] Speaker 3: Kevin Campion. I remember Kevin Campbell. I was so pleased
[20:05] Speaker 3: to him when he went to the Warriors because I
[20:08] Speaker 3: remember him doing a head up in the video room,
[20:10] Speaker 3: and Wayne goes, Kevin, I don't need you to do
[20:12] Speaker 3: on hit ups, mate. You got all these big boppers,
[20:15] Speaker 3: you know, and you know, so Kevin just a great man,
[20:20] Speaker 3: pump about like forty fifty tackles, you know, which was
[20:22] Speaker 3: helpful because we're big guys. And then he went to
[20:26] Speaker 3: the Warriors and he and you saw him get to
[20:27] Speaker 3: have more head ups and stuff and everyone realized how
[20:30] Speaker 3: good that he was. And he was such good with
[20:34] Speaker 3: his you know. So yeah, having all that that pack,
[20:37] Speaker 3: and then you know, to have guy like you know,
[20:40] Speaker 3: Tony Carol. Wayne said that in forty years of fort
[20:43] Speaker 3: he hadn't seen a guy hit as hard consistently in
[20:46] Speaker 3: forty years as he was unpleasant. I'm sure you probably
[20:50] Speaker 3: had to look up. It's not a nice shower run.
[20:55] Speaker 3: And when Big Windo and Lottie and then you had
[20:58] Speaker 3: for me my favorite Lucky for me, I love them
[21:02] Speaker 3: at fullback over six because he becomes your quarterback where
[21:05] Speaker 3: he's not making tackles and he can just drop off
[21:08] Speaker 3: to when or drop off to lot, but he's fully
[21:11] Speaker 3: fresh and he can just you know, do is like
[21:14] Speaker 3: a quarterback. You bring him on for attack. So the
[21:17] Speaker 3: last thing, sorry, I'm on. But the thing that was
[21:22] Speaker 3: cool in O six I felt was it was the
[21:24] Speaker 3: first time we were the underdogs. And there's when you're
[21:27] Speaker 3: when you're the competition leaders, there's a it's not an arrogance,
[21:32] Speaker 3: but it's like when you get in those great teams,
[21:36] Speaker 3: that winning mindset. It's we are good and now we're
[21:40] Speaker 3: going to show you why. You know what I mean,
[21:42] Speaker 3: And it's not built on being a dickhead. It's built
[21:45] Speaker 3: on how hard we work and whatever. It's not it's
[21:48] Speaker 3: not an arrogance. It's just a belief and whatever. When
[21:52] Speaker 3: you are the underdog like that, Melbourne side would be
[21:56] Speaker 3: some of the guys you got to play with, you know,
[22:00] Speaker 3: at the end of their careers. We're pretty darn special.
[22:03] Speaker 3: So you know, English and cam Smith and Troy and
[22:08] Speaker 3: all these they're all champion Billy slat outstanding and their
[22:13] Speaker 3: time was going to come. But to go in as
[22:15] Speaker 3: the underdogs and so it's a different mantage we were.
[22:19] Speaker 3: You know, I hadn't had that in the first three.
[22:23] Speaker 3: I love that because are right and us old off
[22:26] Speaker 3: as we're too old. Luckey's too old. We're like thirty
[22:29] Speaker 3: and thirty one and stuff. But yeah, just getting the
[22:32] Speaker 3: business done that night. It was just built on momentum.
[22:35] Speaker 3: If you remember the Bulldogs. We had Newcastle and Bulldogs
[22:39] Speaker 3: and it was built on experience of you had the
[22:42] Speaker 3: old dogs. We just knew how to just to deal
[22:45] Speaker 3: with that day.
[22:46] Speaker 2: Yes, it's funny, isn't it Like those it's where it's
[22:49] Speaker 2: always the case, particularly premierships in different eras. It's like
[22:52] Speaker 2: you guys dominated that nineties early two thousands period and
[22:56] Speaker 2: then as you guys kind of age out about to return,
[23:00] Speaker 2: you beat the Storm in a Grand Final, who then
[23:02] Speaker 2: dominate the next decade. And then you look at them
[23:06] Speaker 2: like they even sort of they beat as camera Smiths
[23:09] Speaker 2: last year, they beat Penrith in twenty twenty. Just the
[23:12] Speaker 2: young guys, they just end up going on a run.
[23:14] Speaker 2: It always is a bat and chain.
[23:16] Speaker 1: The Broncos like the Panthers are white handed to the Broncos. Yeah,
[23:19] Speaker 1: Broncos in the Grand final.
[23:20] Speaker 3: Then I think I think the thing that happened to
[23:23] Speaker 3: us with that was considered a drought back then. Six
[23:27] Speaker 3: you know one was it look like he's going down
[23:30] Speaker 3: to restless, you know.
[23:33] Speaker 1: He can't flirt with.
[23:36] Speaker 3: Sorry, just moving past that. But you know we we
[23:41] Speaker 3: didn't have that like last Grand Final where we because
[23:45] Speaker 3: you do grow from that, like the Broncos grew from
[23:47] Speaker 3: that recently. Like you said, Penrith, if you feel the
[23:51] Speaker 3: taste of falling short, that sucks, you know, and and
[23:56] Speaker 3: you the resolved builds and you bring even more and
[23:59] Speaker 3: you get pen just the outstanding you know, you get
[24:03] Speaker 3: you get the storm twenty years sort of just always
[24:07] Speaker 3: at the top of thing. For what happened with our
[24:10] Speaker 3: guys was we had a turnover and a lot of
[24:12] Speaker 3: young guys, you know, Brent Taate and Darius Boards and
[24:15] Speaker 3: all these sort of guys coming through and they hadn't
[24:18] Speaker 3: really been part of that success. There was sort of
[24:21] Speaker 3: like a six year period where the origin would come
[24:24] Speaker 3: along it would be fatigue and yeah, it was our
[24:29] Speaker 3: sort of resolve was built on enough enough one in
[24:33] Speaker 3: the sand. Unfortunately, you know, two good guys Brett Seymour
[24:37] Speaker 3: and never cost I don't know if you remember, got
[24:40] Speaker 3: moved on and uh, you know, yeah, Wayne brought Webbe,
[24:46] Speaker 3: Petra myself and and we we just had a resolve.
[24:51] Speaker 3: It's time to get business done and to beat that
[24:54] Speaker 3: Melbourne team was you know, it was it was cool
[24:59] Speaker 3: and it was cool to see them go on and
[25:01] Speaker 3: so much respect for them.
[25:04] Speaker 1: Like as I said before, you've done everything. We're talking
[25:06] Speaker 1: with the All Blacks in a second. Your won World Cups,
[25:08] Speaker 1: Mate one, Heineken Cups and everything, but state of origin football?
[25:13] Speaker 1: Where where does where does that sit? As far as
[25:15] Speaker 1: intensity and so on?
[25:18] Speaker 3: At the top. The thing that I would get asked
[25:22] Speaker 3: about this to me, the equal of it in rugby
[25:27] Speaker 3: is you know, I said, you get born in New Zealand,
[25:31] Speaker 3: you get a computer chip. Yeah. The other thing that
[25:34] Speaker 3: I didn't add on to that is as a little kid,
[25:37] Speaker 3: that chip goes in and you look. We look west.
[25:39] Speaker 3: We're not looking at Australia, We're looking at Africa South
[25:44] Speaker 3: a kid rugby means so much to them when they
[25:47] Speaker 3: get born, they get a chip in their head that
[25:49] Speaker 3: would be a spring book. They look east because it's
[25:53] Speaker 3: it's us, you know, so we when we go to me,
[25:56] Speaker 3: if I look at origin, the intensity, the pressure, just
[26:01] Speaker 3: just the weight of the history, the awesomeness of what
[26:04] Speaker 3: it is, and the and the noise. Shane Weiky was,
[26:08] Speaker 3: you know, standing ten meters away from me and laying
[26:11] Speaker 3: park or some corporate you know, whatever you want to
[26:13] Speaker 3: call it, and it wasn't facing me and I was
[26:15] Speaker 3: calling it. He couldn't hear me from ten meters away.
[26:18] Speaker 3: You've experienced that. So to be at at attitude in
[26:23] Speaker 3: South Africa, got to understand rugby is it's a heavyweight division.
[26:27] Speaker 3: It's with big it's big men. I was lighter in
[26:31] Speaker 3: the league than I was in Union. I could be
[26:33] Speaker 3: my natural sort of size of one eighteen, you know,
[26:36] Speaker 3: you know I could be that. You know when you
[26:38] Speaker 3: feel you're strong in power in league, especially when I
[26:43] Speaker 3: went back a second though, I had to trim and
[26:46] Speaker 3: I felt all fit and good and I was playing
[26:48] Speaker 3: good footy, but it wasn't the same power you know
[26:51] Speaker 3: when you feel at your weight. But yeah, so it's
[26:53] Speaker 3: a big man's game. There's big dudes everywhere, you know.
[26:57] Speaker 3: And when you play the spring box, say loftus betoy,
[27:01] Speaker 3: it's a heavyweight title fight. That's the best way to describe.
[27:04] Speaker 3: But they never worried about You never hear the spring
[27:07] Speaker 3: bots talk about, oh the huck is not fair, blah
[27:09] Speaker 3: blah blah. There's eighty one hundred odd years of us
[27:12] Speaker 3: going at it, the two of us, and we meet
[27:15] Speaker 3: in the middle, you know, like in UFC. You know
[27:17] Speaker 3: that last ten seconds sometimes you know, when you hear
[27:19] Speaker 3: that clapping of the thing, you'll see them that's go
[27:23] Speaker 3: in the middle. It's sort of like that. We know
[27:26] Speaker 3: what we're bringing, they know what they're bringing. Which if
[27:28] Speaker 3: you think about our origin, it's very similar. We meet
[27:31] Speaker 3: in the middle and we swing.
[27:32] Speaker 1: And.
[27:34] Speaker 3: That is to me a similar thing to start of origin.
[27:39] Speaker 3: It's a different game. You know, we have our power
[27:42] Speaker 3: stuff in rugby, power scrummaging nine hundred kilo against each other,
[27:46] Speaker 3: trying to crush, you know, each other, you know, mauling
[27:50] Speaker 3: whatever the defensive lines at the last feet. That's what
[27:53] Speaker 3: allows the size to be there. League is such a
[27:58] Speaker 3: hard game. But yeah, so that's that's the connection if
[28:01] Speaker 3: you wanted to look at the two games. And yeah,
[28:05] Speaker 3: it was cool. Last thing I say on that is
[28:09] Speaker 3: I had a test match there at Nelson Mandela Stadium
[28:13] Speaker 3: in Soweto, which is the poor area in joe Bergen,
[28:17] Speaker 3: ninety four thousand people before our third test and we
[28:22] Speaker 3: won it on the last minute and I remember they
[28:26] Speaker 3: sung their anthem it's an awesome anthem South Africa. Yeah,
[28:31] Speaker 3: it's awesome. And it was the first time where I
[28:36] Speaker 3: was usually I'm just game made. I respect the anthem,
[28:40] Speaker 3: I respect the hakka, but I'm all about first action
[28:44] Speaker 3: and whatever. I'm standing there in ninety four thousand and
[28:47] Speaker 3: singing the opposition anthem and it forced me to smile.
[28:51] Speaker 3: I just had to because it's just like, how good
[28:54] Speaker 3: is this ninety four thousand singing that awesome anthem and
[28:58] Speaker 3: we're about to get it on and just energy could
[29:01] Speaker 3: not hear the hacker. That's why I always stood at
[29:04] Speaker 3: the back, you know, you know, because the noise was
[29:08] Speaker 3: so crazy, you know, and you know it's good times.
[29:12] Speaker 1: When you were when it went to Union two thousand
[29:14] Speaker 1: and one. Thorny oftentimes whether these comments are accurate, but
[29:20] Speaker 1: some league you say they go across Sammy Bird just
[29:23] Speaker 1: said and just felt like he wasn't accepted, particularly at
[29:26] Speaker 1: first he wasn't received. Well, is it the same with you?
[29:30] Speaker 3: They were trying hard to help me, but everything's just different,
[29:37] Speaker 3: you know, she got the Australian New Zealand culture slightly different,
[29:41] Speaker 3: you know, League. You know, League can have a harshness
[29:45] Speaker 3: about it, but Banta, you know it's a spade a spade.
[29:50] Speaker 3: Even from my under thirteenes, You've got some math and
[29:56] Speaker 3: it's a tough game played by tough you know people,
[30:00] Speaker 3: and there's so much awesome. I don't I'm not putting
[30:03] Speaker 3: a leg down at all. I love it. I love
[30:06] Speaker 3: the people in rugby league. But that's a culture and rugby.
[30:09] Speaker 3: We're a rural country in New Zealand. It's rural. So
[30:13] Speaker 3: you come from a lot of farm boys working your
[30:16] Speaker 3: milk and at three am if it's snow and doesn't matter,
[30:19] Speaker 3: you go get up. So you know, you can't be
[30:21] Speaker 3: a dickhead in a small town, you know. You know
[30:25] Speaker 3: there's connection and there's a stoicness and there's yeah so.
[30:30] Speaker 3: And then you've got the Polynesian who you know, a
[30:33] Speaker 3: lot of those guys got obviously Mary, but you've got
[30:35] Speaker 3: the Polynesians you come in and their mum and dads.
[30:38] Speaker 3: You know, they're cleaners, taxi drivers, trying to bring their
[30:44] Speaker 3: family over for more opportunity, which is exactly what my
[30:47] Speaker 3: family did coming to Australia. So grateful to Australia, you know,
[30:50] Speaker 3: but they come across. So you bring that power and
[30:53] Speaker 3: flare of the Polynesian and the stoleicness and the of
[30:56] Speaker 3: the rural you know.
[30:58] Speaker 1: Of very league here is going how it's combined. That's
[31:02] Speaker 1: very grassroots.
[31:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, excellent example. But so you know I came across
[31:08] Speaker 3: and you know some guys were stand office. Some of
[31:11] Speaker 3: the stand office guys some of my best better mates
[31:14] Speaker 3: to this day.
[31:15] Speaker 2: Is that they stand off. Is just because you come
[31:17] Speaker 2: from league. Obviously you come over as like a big deal.
[31:20] Speaker 2: You'd want so many premierships. Were they just a little
[31:21] Speaker 2: bit like who's this league? You're coming over here?
[31:24] Speaker 3: Possibly you'd have to ask them. It was. It was
[31:28] Speaker 3: so different like if I sat on the bus, there
[31:31] Speaker 3: was an order to wear you sat. So when I
[31:33] Speaker 3: went across, I played a year in the Brisbane competition
[31:37] Speaker 3: for West and then seven seasons with the Broncos with
[31:40] Speaker 3: a lot of success playing for Australia, winning titles whatever,
[31:44] Speaker 3: Simon two. So that's eight season. I went across on
[31:47] Speaker 3: my ninth season as a pro. Some guys that's their career,
[31:50] Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So and I go on
[31:53] Speaker 3: to the bus and just try and sit down somewhere
[31:55] Speaker 3: in the middle. You're going to go to the front.
[31:57] Speaker 3: You're a rookie, a new guy. You know, that's that's
[32:00] Speaker 3: their way and you have to respect you don't go in.
[32:04] Speaker 3: You know, you respect what you come into. I learned
[32:07] Speaker 3: that when I played in Japan, Island, England. Respect where
[32:11] Speaker 3: you come into, you know, and and and over time
[32:15] Speaker 3: you get understanding, a feel and if your actions are
[32:19] Speaker 3: showing good worth, you'll get respect as well, and you'll
[32:22] Speaker 3: get a feel. You understand things when we are you know,
[32:26] Speaker 3: we be on a plane and we come across to
[32:30] Speaker 3: Australia on a big might be a jumpage, and I
[32:34] Speaker 3: just get off the off the plane. The whole team
[32:36] Speaker 3: stays on the plane, the Crusaders, they wait for everyone
[32:39] Speaker 3: to get off. So I'm waiting for my bag. How
[32:42] Speaker 3: do you think I felt down there? You know? So
[32:45] Speaker 3: it was tough. I didn't know my way around town
[32:47] Speaker 3: and sometimes you know, I wouldn't know where to go
[32:50] Speaker 3: or I lived in a one bedroom apartment, you know.
[32:54] Speaker 3: So you know, they had court sessions after the games
[32:58] Speaker 3: where they get on the gas almost like a control way.
[33:01] Speaker 3: It wasn't that control And I would think, why would
[33:06] Speaker 3: I want to be stuck in the room with a
[33:07] Speaker 3: bunch of dudes. I think our footy, you know, you know,
[33:10] Speaker 3: my dad would want to go out that I had.
[33:17] Speaker 3: The cool thing was I actually gave up alcohol for
[33:20] Speaker 3: about a period of six years. I wasn't I wasn't
[33:23] Speaker 3: actually mad enough to at that time to use it properly,
[33:26] Speaker 3: you know. I was just getting mother.
[33:28] Speaker 1: Than So, yeah, that's a great tradition.
[33:34] Speaker 3: And I'm not the first and not the last, but
[33:38] Speaker 3: I remember I was I'd be drinking waters and stuff.
[33:40] Speaker 3: I remember thinking, you know, because my super power gift
[33:46] Speaker 3: as a as a drinker was I never spewed. I
[33:49] Speaker 3: could drink huge amount as a consumer, you know what
[33:51] Speaker 3: I mean by And I remember thinking, which used to
[33:58] Speaker 3: hurt me because I hangover, I had to process all
[34:00] Speaker 3: that the other you know, other guys throwing up. I'd
[34:04] Speaker 3: have the worst hair processing all this alcohol. Unfortunately, I'm
[34:09] Speaker 3: not saying that's awesome, but yeah it was. I remember
[34:13] Speaker 3: thinking in those court sessions, you know, if I, if
[34:17] Speaker 3: I was drinking, I could you know, I could be
[34:19] Speaker 3: dominant in this room, you know, but I'd sort of
[34:22] Speaker 3: made a good decision there. But a lot of the
[34:24] Speaker 3: cultural stuff was different. Guys in the team meetings really
[34:28] Speaker 3: stood out. We could say stuff that was quite sincere.
[34:32] Speaker 3: Was that the broncos? You know, if I was saying
[34:35] Speaker 3: something quite sincere, I might have elfie, give me a well,
[34:39] Speaker 3: d be all this banter and so it was different.
[34:44] Speaker 3: But do you know what wasn't different? Hard work, discipline,
[34:49] Speaker 3: caring about your mate, you know, uh, you know, sticking, playing,
[34:54] Speaker 3: putting the team first, when when teams are under pressure,
[34:58] Speaker 3: they often will get to point where they go individual
[35:02] Speaker 3: the crusades pride themselves and our working opposition saying we
[35:05] Speaker 3: do the Broncos and playing as a team, and the
[35:09] Speaker 3: collector putting the team first. So all those things were
[35:13] Speaker 3: the same. The biggest challenge was to hang in long
[35:17] Speaker 3: enough to hang in there. You've got fourteen year olds
[35:20] Speaker 3: you know more than you do. It's pretty it's very
[35:22] Speaker 3: humbling and until you finally start to get instinctive because
[35:28] Speaker 3: until then your two players behind it, or you get
[35:31] Speaker 3: to a breakdown and you're like, okay this we do
[35:33] Speaker 3: a breakdown, it's already played. Moved on. You do this,
[35:37] Speaker 3: you do you know, you can't get your line out
[35:40] Speaker 3: rugby union. If you think of it as an Olympic sport,
[35:43] Speaker 3: it's the decathlon, it's you know, it's all these different
[35:48] Speaker 3: they're not related. The lineout is nothing like power scrammaging,
[35:51] Speaker 3: you know, picking, you know, picking, go breakdown. Mauling is
[35:55] Speaker 3: like a scrum but quickly formed. The hardest one was
[35:59] Speaker 3: the kick off for seats where you take the ball
[36:02] Speaker 3: like an AFL player above your head, you know, three
[36:08] Speaker 3: four meters in the air because you've got two guys
[36:10] Speaker 3: lifting and it's rainy and windy, and you're like so
[36:13] Speaker 3: so people would say, oh, League and Union, you know,
[36:16] Speaker 3: they're getting more similar. It's like you don't understand, you know,
[36:20] Speaker 3: so you have to persevere and then finally start to
[36:26] Speaker 3: become instinctive and then and then you know, and then
[36:32] Speaker 3: you start to be able to play the game and
[36:34] Speaker 3: understand it, enjoy it, and you get worth in the team.
[36:38] Speaker 3: It's it's hard at the beginning when I had guys
[36:40] Speaker 3: looking at me and that would give me these looks keeper,
[36:43] Speaker 3: you know, like you're hurting us. Yeah, I mean and
[36:47] Speaker 3: that is a proud guy. See that hurts, you.
[36:50] Speaker 2: Know, because we see so many transitions both ways Union
[36:55] Speaker 2: and league, but it's it's mainly in the backs, like
[36:57] Speaker 2: it's very easy for us. We'll not easy, but it's
[36:59] Speaker 2: an easier transition for a wing. You see Mark and
[37:01] Speaker 2: Wogan need to He's done it the same year as
[37:03] Speaker 2: you went Wendell Saylor went, it's quite easy for those
[37:06] Speaker 2: guys because they have to deal with breakdowns and scrummaging.
[37:09] Speaker 2: But to go from forward because the Union forwards it's
[37:13] Speaker 2: not as conditioning hard, but it's so technical and you've
[37:15] Speaker 2: got to be so educated in breakdowns, lineouts and scrummaging and.
[37:19] Speaker 3: When you come out, you know, when you're it's probably
[37:22] Speaker 3: another good one to talk about. You know, the lead
[37:23] Speaker 3: people look at Union and go, oh, you know these
[37:25] Speaker 3: guys are look overweight the props and you know they
[37:29] Speaker 3: hardly take a run. But we do like the scrummagings.
[37:33] Speaker 3: Like imagine having a footy film and there's a max squat,
[37:36] Speaker 3: so you're max squat. Just set up about twenty of
[37:40] Speaker 3: them around the park and then you have to do a.
[37:44] Speaker 1: Max squat and just hold it.
[37:46] Speaker 3: Hold your max squat for say ten seconds. Now run
[37:49] Speaker 3: around and get it into your next job. Like you
[37:54] Speaker 3: have to get used to the game. And you come
[37:58] Speaker 3: out and you're lactated and you can hardly breathe, Like
[38:00] Speaker 3: when you're in the scrum you can't move a foot.
[38:02] Speaker 3: There's nine, like I said, nine hundred killers of power
[38:06] Speaker 3: and pressure. And if I don't do my job as
[38:09] Speaker 3: a tight head lock. I'm behind the tight end prop
[38:11] Speaker 3: who's like the basically the foundation of the scrum. You
[38:14] Speaker 3: destroy him, you destroy the scrum so that he's got
[38:17] Speaker 3: a guy on the outside and inside attacking him. I'm
[38:19] Speaker 3: the tight head lock, so I'm sixty seven percent of
[38:22] Speaker 3: the power comes from the back five and I'm like
[38:25] Speaker 3: the V eight under the engine. So I'm giving my
[38:27] Speaker 3: tight head everything. And he's gone to war against two
[38:30] Speaker 3: guys every time, so you can understand why you build
[38:34] Speaker 3: a really strong connection.
[38:35] Speaker 2: It's funny you say that because I saw an interview
[38:37] Speaker 2: Taniela Tupo. You must have played with him in Queensland.
[38:41] Speaker 3: I played a couple of games, just a sort of
[38:44] Speaker 3: when I was forty one. Yeah, I played a couple
[38:46] Speaker 3: just to I coached them, but I wanted to play
[38:49] Speaker 3: next to them, just to there's a fifth I just
[38:52] Speaker 3: finished playing, but I wanted to. When I say hit
[38:54] Speaker 3: a ruck, this is what I mean.
[38:56] Speaker 1: Actually.
[38:57] Speaker 3: You know when you're a senior player and you learn
[39:00] Speaker 3: learn or flaza, you know.
[39:01] Speaker 2: That sort of thing you learn the most out of
[39:03] Speaker 2: been like seeing it done. But Tela Tupo the tongue
[39:06] Speaker 2: and though big Fella and he was saying he's never
[39:09] Speaker 2: felt a ship like you must have been behind him
[39:12] Speaker 2: in the scrums and he said, I've never felt force
[39:14] Speaker 2: from behind me than when Brad Thorne's shoulder was like behind. Yeah,
[39:19] Speaker 2: you said, I've never felt a shoulder, So like.
[39:22] Speaker 3: It sounds pretty funny because it is right up the date,
[39:26] Speaker 3: but it's if you look at it's your spine you
[39:28] Speaker 3: want to be. I want to be in line with
[39:30] Speaker 3: spot his spine and uh, it's it's all cards and
[39:34] Speaker 3: you know that's how I felt. I would say to
[39:37] Speaker 3: the guys, you know, if you go, I'm going down
[39:39] Speaker 3: with you. So there's no bailing out on you and
[39:42] Speaker 3: those guys if you if you mucking around in there, guys,
[39:45] Speaker 3: can you guys break their neck or you know, like
[39:48] Speaker 3: it's a but just finishing what I said before, I
[39:52] Speaker 3: only really said the Raby side. The Raby guys look
[39:54] Speaker 3: at league and they say, oh, you do one hit
[39:56] Speaker 3: up than your rest That hit up is ten meter
[40:00] Speaker 3: hit up. You're carrying two three guys for ax cmeters.
[40:04] Speaker 3: You get to the ground there resting whatever you're working
[40:06] Speaker 3: your ass off to get up, You play the ball
[40:09] Speaker 3: and then you're moving forward. Then you've got a forty
[40:12] Speaker 3: meter kick chase. Hopefully you're getting used to be with us,
[40:15] Speaker 3: try and keep him inside the thirty. That was a win.
[40:18] Speaker 3: And then you've got shuttles. Ye, welcome to So I
[40:23] Speaker 3: remember we did some We had a league trying to
[40:26] Speaker 3: come over Ash. I've got his last name, Jones, Yeah,
[40:31] Speaker 3: Ashley James, yeah Castle yeah yeah, but I got on
[40:38] Speaker 3: one with Ash and he was a league. Yeah. I
[40:40] Speaker 3: been a Legies and that, and we did Malcolms and
[40:45] Speaker 3: and like leaguees, mate, they just fly through it, you know,
[40:49] Speaker 3: up and that's a bread and butter, up and down, up,
[40:51] Speaker 3: repeat effort. And the rugby guys, you know there's a
[40:56] Speaker 3: part one of them where you run backwards and they
[40:58] Speaker 3: were just you know, battle with it, and me being
[41:02] Speaker 3: a bigger guy, even in the rugby team, I was
[41:05] Speaker 3: doing it quite well. It just there's this difference, is there.
[41:08] Speaker 3: So so the rugby people when they watch league just
[41:11] Speaker 3: understand that is a tough game. I could never play
[41:15] Speaker 3: eighty minutes of league only when I was younger and
[41:18] Speaker 3: I was one hundred and three killer whatever. But as
[41:20] Speaker 3: a big guy, I played minutes and then you know
[41:23] Speaker 3: I got rest or whatever. Guy like Glenna that Lazwiez
[41:25] Speaker 3: was a freak. Paint House is the modern day Lazo
[41:28] Speaker 3: in my opinion, Yeah, the freak freak as engine. Lazo
[41:31] Speaker 3: was similar, like he was a free two hit ups
[41:33] Speaker 3: and say sex all that. And then the thing I
[41:36] Speaker 3: say to the league people is with the union, just
[41:38] Speaker 3: understand it's it's like going into the seas, you know,
[41:44] Speaker 3: at the bottom of Australia and New Zealand.
[41:45] Speaker 1: There's big animals out there on the run.
[41:50] Speaker 3: And you feel, you know, the mauling and all this
[41:52] Speaker 3: sort of stuff you're feeling like in this if I
[41:56] Speaker 3: go back to the scrum, I can feel if the
[41:58] Speaker 3: loose head's getting dominance even though he's over that side
[42:01] Speaker 3: the hooker. I can feel the tightness. I can feel
[42:04] Speaker 3: my locks, you know, so I can feel everything going on,
[42:07] Speaker 3: and sometimes I can feel where it just becomes me
[42:10] Speaker 3: and my tight head sorry, and the hooker and the
[42:12] Speaker 3: loose had are coming at him and almost like it's
[42:15] Speaker 3: almost like in a movie. You know, when there's the
[42:17] Speaker 3: spotlight in a movie on a certain part and it's
[42:20] Speaker 3: just war. So what I'm saying is for the league
[42:24] Speaker 3: people watching rugby, it's got its Rugby's got its own things,
[42:29] Speaker 3: and it is a physical game. At the top level,
[42:32] Speaker 3: you get over that ball. We are flying in horizontal,
[42:36] Speaker 3: trying to waste.
[42:38] Speaker 1: The change like culturally and going into as you said,
[42:42] Speaker 1: you did it and you had to. You weren't there
[42:44] Speaker 1: trust And I suppose going across to it, you know,
[42:47] Speaker 1: is that you gather, you know, you get, you get pressed,
[42:50] Speaker 1: and you know he's coming across and sometimes plays that
[42:53] Speaker 1: they can resent that. Then you as you're established and
[42:56] Speaker 1: you start to become a senior player, Sunny Bill Williams
[42:59] Speaker 1: comes across. How how and now Sunny when he came across,
[43:02] Speaker 1: I could only imagine it was like it was like crazy,
[43:05] Speaker 1: it was a circus. I went, how did how did
[43:08] Speaker 1: the how did you see your players handle that? What
[43:13] Speaker 1: the how was Sunny receive?
[43:15] Speaker 3: I know, for me personally, it was Sonny when he
[43:18] Speaker 3: came to the Crusaders. The way I saw it was,
[43:21] Speaker 3: I'd come across and there were guys in the Crusaders
[43:24] Speaker 3: who really looked out for me, Guys like Todd Blackadder
[43:26] Speaker 3: and all Maxwell Greek Fig different guys. You probably won't
[43:29] Speaker 3: know them, but I really appreciated that. I wanted to
[43:32] Speaker 3: make sure now I was entrenched a league guys coming in.
[43:37] Speaker 3: I wanted to be as encouraging as support as possible,
[43:40] Speaker 3: so you know, it was great to have him in there.
[43:44] Speaker 3: Such an athlete, such a Rolls Royce of you know,
[43:49] Speaker 3: he's got that awesome ability and physique.
[43:53] Speaker 1: But those Blake likes, let's say Tony like, let's say
[43:55] Speaker 1: a bloke like Richie mccaor and Dan Carter the last season,
[43:59] Speaker 1: hard professionals, you know, and they've dedicated their whole lives
[44:05] Speaker 1: to it. You know, how did they feel? And sunny
[44:07] Speaker 1: coming across and getting big headlines. But it was a
[44:09] Speaker 1: little bit like, hey on a second mate, you got
[44:11] Speaker 1: to prove yourself.
[44:13] Speaker 3: I think I think we liked having in the team.
[44:16] Speaker 3: And the thing about Sonny is he will show you
[44:19] Speaker 3: his worth. You know, he's very hard trainer. You know,
[44:25] Speaker 3: he's aspirational. Look at the guy went in, did boxing?
[44:29] Speaker 3: Did you league? Did union? I love that. I love
[44:33] Speaker 3: when these guys have a crack And basically that's all
[44:35] Speaker 3: I did. It's just have You know, when I came
[44:38] Speaker 3: across to Raby that first time, you know, when I
[44:42] Speaker 3: considered a success was the moment I signed, So I
[44:46] Speaker 3: hadn't even gone across it because what I felt was
[44:49] Speaker 3: I didn't want to be an old man and have
[44:51] Speaker 3: that question. Could I have You know what if I
[44:54] Speaker 3: grown up in New z Owne, we never meet Australia
[44:55] Speaker 3: would have been good enough? Or you know what if
[44:58] Speaker 3: I've gone back to union and then becoming all back
[45:01] Speaker 3: so at least I don't know, you know, and if
[45:05] Speaker 3: I failed, fine, listay it didn't work whatever. So uh,
[45:10] Speaker 3: you know, guys like Sunny coming to the Crusaders, I
[45:13] Speaker 3: think he'd had two three years you've been in France
[45:15] Speaker 3: whatever and his I think he had an MPC, which
[45:18] Speaker 3: is a really good building. Yeah, it's just like the
[45:21] Speaker 3: National colp, which is a really good place to continue
[45:24] Speaker 3: to great a game, and he was. We had a
[45:27] Speaker 3: special team that year went all the way and we
[45:31] Speaker 3: just I don't if you remember, but we had an earthquake,
[45:33] Speaker 3: we had games, went to London, had to come back
[45:36] Speaker 3: from Africa and just Scot pipped in the final.
[45:39] Speaker 1: So yeah, playing the all back like you're used to
[45:43] Speaker 1: pressure because Brisbane Bronco is about pressure. You know, if
[45:46] Speaker 1: you play for Brisbane you come second where most of
[45:48] Speaker 1: teams go. That's a great season, brock as go failure
[45:52] Speaker 1: to play for the All Blacks in World Cups, like
[45:54] Speaker 1: like two thousand and three getting beat by the Aussies
[45:56] Speaker 1: in the semi finals.
[45:57] Speaker 3: Like yeah, how it was a tough week.
[46:01] Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, I can the whole country.
[46:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's what we do and our job is
[46:06] Speaker 3: to win. Like I you know, I said at the beginning,
[46:09] Speaker 3: so when you put the jersey, I understand that a
[46:13] Speaker 3: job is to win. Some guys that pressure can crush them,
[46:17] Speaker 3: you know, some guys they thrive. For me, I loved it,
[46:20] Speaker 3: you know, coming into the Broncos as a nineteen year old.
[46:24] Speaker 3: Do you remember we had the Q two memories.
[46:27] Speaker 1: What a prick of the ground to play for.
[46:31] Speaker 3: Well had a you know sometimes I'd go out there
[46:33] Speaker 3: and I'd see teams already beaten, just sense it. You know.
[46:37] Speaker 3: That's where we were good. But at nineteen I had
[46:41] Speaker 3: to work out how do I handle playing in front
[46:43] Speaker 3: of fifty thousand in a two time title winning team,
[46:47] Speaker 3: you know, with these legends and Shane was the same
[46:51] Speaker 3: week kid and young guys coming in and you know
[46:55] Speaker 3: that prepares you for it gets to a space where
[46:59] Speaker 3: you need I need the pressure. You know, it's it's
[47:03] Speaker 3: like a drug. You know, the worst thing I can have.
[47:06] Speaker 3: I've always said I can you can love me or
[47:11] Speaker 3: you can hate me, but as long as you're there,
[47:13] Speaker 3: you know I need to know. So hate me. In
[47:15] Speaker 3: Africa they still boomy in whatever. I was the bad guy,
[47:18] Speaker 3: you know, love me somewhere whatever. But you want that pressure,
[47:22] Speaker 3: you want that big occasion your whole body comes to life.
[47:25] Speaker 3: So that's in the All Blacks as a senior guy.
[47:29] Speaker 3: Kevin Milami. I don't know if you heard of Kevy Great.
[47:32] Speaker 3: He's basically the Petro of New Zealand rugby. Just absolute
[47:36] Speaker 3: golden people, softest guys, but concrete him and I used
[47:40] Speaker 3: to mentor the young guys who'd come into the All
[47:43] Speaker 3: Blacks if you hadn't had three series. So we'd have
[47:47] Speaker 3: say June as they come down, have a try Nations,
[47:51] Speaker 3: and then to at the end of the year in November. Ye,
[47:54] Speaker 3: so that would equate the three things. You would meet
[47:57] Speaker 3: with me and Kevy every two three weeks we'd have
[48:00] Speaker 3: a coffee. You might be four or five guys and
[48:03] Speaker 3: we just see how you're going, trying to build them
[48:05] Speaker 3: into the belief that hey, you got picked for a reason,
[48:09] Speaker 3: you belong here. We want you to to do great
[48:13] Speaker 3: things here, you know, so to to you know, just
[48:17] Speaker 3: to see how they're going and to encourage. You would
[48:19] Speaker 3: see guys like a Jerome Kanno who it was in
[48:22] Speaker 3: the All Blacks. You know, he's just doing this thing
[48:26] Speaker 3: and then finally, you know, that belief comes in. You'll
[48:28] Speaker 3: see that in teams. Yeah, And you know, a guy
[48:32] Speaker 3: gets belief, he gets an understanding, he feels you know,
[48:37] Speaker 3: a connection with the guys and that respect and you
[48:40] Speaker 3: see him. What we all want is just to see
[48:42] Speaker 3: him play to his potential. So that's the challenge and
[48:45] Speaker 3: like I said in the All Blacks sometimes that can
[48:47] Speaker 3: crush guys. Me and Kevy was our sort of job
[48:50] Speaker 3: to try and you know, encourage him along.
[48:53] Speaker 2: The All Blacks to meet It seems like it seems
[48:56] Speaker 2: like to me it's always been the apex of like
[48:58] Speaker 2: culture leadership and mine set in sport. They seem like
[49:01] Speaker 2: a kind of They used to come over when I
[49:03] Speaker 2: was at the Storm quite a bit and just take
[49:05] Speaker 2: they take pieces, always wanting to get better from as
[49:08] Speaker 2: many different sports and teams as possible.
[49:10] Speaker 3: They had a lot of respect for the Storm. I
[49:11] Speaker 3: know that Wayne Smith, I think had a good connection
[49:14] Speaker 3: with Craig Bell. Yeah, do they for you?
[49:17] Speaker 2: Being a part of like so many champion teams. When
[49:20] Speaker 2: you look at the All Blacks in that sense of
[49:23] Speaker 2: leadership culture mindset, is that the apex for you?
[49:28] Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, like far out settling up next to the Webby,
[49:34] Speaker 3: like we talked about a sex Shane Webki on one
[49:36] Speaker 3: side of me, great man Petro on the other far out.
[49:41] Speaker 3: You know, I think we've all got pet Webby might
[49:45] Speaker 3: have three kids, Petro has got four. I got four.
[49:49] Speaker 3: You know, you got luck, You've got these other guys there.
[49:52] Speaker 3: Like I said before, Alfie, it was pretty special that
[49:56] Speaker 3: rock environment to be in origin to play a frustrate
[50:00] Speaker 3: next to these great guys like Lori Darty and these guys.
[50:03] Speaker 3: I don't want to take away from that, because they
[50:06] Speaker 3: were groups of men that demanded success as well, you know,
[50:11] Speaker 3: and earned the right to achieve that. In the All Blacks,
[50:16] Speaker 3: you've got to remember, yep, we've got that, you know,
[50:19] Speaker 3: one hundred odd years of performance and you know we
[50:23] Speaker 3: take it seriously in the way of the nation's on us.
[50:25] Speaker 3: But we've been falling short in World Cups. We had
[50:29] Speaker 3: a twenty four years drought from ninety seven, the first
[50:31] Speaker 3: one to eleven.
[50:33] Speaker 1: That incredible.
[50:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, so when it mattered, when it mattered, what would
[50:37] Speaker 3: happen is we play this attractive Rugby all Blacks show.
[50:41] Speaker 3: You know, we pack out stadiums in Europe or whatever.
[50:44] Speaker 3: You get to World Cup. It's a different it's a
[50:47] Speaker 3: different game. You've got your four round robin that can
[50:50] Speaker 3: almost put you in a sense of that can sometimes
[50:52] Speaker 3: not help you. You kicking, kicking big scores, you know whatever.
[50:56] Speaker 3: For me, that meant nothing. Two thousand level that wasn't
[51:00] Speaker 3: interested in it. I was interested in the build. For me,
[51:04] Speaker 3: it became business time first quarter final and I kept
[51:07] Speaker 3: For me personally, it was like thank you, I come
[51:09] Speaker 3: to life. Something's on the line here and like I
[51:12] Speaker 3: said before, from a nineteen year old part front of
[51:14] Speaker 3: fifty thousand, that's in my DNA and you know I
[51:17] Speaker 3: almost I need that. Yea. That's when I it's like
[51:21] Speaker 3: I can breathe.
[51:22] Speaker 1: You know.
[51:22] Speaker 3: Now there's pressure. I know that I understand it. And
[51:26] Speaker 3: that group of guys we were determined to get something done.
[51:30] Speaker 3: And you know we're down to our fourth number ten
[51:33] Speaker 3: in the final, which is Stephen Donald came out, Dan
[51:38] Speaker 3: Carter went down, you know, Aaron Cruden whatever. So Richie
[51:43] Speaker 3: had an injury, he couldn't train with the team. He
[51:45] Speaker 3: was just out there. And the best part about that was,
[51:49] Speaker 3: you know, the game was won eight seven against the French.
[51:53] Speaker 3: And I'll forever have respect for those Frenchmen. They were
[51:57] Speaker 3: played so proud for their country and they brought every
[52:00] Speaker 3: everything they had. And uh and for what you know,
[52:04] Speaker 3: for a long time, the All Blacks learned how to
[52:06] Speaker 3: win ugly. And it was ugly. It was unpleasant, it
[52:09] Speaker 3: was there's a yuck feeling. But it was just the
[52:12] Speaker 3: same thing you know in Origin, keep turning up for
[52:15] Speaker 3: your mate to play what's in front of you. Uh
[52:18] Speaker 3: and and and who wants it more? And and uh
[52:22] Speaker 3: you know we got that result that day. But yeah,
[52:25] Speaker 3: I don't want to take away from league so many
[52:27] Speaker 3: special leaders and teams to be part of that All
[52:30] Speaker 3: Black Yeah, it has an aura.
[52:32] Speaker 2: What's what's Dean Carter like as a as a leader
[52:35] Speaker 2: and a trainer? Like what's he about him?
[52:38] Speaker 3: You know, it's cool talking about it because you know,
[52:42] Speaker 3: I said Petro was the Ossie version of Kevy. Lucky
[52:47] Speaker 3: to me is the Ossie version of Dan. The difference
[52:51] Speaker 3: the big difference with Dan and what separates Dan Carr
[52:54] Speaker 3: and Dan Locket Darren Locket. I got the pleasure of
[52:56] Speaker 3: playing with both of them. The difference is about ten killer.
[53:00] Speaker 3: Dan's like ninety three country boy. Lockie is a country
[53:06] Speaker 3: boy from Roma. Dan's from south I used to call
[53:09] Speaker 3: him a Southbridge bogan. You know, I'm I'm the third
[53:12] Speaker 3: generation bog.
[53:13] Speaker 1: Himself, but six generation. Don't worry about to be seven good?
[53:20] Speaker 3: How good? He's really great mate, but he's a country
[53:26] Speaker 3: boy from Southbridge. And so Dan and uh Lockey had
[53:32] Speaker 3: all these great kicking game competitors, you know, their ballplay,
[53:39] Speaker 3: incredible instinct to run. But with Dan having that like
[53:44] Speaker 3: Lockie was like early days eighty three killer, I think
[53:47] Speaker 3: he got to eighty five, euty six. Uh you know,
[53:51] Speaker 3: having that power that size from Dan made it is
[53:54] Speaker 3: a tough defender. Could get over the ball, you know,
[53:58] Speaker 3: getting over the ball in rugby, you got guys like
[54:01] Speaker 3: me trying to kill you. You know, we see ten,
[54:04] Speaker 3: you know the main ballplayer we are trying to destroy you.
[54:07] Speaker 3: You know he would he's a very good defender. So
[54:11] Speaker 3: he got a strong defender at ten and he'd run
[54:15] Speaker 3: hard and whereas Lucky didn't have that that side to
[54:22] Speaker 3: his game. Not taking away from an absolute champion of
[54:25] Speaker 3: the game, but to me, that's the difference personality. Why
[54:28] Speaker 3: similar quite quite a guys, but could be loose, you know,
[54:34] Speaker 3: I mean they are having a good time, you know,
[54:37] Speaker 3: similar like that, those sort of guys, you know, they
[54:40] Speaker 3: get zeroed in amount of attention and pressure. You can understand,
[54:46] Speaker 3: you know, that balance from.
[54:48] Speaker 1: Bad pressure before And I remember we interviewed Eddie Jones
[54:54] Speaker 1: and I said to Eddie, what's one of the biggest
[54:56] Speaker 1: challenges with the English rugby union side as far as
[54:58] Speaker 1: the other big tournaments. There's a tendency of late to underachieve.
[55:02] Speaker 1: And he said the pressure that's applied through tabloids. He said,
[55:05] Speaker 1: the pressure is just huge. When you won in twenty eleven,
[55:08] Speaker 1: finally you won it, what was the sensation was it
[55:13] Speaker 1: like pure joy? Was it relief? A bit of both?
[55:18] Speaker 3: Similar Like when we won those I said, those first
[55:20] Speaker 3: three Bronco titles and then we hit we were the
[55:23] Speaker 3: underdogs for the Storm. It was like relief because you
[55:26] Speaker 3: are the top dominant team. Massive relief. Yeah, you know,
[55:32] Speaker 3: I was zoned in from that, Like I said, the
[55:35] Speaker 3: quarter final for three weeks. I considered that the Grand Final,
[55:38] Speaker 3: Grand Finals. You know, I'd played four for the Broncos,
[55:41] Speaker 3: four for the Crusaders and all that experience and whatever,
[55:45] Speaker 3: and you have to with the quarter of the semi
[55:48] Speaker 3: the final. You don't need to bullshit. It's still a die,
[55:52] Speaker 3: so you can be thinking about that. In two thousand
[55:54] Speaker 3: and seven, they had a plan for the semi final.
[55:57] Speaker 3: Guess what, You're going home after the quarter So you
[56:00] Speaker 3: have to have a Grand Final mindset because it's all
[56:04] Speaker 3: or nothing, So save anything for the next week. You
[56:07] Speaker 3: but you got to earn the right to be there.
[56:08] Speaker 3: For me. I've got like for me, which I appreciate.
[56:12] Speaker 3: I've got like a gift where I just see nothing
[56:14] Speaker 3: past my I just see blackness. I've always had that
[56:18] Speaker 3: where until the minute after they win that quarter final,
[56:23] Speaker 3: then it's like on a video game, you know, to
[56:25] Speaker 3: unlock another thing.
[56:27] Speaker 1: That's a great gift.
[56:29] Speaker 3: Yeah. So so yeah, you've got to You've got to,
[56:34] Speaker 3: you know, front on each one of those. And but
[56:37] Speaker 3: by the time I got to the final, won out
[56:40] Speaker 3: and I wake up that morning, it's crook, and some
[56:45] Speaker 3: things didn't go our way with the line out, you
[56:48] Speaker 3: know where I think we kicked two from seven. P
[56:50] Speaker 3: had heard his growing so we couldn't build score repression,
[56:54] Speaker 3: like I said the French as the French always do,
[56:58] Speaker 3: like I said, oh my, I'll salute the French. I
[57:02] Speaker 3: love the Balot. But when we won that game, for me,
[57:06] Speaker 3: it was like walking away from a car crash. Wow,
[57:09] Speaker 3: just absolute, like in shock of just the pressure and
[57:14] Speaker 3: the weight. And you know, being the oldest guy. That
[57:17] Speaker 3: was my last test for the All Blacks game number
[57:20] Speaker 3: sixty fifty nine tests and everything was on the line.
[57:23] Speaker 3: I was the most senior guy, and you know, all
[57:28] Speaker 3: that came out. I felt on my knees. You know,
[57:30] Speaker 3: I'd seen guys like melmanning a memory and crying at
[57:33] Speaker 3: eighty nine and different guys, and I felt on my
[57:36] Speaker 3: knees bawling, and all that energy came out. And I
[57:40] Speaker 3: didn't have to with the All Blacks because of the
[57:45] Speaker 3: two thousand and seven teenth where they went out in
[57:49] Speaker 3: the quarters. They had like a review, that six month
[57:52] Speaker 3: review the next year, and that there was a bit
[57:54] Speaker 3: of baggage those guys. For me, I felt I had
[57:57] Speaker 3: to show strength around the team, like instead of just
[58:01] Speaker 3: in the game, even just in general. I'm always putting
[58:04] Speaker 3: on like a front, not over the top, but just
[58:07] Speaker 3: it wasn't until I go back to my room and
[58:11] Speaker 3: I get to just just and just be myself. And
[58:16] Speaker 3: I remember in that twenty eleven, in that three weeks,
[58:19] Speaker 3: I remember I had I didn't like the nighttime because
[58:21] Speaker 3: I had heart palpitations. So that's the I haven't heard
[58:24] Speaker 3: that before. Well that's where your heart like flotters a bit. Yeah,
[58:28] Speaker 3: and it was just the it was just the NonStop
[58:31] Speaker 3: pressure of you know, being around that. But yeah, we
[58:36] Speaker 3: got the job done. Was it until the next day
[58:39] Speaker 3: where we you know, went out celebrated two hundred and
[58:43] Speaker 3: fifty thousand Auckland has come out, And finally I got
[58:47] Speaker 3: to feel some elation and joy and shame for Richie.
[58:50] Speaker 3: He was exactly the same he you know, he felt similar.
[58:54] Speaker 2: And then you know, so where does that in comparison
[58:57] Speaker 2: to like a mad Monday NRL setup after you win
[59:00] Speaker 2: a Grand Final, winning winning a World cut. How does
[59:04] Speaker 2: that compare?
[59:05] Speaker 3: Is it?
[59:05] Speaker 2: Do they celebrate?
[59:06] Speaker 1: I imagine a lot.
[59:07] Speaker 3: Of So it was such relief from the bottom of
[59:11] Speaker 3: the South Oland to the top to expats around the world.
[59:15] Speaker 3: It was just a relief and you know, you heard
[59:18] Speaker 3: about people just crying and yelling in the street, Like
[59:22] Speaker 3: we would getting the bus at the hotel the Heritage
[59:25] Speaker 3: in the middle of Walklord and we'd go out to
[59:27] Speaker 3: Eden Park and it was lined up. I'd be in
[59:30] Speaker 3: the bus with you know, you know, oh minute, I'd
[59:33] Speaker 3: have tears, you know, rolling down my face just before
[59:36] Speaker 3: the game. You know, you see the rgs and that
[59:38] Speaker 3: that the friends who get passionate. Yeah, I had tears
[59:40] Speaker 3: rolling down my face just they were They're basically saying
[59:45] Speaker 3: we're with you, and you know, the celebration probably was
[59:50] Speaker 3: crazy for everyone. I was a thirty six year old
[59:53] Speaker 3: father of four. Like I said, I that fell that
[59:57] Speaker 3: pressure and I actually went to bed, you know, with
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: my wife, and you know, within three days I was
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: going to Japan. I played two weeks later, I believe
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: it or not, and it was and you know, when
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: they had that nucolor problem two weeks later, I was
[1:00:15] Speaker 3: one hundred kilometers away from there, playing a Japanese team
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: with about three thousand people win a fifty thousand crowd stadium,
[1:00:25] Speaker 3: just thinking what the heck am I doing?
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: Not necessarily shit out Thoughty, I mean, all the things
[1:00:32] Speaker 1: you've done European Rugby. You just everywhere you went, your
[1:00:36] Speaker 1: win finish at forty one, going into coaching, coaching as
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: far as rewards and pressure, how does that competer playing?
[1:00:46] Speaker 3: It's the second to play. Nothing is better. Yeah, it
[1:00:50] Speaker 3: is so good and everyone in this room got to play.
[1:00:54] Speaker 3: And how good is it, you know, to go out
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: and play footy coachings. I remember Robbie Deans saying to me,
[1:01:01] Speaker 3: he's an All Black. I used to watch them in
[1:01:03] Speaker 3: the eighties, you know, playing for Canterbury and it's the
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: next best thing. Thorny. I remember saying that, you know,
[1:01:10] Speaker 3: being involved. That sort of happened because playing all my
[1:01:16] Speaker 3: Arabia and New Zealand, a lot of people would think, oh,
[1:01:19] Speaker 3: you'll go back to New Zealand. Brisbane's my home, It's
[1:01:21] Speaker 3: where I've grown up since I seven. My father's buried there.
[1:01:25] Speaker 3: You know. I've got three sons born in Australia, my
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: wife and my daughters born in New Zealand. But yeah,
[1:01:31] Speaker 3: to come back there, and there was an opportunity with
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: the Reds, with the under twenties to have a role
[1:01:39] Speaker 3: as a four's cage and I thought, I thought to myself,
[1:01:42] Speaker 3: I played for twenty two years. You know, footy, surely
[1:01:45] Speaker 3: I know how to cache from seventeen year olds, you
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: know what I mean. And that quickly over a two
[1:01:51] Speaker 3: year period we had a pretty cool success. And I
[1:01:55] Speaker 3: guess I was cheap. And you know, the club was
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: nine men and dad and they wanted to change there
[1:02:01] Speaker 3: and they said, we have a crack. And you know,
[1:02:06] Speaker 3: if you look at one thing about my career, that's
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: why I said, I respect, you know, guys like Sunny
[1:02:10] Speaker 3: and these different guys have a crack. You know, I
[1:02:12] Speaker 3: have a crack and I have a guy. And I
[1:02:16] Speaker 3: had six years there and before that, I always say
[1:02:22] Speaker 3: that first year in rugby. Had always said that was
[1:02:24] Speaker 3: the hardest year of my life, but one of the
[1:02:27] Speaker 3: most important years in my life because character was tested, humility,
[1:02:31] Speaker 3: all those things and I had to hang in there.
[1:02:34] Speaker 3: I always said that was what I do again, probably not,
[1:02:37] Speaker 3: but one of the most important years. The head coaching
[1:02:41] Speaker 3: was another five ten levels above that. Yeah, it was
[1:02:46] Speaker 3: heavy duty, managing up, managing down players, managers, media academies,
[1:02:54] Speaker 3: having four kids, four three sons in their teenage years,
[1:02:58] Speaker 3: you know, you know then Tim Ages, Yeah, you know,
[1:03:02] Speaker 3: we were renovating her house my mother had Alzheimer's. She
[1:03:05] Speaker 3: lived with us for a year and a half. That
[1:03:06] Speaker 3: was you know she's now, you know, taking her back
[1:03:09] Speaker 3: to christ Shir. It's my brother. I have no relations
[1:03:12] Speaker 3: in Australia, only my wife's family. All my relations are
[1:03:14] Speaker 3: back in New Zealand. So I took mum home and
[1:03:17] Speaker 3: obviously Dad's been going for thirty years. We look out
[1:03:20] Speaker 3: for mum, me and my brother, so which is a shame.
[1:03:23] Speaker 3: But all that sort of packaged in there, and you know,
[1:03:26] Speaker 3: it wasn't like I was what I found was there.
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: It was an easy story there because I had a
[1:03:32] Speaker 3: bit of a profile of being an ex player, so
[1:03:34] Speaker 3: you're always Benji's always you know, there's an easy story there,
[1:03:40] Speaker 3: you know, and you know I watching I remember watching
[1:03:44] Speaker 3: Benji the having a go at him about, you know,
[1:03:47] Speaker 3: spending time with the balance of family time. I had
[1:03:50] Speaker 3: a saying that the Crusaders at the Reds, as a coach,
[1:03:54] Speaker 3: the family comes first. That's set that to the players
[1:03:57] Speaker 3: and the staff. Do you know who I was really
[1:03:59] Speaker 3: saying that, Tea? I said it to myself because you
[1:04:03] Speaker 3: get so wrapped up and it's all about winning, and
[1:04:07] Speaker 3: that it's that balance of hang on mate, you know,
[1:04:14] Speaker 3: I want to World Cup in two eleven. That was
[1:04:16] Speaker 3: fourth World Cups ago. They moved on the building of
[1:04:21] Speaker 3: character in young man, the game of League, League and
[1:04:24] Speaker 3: Union character games where you put you know, you learn selflessness,
[1:04:28] Speaker 3: you put the team first, you play female, all this
[1:04:30] Speaker 3: sort of stuff. So try to remember that, not just
[1:04:33] Speaker 3: the winning and the losing, remembering how important one thing
[1:04:37] Speaker 3: I was always aware of. I only get this one
[1:04:39] Speaker 3: time with my kids at that age. You know, I
[1:04:44] Speaker 3: don't want to be where I'm at now and go
[1:04:48] Speaker 3: I wish That's one of the famous sayings they say
[1:04:50] Speaker 3: when a person's having his last words. I wish great business,
[1:04:55] Speaker 3: great this. I wish I spent more time with my family. Yeah,
[1:04:59] Speaker 3: so that's that battle as well, and that's why it's
[1:05:02] Speaker 3: so cool. Send you guys work.
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: My death bed. I'll be saying, jeers, I should have
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: just had more me time. One I really we're going
[1:05:16] Speaker 1: to finish with this game to search all the blace
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: you play with. But I'd just like to say this
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: and get that anxiety is such a massive thing in
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: society these days. Whether we're shining a light on the more,
[1:05:28] Speaker 1: whether it's the nature of social media, and the modern world.
[1:05:30] Speaker 1: It's just everything's happened so quick. It's such a critical
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: world as well. For you, you said, you still have anxiety,
[1:05:40] Speaker 1: and you're you're so good, you've been able to master yourself.
[1:05:44] Speaker 1: How do you deal with anxiety?
[1:05:46] Speaker 3: Break? My breaker is how I learned. So I just
[1:05:48] Speaker 3: thought it was a little bit nuts. We didn't have
[1:05:51] Speaker 3: a name for it. You know. I spoke to a
[1:05:53] Speaker 3: guy the other day. He said he felt better hearing
[1:05:55] Speaker 3: that that batter with stuff. He heard that I had
[1:05:59] Speaker 3: a bit of anxiety. It sort of helped. It helped
[1:06:02] Speaker 3: me that they actually talked about mental health in the
[1:06:05] Speaker 3: last ten years, because until then you didn't talk to
[1:06:08] Speaker 3: anyone about it. You just got to you just wired differently.
[1:06:12] Speaker 3: I knew he was in my family, and my granddad
[1:06:16] Speaker 3: dealt with it by being an alcoholic. God bless him,
[1:06:19] Speaker 3: and you know he he ended up being a guy
[1:06:21] Speaker 3: that helped people in AA. He went to AA, talked
[1:06:24] Speaker 3: to a priest, went to AA. But that connection with
[1:06:28] Speaker 3: my father was never really ill. But yeah, so for
[1:06:31] Speaker 3: me it was pricked by Brick. I was at university
[1:06:34] Speaker 3: where it really hit hard the first time, and I
[1:06:37] Speaker 3: was first at union. I was just in the lecture
[1:06:39] Speaker 3: theater and just freaking out, just felt terrible. I've got
[1:06:42] Speaker 3: to get out of there. I get out of there.
[1:06:45] Speaker 3: What's going on? I'm soaked and sweat and fell and weird.
[1:06:48] Speaker 3: And I did a tutory next day, same thing. Before
[1:06:51] Speaker 3: it even started. What's going on? I said to my mum,
[1:06:54] Speaker 3: I don't know if I can go to Union anymore.
[1:06:56] Speaker 3: Imagine sitting from Wayne Bennett's meeting room, trying to sit
[1:07:00] Speaker 3: there with anxiety. You know, had nothing to do with
[1:07:04] Speaker 3: what they were doing. Obviously respect for him as a
[1:07:06] Speaker 3: cage and the Saint players, but just this thing that
[1:07:10] Speaker 3: that's somehow in my family line. And you know what
[1:07:15] Speaker 3: I realized. I said to mom, I might not be
[1:07:17] Speaker 3: able to get Unimore. She's too bad, you know. She
[1:07:21] Speaker 3: she was strong farm girl, and she said, you know
[1:07:27] Speaker 3: you got to go. And I thought to myself, well,
[1:07:31] Speaker 3: there's no more running. I'm not running anymore. I got
[1:07:34] Speaker 3: a stand and fight. I know that sounds ridiculous. Who
[1:07:36] Speaker 3: am I standing fighting against? But this is so powerful?
[1:07:39] Speaker 3: And you know that next lecture I went to I
[1:07:43] Speaker 3: through the kitchen sink. Mentally, everything I had to do
[1:07:46] Speaker 3: to stay in that chair because because I'd run a
[1:07:49] Speaker 3: couple of times. It was so soaked and sweat. My
[1:07:52] Speaker 3: tongue is too big from her mouth. It's just an
[1:07:54] Speaker 3: lecture there. It's like I was sitting here natural, relax whatever,
[1:07:57] Speaker 3: but I'm under you know, what the heck is this?
[1:08:00] Speaker 3: You know? And I got through it and I finally
[1:08:03] Speaker 3: come drenched and sweat whatever. And then lecture by letter
[1:08:08] Speaker 3: shoot meetings at the Broncos brick By Brick, I just
[1:08:13] Speaker 3: just sit there and sometimes you know, Wayne would ask me,
[1:08:16] Speaker 3: you know, you know something around what we talked about.
[1:08:19] Speaker 3: I didn't know. I wasn't listening. I was just trying
[1:08:21] Speaker 3: to stay in the room sometimes understand and do they know?
[1:08:26] Speaker 2: Do they know that was going on there?
[1:08:27] Speaker 3: Now?
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: No? No, No, I don't talk about I talked.
[1:08:31] Speaker 3: About this stuff. And you know, I didn't even talk
[1:08:34] Speaker 3: to my father about it. And you know, I remember
[1:08:38] Speaker 3: he told me he forced himself to do toast masters
[1:08:40] Speaker 3: and he put his hand up when they're opportunities. I
[1:08:44] Speaker 3: reckon he had his own battles. Yeah, So for me,
[1:08:50] Speaker 3: you know, bit by bit with those when I say
[1:08:54] Speaker 3: brick By Brick, I got through that meeting, I got
[1:08:56] Speaker 3: through that lecture. I built on that, and uh, it's
[1:09:00] Speaker 3: a similar mindset to the footy. No backwards step everything,
[1:09:03] Speaker 3: You've got to go forward, no forward. And and it's
[1:09:08] Speaker 3: it trained my mind because it's a lot of negatives
[1:09:12] Speaker 3: coming in you and you realize the power of it
[1:09:14] Speaker 3: can and swamp here. But the strength is, you know,
[1:09:17] Speaker 3: you can put a lot of positives in your mind.
[1:09:19] Speaker 3: And you know. And the other big thing it did
[1:09:23] Speaker 3: money was compassion. I'd sat there and I was at
[1:09:26] Speaker 3: church with my family one day and this lady's at
[1:09:28] Speaker 3: the front talking about depression. I'm like, just get on
[1:09:30] Speaker 3: my life. What do you want? What are you wanting about?
[1:09:33] Speaker 3: You know, it's a bit ruthless. And when that happened
[1:09:35] Speaker 3: to me, that sat me on my ass. And and
[1:09:39] Speaker 3: then I thought, if this is how bad anxiousness is,
[1:09:42] Speaker 3: you can only imagine depression, you know. So compassions are
[1:09:47] Speaker 3: so important, you know. And so as a coach, you know,
[1:09:49] Speaker 3: if I was talking to a guy sometimes you guys down,
[1:09:52] Speaker 3: if I con sense that they were battling away, I
[1:09:55] Speaker 3: would I would communicate more with them to just be
[1:09:59] Speaker 3: side by side or whatever. So you have that compassion,
[1:10:02] Speaker 3: and I think it was a real weapon for me
[1:10:05] Speaker 3: as a player because you can be tall and you
[1:10:10] Speaker 3: know you can do your German be this big guy.
[1:10:12] Speaker 3: But you know, we all know this is where it's at,
[1:10:15] Speaker 3: and you refine me in my discipline, in my attitude,
[1:10:22] Speaker 3: you know, of applying what I was trying to play
[1:10:25] Speaker 3: under pressure.
[1:10:26] Speaker 2: So yeah, it's so funny. How like in a sporting environment,
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: like particularly in your day, but even the modern sort
[1:10:33] Speaker 2: of generation where you might want to physically you don't
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: want to show like you're hurt sometimes a training because
[1:10:38] Speaker 2: you think, oh that the coach is going to think
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: I'm soft, or he might not pit me this week
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: because I'm carrying half an injury. It's the same with
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: mental health anxiety depression players. I think why it festers
[1:10:49] Speaker 2: out when people retire and it gets worse because their
[1:10:52] Speaker 2: whole career they'll pretend like if they are anxious, they'll
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: they'll put on a front like they're not because out
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: of fear a coach might not pick them or a
[1:10:59] Speaker 2: club might get rid of because they see it as weakness.
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: But I feel like that the newer generation, Jack and
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: I do a lot of some work now with like
[1:11:06] Speaker 2: the under ninet's at Manly and whatnot. But you can
[1:11:09] Speaker 2: see it now with the younger generation there, they sort
[1:11:12] Speaker 2: of have got it right where they're not really afraid
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: to show their emotions and they're not really afraid to
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: talk out about that.
[1:11:19] Speaker 3: You know.
[1:11:19] Speaker 1: It's funny Thorny said that about anxiety that always just
[1:11:22] Speaker 1: sits there. You never totally you know, it's something I
[1:11:26] Speaker 1: suffered a lot of it when I was a young
[1:11:27] Speaker 1: young boy. But along the way, you know, suddenly you're
[1:11:30] Speaker 1: playing first go to rugby league, then you win a
[1:11:33] Speaker 1: comp and origin Blane news and then you'd all this
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: sort of life experience and you get to my age
[1:11:38] Speaker 1: and you go, oh, conquered it. And then last year
[1:11:41] Speaker 1: they go, oh, we're going to send you to Paris
[1:11:44] Speaker 1: to cover the Olympics. Oh yes, sweet, no worries to
[1:11:47] Speaker 1: go over there. What am I covering?
[1:11:49] Speaker 3: Oh?
[1:11:49] Speaker 1: Are you going to cover the swimming? Mate? I didn't
[1:11:53] Speaker 1: sleep first four nights. I just lay there in a
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: bit in sweat's just going. Oh like swimming, and you
[1:12:02] Speaker 1: get trying to get all the names right. And that's
[1:12:05] Speaker 1: what it shows you is that it just always just
[1:12:08] Speaker 1: sits there. Yeah, it just sits in the shadows.
[1:12:11] Speaker 3: I told you about those two times last year I
[1:12:14] Speaker 3: had a speaking I've done a lot of speaking spoken
[1:12:16] Speaker 3: in two fifteen World Cup, I'm on the field turn
[1:12:19] Speaker 3: in ninety thousand at Wembley and now on the mic,
[1:12:22] Speaker 3: and I've done a lot of talking generally Q and
[1:12:25] Speaker 3: a whatever, but sometimes speaking. Last year I had a
[1:12:29] Speaker 3: thing where I was doing the book. Actually I was
[1:12:32] Speaker 3: absolutely loaded. My brain was mounted, I was fatigued, and
[1:12:37] Speaker 3: I couldn't do it. I couldn't do the speaking engagement
[1:12:41] Speaker 3: that booked me in and first time since university and
[1:12:45] Speaker 3: I've done speaking since then, you know whatever. But like
[1:12:48] Speaker 3: you just said, you know, that was humiliation for me
[1:12:52] Speaker 3: and you're sort of worse fear, and it was I
[1:12:56] Speaker 3: was soaked and sweat and you finally and I don't
[1:13:00] Speaker 3: let people down. That's not who I am. And I
[1:13:02] Speaker 3: let them down, you know. And so like you said,
[1:13:06] Speaker 3: you know I learned from that. You know, I've got
[1:13:07] Speaker 3: to uh, you know, you've got to have some balance
[1:13:11] Speaker 3: and I shouldn't have taken that, and you know it
[1:13:13] Speaker 3: has loaded up with too much stuff. But like you said, yeah,
[1:13:19] Speaker 3: you know there's compassion around it and and it's you know,
[1:13:24] Speaker 3: the thing I would say is you never defeated. You
[1:13:26] Speaker 3: never defeated and for me, I'll take to uh, you
[1:13:32] Speaker 3: know how I see around. I'm a Christian and my
[1:13:37] Speaker 3: my faith is a big part of me dealing with
[1:13:41] Speaker 3: that as well. Where I feel my purpose is to
[1:13:45] Speaker 3: you know, I have purpose in doing the different things
[1:13:47] Speaker 3: I do, and you know I have a trust trust
[1:13:50] Speaker 3: in God that you know, I will, like I said,
[1:13:54] Speaker 3: never defeated and I walk forward and and you know,
[1:13:58] Speaker 3: like I said, I think thank Him for the compassion
[1:14:01] Speaker 3: and that around it.
[1:14:04] Speaker 1: So, yeah, Thorny, we're going to finish with mate. I
[1:14:09] Speaker 1: was going to say a bit of fun, but this
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: for you, this could be this could be quite hard work.
[1:14:13] Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the best play you've ever
[1:14:15] Speaker 1: played alongside. Now, you said alf before, so I'm going
[1:14:17] Speaker 1: to remove Elves here, so you're going to have second
[1:14:20] Speaker 1: best player for play alongside.
[1:14:21] Speaker 3: So right, so playing forward it has to before because
[1:14:24] Speaker 3: I set it back.
[1:14:25] Speaker 2: Well, he's basically he's gonna he's going to pick. It's
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: like King of the Ring, right, He's just going to
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: put two up and then you pick between those two
[1:14:33] Speaker 2: until eventually we're at the Grand Final and then does
[1:14:36] Speaker 2: something I.
[1:14:36] Speaker 1: Have explaining that my assistant here, it's good.
[1:14:42] Speaker 3: That's all my wife does for me. Yeah, Brad says
[1:14:47] Speaker 3: he wants this subtitles.
[1:14:50] Speaker 1: My wife does different, do this? Do that?
[1:14:52] Speaker 3: Not? Allowed to do that?
[1:14:53] Speaker 1: Going out with friends? You don't have any friends now.
[1:14:57] Speaker 1: Wendell Saylor and Lottie Takiri, Wendell, Wendell's sailor Or man
[1:15:04] Speaker 1: oh Man man Man, Steve Runoff, po Man, Sunny Bill Williams,
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: man On, who Mills Mollyana, uh my, no, Keavy Waters.
[1:15:22] Speaker 3: I'll go man imagine.
[1:15:27] Speaker 1: Okay man Tan Maga.
[1:15:30] Speaker 3: Oh, that's the Master and the Apprentice. Still go man On.
[1:15:35] Speaker 3: This will be boring. It keeps having one.
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: Carlos Spencer.
[1:15:39] Speaker 3: Oh, I love Carlos. Carlos go man on a two
[1:15:46] Speaker 3: tyn who in this player?
[1:15:49] Speaker 1: Who was just neither cave one of my very favorite
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: Christian Callen.
[1:15:53] Speaker 3: I love Christmas far Out. That's my favorite World Cup
[1:16:00] Speaker 3: team and they didn't win that ninety five era. I
[1:16:04] Speaker 3: gotta still go mine. I just knew how he was
[1:16:11] Speaker 3: so big for us, you know, and his power. I
[1:16:15] Speaker 3: like the power.
[1:16:16] Speaker 1: You know, here we go talking about power and you'd
[1:16:19] Speaker 1: be like, this play doesn't hold a grudge. Not Gordon Talis.
[1:16:25] Speaker 3: This is classic far out there. How you're making that
[1:16:28] Speaker 3: brutal because if my league came first, I'm going Gordy.
[1:16:32] Speaker 1: Okay, Gordon tallis again another bloke who doesn't hold a grudge.
[1:16:36] Speaker 1: Glenn Lazarus.
[1:16:39] Speaker 3: Lazo the best in my opinion, I didn't see much
[1:16:43] Speaker 3: of Arthur. I know he's a legend, but I just
[1:16:46] Speaker 3: think he's because that he's the pain house of the
[1:16:49] Speaker 3: party minute a small man trapped in a big man's body.
[1:16:52] Speaker 3: He was, it was so cool playing net wasn't the
[1:16:55] Speaker 3: friendliest guy we went.
[1:16:58] Speaker 1: We went Orige camp and we got beat when the
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: bat when cowboys couldn't struggling to beat anybody. We're going
[1:17:04] Speaker 1: to camp and he goes so juke boast good people
[1:17:09] Speaker 1: of the cowboys last night yep, and made all he
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: did was turn on his field, and as he did,
[1:17:13] Speaker 1: he just went dogs. Okay, here we go. Clent Lazarus.
[1:17:22] Speaker 1: Who's going to top Jerry Collins?
[1:17:24] Speaker 3: Jerry Collins, I still la I love Jerry. I love
[1:17:27] Speaker 3: you to sit next to him the bus. He loves
[1:17:29] Speaker 3: his leg love the broncos. It's a great guy.
[1:17:31] Speaker 1: Gordon always tells me he loves Gordon. Now, okay again,
[1:17:37] Speaker 1: let's move on. Another blake who doesn't hold a grudge,
[1:17:40] Speaker 1: not stubborn at all. Gleann Lazarus, Shane whipkh.
[1:17:47] Speaker 3: It's like fair freaking family. I'm still gotta go Laser.
[1:17:52] Speaker 1: Sorry, Laso Petra.
[1:17:54] Speaker 3: I love Petro's brother, but I still gotta go Laser Lasso.
[1:18:00] Speaker 3: Richie McCaw a, Oh, just throwing the heavyweights.
[1:18:08] Speaker 1: I am. I'm still going to go Laser Lazzo. Dan
[1:18:12] Speaker 1: Carter not giving you anxiety here.
[1:18:20] Speaker 3: Cheaper h It's going to be controversial. I'm a forward Lazarus.
[1:18:27] Speaker 1: The final one, Glenn Lazarus, Darren Locke, you.
[1:18:31] Speaker 3: I repeat, repeat what I just said, the King of the.
[1:18:39] Speaker 1: That's not exactly what we wanted. That's the exact decision, Thorny,
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: it is. It's fantastic to have you on, mate. It's
[1:18:46] Speaker 1: great to see you and it's been a long long
[1:18:47] Speaker 1: time and to watch you through your career from Afar
[1:18:51] Speaker 1: and mate with me in all of what you've done. Mate,
[1:18:53] Speaker 1: you're a great man.
[1:18:54] Speaker 3: Well, thank you very much. Pumped to be here. Awesome
[1:18:57] Speaker 3: to meet the Suns. You know, the big man behind
[1:18:59] Speaker 3: the can to you there as well. So thanks for
[1:19:02] Speaker 3: having me so cool.
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: We haven't had I don't think we've had a bigger
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: bloke sitting in that chair as well.
[1:19:07] Speaker 3: You are alive, have it awkward? And can we get
[1:19:12] Speaker 3: there next time?
[1:19:14] Speaker 1: I've been sitting there where the any of you are going? Okay,
[1:19:16] Speaker 1: So Thorny's about six foot six, look at all these
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: things he's cheat. I'm looking at myself. Cajez, I really
[1:19:22] Speaker 1: shouldn't have done this. My sons will thing. Fuck it? Hell?
[1:19:26] Speaker 3: Do you know what I appreciate actually is the size of
[1:19:29] Speaker 3: these because I've got a massive head. So hopefully the
[1:19:32] Speaker 3: MIC's big. Hopefully my skull doesn't look so big.
[1:19:35] Speaker 1: For we actually had to get that one flown in.
[1:19:39] Speaker 1: That's the final word.
[1:19:41] Speaker 3: Awesome, thanks, thank you,

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.