hey guys welcome back to ebbs and flows where we talk about the highs and lows on and off the field
today joined by one of my oldest friends one of my best friends quay cooper what's up bro
what's happening brother good to be here
obviously been a long time since we've done a podcast uh it was hard to get you on that podcast
but are you glad you've done it yeah i mean at the time bro like it's not something that i do a lot
of like speaking on podcasts and whatnot but back it was good to have that chat um and we got a lot
out of it i feel like um sort of broke down the walls of who you are like you said you're pretty
private and we talked about a lot of things and a few of the clips ended up going viral especially
in new zealand like near richie mccall in the head type of thing um yeah and it was cool to
see everyone see like a sort of like normal side of you and people who actually know who you are
so i thought that was really cool bro yes it's it's interesting bro because like i put a lot
out on social media like keep a lot private so like social media just day-to-day stuff but i
don't really speak a lot on it
about personal things and whatnot so it was good getting a few of those out there but also just
catching up with you so that was that was a good good thing yeah um so for people that don't know
what do you do now i'm playing rugby in japan got a clothing brand which i'm i'm enjoying that
journey but just all over in japan now we got like three months holiday upside up in japan is
the break that we get so as older 36 now um it's nice to get that break on yeah for sure um
there's a few guys like i don't realize how big the japanese competition was and we'll talk about
like probably the state of rugby and on this podcast and maybe even start there now do you
feel like a lot more players are going to start heading that way obviously i've seen you go there
arty was over there at the time basically the best player in the world at the moment and he said he
loved it like what's what's so great about japanese rugby it's not that like um rule of going there
like so one you get lifestyle like lifestyle is a whole lot different so you get some experiences
in different cultures and you get some experiences in different cultures and you get some experiences
but from a rugby standpoint the comp's getting really good as i said like on average it's probably
like 80 points scored per game so from a style of play it means there's a lot of running rugby
uh a lot of ball and play time also the physicality is probably not as uh not as hard as it is on this
side of the world or or this northern hemisphere but i think as i said like the the biggest thing
is the amount of time you get off so i think it's a lot of time you get off so i think it's a lot of
so when i played here playing for shreya so you'd start your pre-season january 2nd um you're playing
games by feb and then you go all the way through to december and then you get like kind of like
the best part of december off during that time you don't get any time to just like put the tools
down relax get away from it because stay fit and you got to stay on your training because you know
you're going to start january 2nd so if you think about it like that you're going to get a lot of
like that you look at arty's situation uh he's just been playing non-stop since he come into the
league and he's playing at the highest level so the best team and uh one of the best teams in the
world was them in south africa and stuff um and the way he plays is very physically demanding
so to be able to go to japan rest his body a bit have a bit more time with his family
learn a different culture a different way of living that's really exciting it's something that
this competition can't really offer um guys coming through are you worried about australian rugby
the state of it yeah i mean i think everyone is you know because like you you're seeing us
sort of tumble down the picking order and in the sense rankings viewership um and even
like competition like i've been watching a bit of super rugby this year so i didn't watch it for a
while but since i came back in and started playing again i'm into the strength i started you know
being friends with a lot of the guys that i didn't i'm a different era and so i love watching and
supporting those guys but it's also a little bit sort of sad to see the state of rugby because
everybody in the country wants rugby to do well and if rugby does well there's an another avenue
for a lot of guys to be able to come into a professional environment so if we if we lose
rugby there's going to be afl and rugby league so there's going to be a lot of guys missing out on
the opportunity so once we had three healthy healthy guys we're going to be able to do a lot of
these sports there's a lot of talent coming through enough talent to be able to spread
through all of those but the games need to run well and this rugby needs to be doing well on
the international stage yep because i think about that a lot so when i like um like obviously you
know i've been having a chat with the all blacks crew and when i was talking about like social
media content based around them like if you look at rugby from a high school standpoint amazing
like you look at south south africa new zealand when they're doing those huckers super rugby used
but then internationally it's like crazy like that world cup that just went past went down and
what you boys like a rugby league besides origin wouldn't be able to fill up the mcg where all
blacks versus wallabies even though it's the players load and all seem to always win it's not
many sports that could fill up that internationally you look at the kiwis versus australian game final
last year was played in hamilton and they had like seven eight thousand they couldn't give tickets
away so how do we make the how do they make the like super rugby comp stronger
people to care about that part of the game so one of the things in like with like in the in the
locker room on the bus and that like all the players always have this conversation and there's
lots of different views on it um my view is like if you think back to the covid period where
everybody was forced to do their own domestic sort of seasons so australia one of the biggest
thing is is that perception is reality so when we're in a competition with new zealand at the
moment especially with the state of our game so there's five teams at the minute we've just lost
melbourne but whilst there was five teams every week let's say we're playing against the five
new zealand team we'd be lucky if we had one winner throughout that so the perception is is that we're
terrible and um then you go and play wallabies against the all blacks as you just said letters
are in like 22 years so again the perception is we're terrible so then whilst that cover
period we sort of took new zealand out of it and we just played against each other each week there
was an australian team winning so if you follow the waratahs you follow reds or whatever you
always knew that your team had a good possibility of winning or if they won one week they might lose
the next so there was like healthy rivalry um within that perception just started to become
that so young kids who don't know about um the opposition or the history of it they just see
um queensland i can't remember who they played might have been the brumbies i i imagine they
played the brumbies and suncorp was pretty much sold out again and it was the first time since
i when we won the comp in that they saw suncorp for um a domestic rugby game so if i think about
it like that and perception is reality if we strip it back and i know that it's a it's more of a long
game then you start with the five teams you play each other sort of twice or even three or four
to be able to get the amount of games that product can start at at a small scale but you're going to
keep fans in um and then you just start introducing other teams like you could i'm not saying this is
the right way to do it but for example queensland you might introduce a north queensland team
you might introduce a queensland country or south wales country things like that um there's a lot
of different ways to do that but i think that the perception needs to come back that your team's
winning so you can build the um fan base
yep um but also the the club system is very very healthy so if we can find a way to tap into that
whether again like that domestic comp becomes you have the shoot shield which is the new south wales
comp if queensland's comp is another comp in wa and get those healthy basically you select the
representative team from those um so that's sort of one way to be able to do it in my opinion but
again like it's just about bro like really stripping it back
and saying hey we we got to this point at the moment we're diving down how can we sort of start
again and recapture the imaginations of the local people else our local fan base build that up and
if you think about the nrl um you go back like 20 years so they slowly built it up to what it is now
essentially you got to do the same with rugby because everybody wants a quick fix and go okay
well let's grab japan and introduce some of their teams take some of the money that they have in
japan and then we're going to do the same with rugby and then we're going to do the same with
and we'll make a quick fix or we'll try and get a big investor and make this competition
interesting by changing the rules or so forth i think the fan base is the first place we've got
to start that's good that's a really good take i was just thinking about it then when you're
talking like i love that east and obviously the works like railworks are like people talk about
that passion more so than the passion they have for the roosters or east rugby or then when i
live in manly it was um is it rats first marlins like that was yeah that was some of the biggest
games over so i think that's a really good take i think that's a really good take i think that's a really good take
so potentially building in the narratives around there but the hard thing i feel is um obviously
they don't have any money aou has no money eh so it's hard to market a game when you've got no
money behind it but they can do it through different avenues and i think the reason why
rugby league's taken off um is from that submedia so if you obviously look at fox sports and then
there was ass bloke in the bar hollow sports that were just making content for free i don't feel
like rugby union had that because it was like a level where a lot of guys would take themselves
like they make some funny shit and then obviously the coco show which you like your boys but like
i think just even having that old school old heads white collar at the helm of it when it filters down
into social media you'll transfer it onto social media really well but i don't feel like the rest
of the league's like followed yeah well that's that's the thing right it's like even so the
people that run it are still sort of it's the same boys clubs the same bunch of people
so when there's an overhaul overhaul has to be done and i think that's a really good thing
it's just it's the same thing but it's it's a case of like what happened and they're like
oh yeah well we we we're gonna do something different and they're like well we'll just
go with what's going on and then you know what happens and they just replace it with
their friends who have the same ideas the exact same mentality you know what i mean
yeah so i think that sort of the discussion that we were just talking about with the competition
everybody thinks okay just change the name of it or just um introduce this or that like
quick fixing um and so as you sort of touched on is that over the next few years there's
a lot of big things happening for rugby so it's a great opportunity to go okay well what
can we actually do here whilst we're gonna have money roll in but um i think it's also
a big thing right and i think that's the thing that's really important is that like you know
we can use that to we can strip it back but use this money to inject it and be able to help it
grow it healthily from the ground up rather than go okay let's grab this money inject it in and
try and hope that this goes really well from where it already is you know what i mean yeah
what's the high school confident like around there high school comms amazing so the gps com
so if you go up to queensland and watch um some of the big games like the teams that we have
and the crowds that you get it's the same sort of energy that you see that you see on
instagram from south africa from new zealand so when i was playing played against um
and it turned out to be a final um we had like between five and seven thousand people jammed
into a high school ground so imagine that uh like the atmosphere there was amazing um there's a huge
opportunity there for for rugby that you think of some of the names who have come through like
dave pocock from just talking about queensland um calum ponga so many guys who have come through
the system and then they've just gone off and played other sports and if they use their school
system to be able to instead of having just a round robin creating like a a model where they
have playoffs and so forth maybe even like a draft system so it doesn't mean that the guys have to go
to these these teams but they create like a draft a draft thing and it may seem a lot more
important but it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not
important for these guys and then it kind of guarantees them a fixed income to say okay
you're drafted in the first round or the first draft but you're guaranteed x amount of dollars
um so then what happens is like guys want just want to stay in the sport to be drafted number
one to be seen as number one in the country so i think afl has adopted that that concept really
well in the sense of what the nfl or the nba major league baseball and all those sports in america
and say that's a good point i think it's a good point i think it's a good point i think it's a good
i was just thinking about it then uh so obviously like do you think it takes too long for guys to get
from high school to super rugby because i think about some of the and like obviously you're an
exception because you kind of went straight in you and curtly but like sometimes when i hear about
people's path toward the all blacks or even just super rugby it's like they go do a trade for
like two years and they build themselves for npc and i know that's a better path for people to get
through but if i'm an 18 year old i've got a bit of talent um i'm looking at rugby league and they're
going you can come train with me and i'm like okay i'm going to go to the nba and i'm going to go to
the broncos and we'll give you 140k off the bat do you reckon that little period is where a lot of
good players start to get lost but it's also bro there's like a part to that is like when you're
saying come train with the broncos and then you're listing off rattling off a few of the names that
they have like in rugby at the moment we just don't have the name so then it's like when you're
trying to sell to a kid come you come train here there's an opportunity for you here they look
around and say like who am i looking up to be like you know what i mean so i remember when i was
we had matt kiddo you had stephen larkins um like there was just players all across the board
yeah i feel like i could have named the wallaby side back in the day hundred percent i couldn't
i couldn't name it now yeah and and that's the thing i play the sport and there's like i watch
some of the games and i'm like i have no idea who some of the guys are yeah then there's guys who i
know and we we did this thing one time we went through and just sort of kind of looked at guys
that we knew who were kind of like the top of the game um and rugby at the moment we just looked at
their social media and we just checked how many like followers and not saying that followers is
important it is yeah but it's not saying okay oh that's the be on it that doesn't mean you're not
a good player if you don't have a big following but what it was saying is that they're not known
well to the public and it was guys that are like frontline wallaby players who are first choice
one of the first picked every time and it's like oh shit they got like 7 000 followers and look at
someone in the japanese
league like some of our like japanese players who still like workers so they go to work and they
have more followers you know in a league that is relatively small and they're sure an international
player um but for me that was one of the things that i was like it's a telltale sign that i'm
doing enough as a game to promote these players and and also encourage them so like when i played
and i scored a try and did a backflip i remember getting a bit of backlash from someone and i won
another time there's a story so i went out to a regional school when the floods happened
and the school's uniform was green and so i said i've got green boots i'm going to wear them this
week um as sort of representation of you guys and they're all excited so i said tune into the game
and you'll see me wearing the boots um in the warm-up to that game
i ripped my boots and so when i went into the sheds i was like i'll just tie them a bit
different and it'll be sweet and i chose not to wear them so i changed my boots but it was like
boys were lining up to run onto the field and i was taking a photo on on my phone and uploading
it to twitter and so i uploaded this photo hey kids my boots rip i'm not going to wear them but
you know i'm still got you guys on my mind put my red boots back on went out ran out and the boys
already started running onto the field i run out and
the tweet said like sent two minutes ago right and then i kicked the ball off in the game so then
after the game and the press conference i got play of the match um and i come off the field and the
first thing the media wanted to do was kind of have a crack at me for not being focused or they
said to our coach um you and mckenzie at the time oh how do you feel about quade you know kind of
just tweeting tweets out like two minutes before the game it says it says kickoffs at 7 30 he sent
this tweet at 7 28.
and you're mckenzie which why i loved him as a coach he just sort of turned and said like
well we just won the game man of the match and you're in here trying to
get an angle yeah get an angle to try and bring him down like try and bring him back into the
pack said that's how he prepares and he's fine with that so some guys listen have their headphones on
two minutes before kickoff and nobody says anything about that because that's normal now
um go back 10 years no one had headphones on and i'm like i'm not going to play this game
so no one was listening to music so everything changes but the reason why i say that it was
because it because i did that tweet and i'm not saying it's controversial but it was like
it was one of those things that was kind of before its time guys on social media and doing that like
now you've got media guys walking through your locker as you're getting changed getting ready
to kick off taking a photo of you and uploading it to the team social media so just for me doing
that to my own didn't mean i wasn't focusing on the game it's just that
this part of my life was the same as it is as putting your shoe on tie your laser and walk
out onto the field super simple for me i didn't think anything of it um but it kind of created
this like image it created like a hype and then so that that tweet got retweeted x amount of times
it was put on the news because someone said oh he tweeted two minutes before a game like
and then got mad at the match you know so i think that
there's there needs to be more of an effort on like sort of promoting these young guys i did it
on my own without him really knowing it like i know i knew what i was doing i knew that it would
kind of create um some type of noise around um myself if i didn't have a good game or if i had
a good game was like as my coach back now said he played well why are we not just talking about
his game yeah so did you see social media back then as like you know like you know like you know
like a way to put pressure on yourself because obviously you're posting a lot and you know you're
like you have to play well it's almost like wearing larry boots like if you're gonna wear
those boots you're gonna have to play well did you see it as that or just something that was fun
like i just saw it as fun and i just saw it as this like a window for opportunity because i was
like okay no one else is doing this i was tweeting i think that i did 10 000 tweets one year and i
had had twitter for like three or four years and i did like 30 000 tweets if you look at my tweets
maybe 32 000 since so it means i haven't been very active on it but the i knew it was super
powerful then because after a game i could just interact with people whether i had a good game
or bad game people come on and spray me say oh you're this you're that i just interact with
and so whether they like me they didn't like me i knew that i was on their mind and as we were
sort of just talking about as we led into this part of it i don't think there's enough players
in rugby at the moment on the minds of people who watch league who watch afl who just supporters of
sport because if they're sport supporters they might not follow you or follow your sport but
if they know who you are because of your game and that was also another side of it i knew that
first and foremost my game had to speak for itself so the things i did on the field the
way i scored tries the way i passed the ball the options that i chose they were the
things that were going to tie in with my personality off the field so i couldn't and
there was a lot of players who saw what i was doing and said okay well i want the same so i
want followers i want this and that so i'm going to go do some outrageous things but didn't really
back it up on um on their the way that they play they didn't have any point of difference in the
way that they play and just for an example that was like like a vibey prop so here's an example
one of my teammates um
and he used to do his headgear thing and it was it was a great idea because he was really trying
to self-promote himself and he would do these headgears each week with different um charities
and stuff that's cool so like it was a great idea but it was like you couldn't really get much
promotion for him because of the position or how he played the position that he did so he was just
like a um it's kind of like a grinder grafter did a lot of shitters for us he was a really
important player for us he just hit a lot of breakdowns but like if you look at taniyela tupo
if you put the headgear on him and did the charity thing it'll go crazy because yes he's the best
scrummager in the world but the way he plays he scores these tries where he runs 40 meters
breaks through three or four tackles might not do it a lot but when he does it you see this 145
kilo he shouldn't be moving or shouldn't be moving like that who's different to everyone else but like
run do a little no look pass something like that
and then everybody's just imaginations captured by that and then now if you grab that and add
something off the field so if you knew his personality off the field they could market
the hell out of him i know they try but i don't think they do it the right way he should be a lot
bigger than what he is um and prior to him there was a guy called rodzilla yeah i remember they
had him on like some bridgestone bridgestone tire we had like a tire and he was some godzilla thing
rodzilla and so they marketed him well but again he had wasn't the talent of what taniela is like
taniela is super special and like he's got this big aura he's a big name in the game
but if they managed him better he'd be being larger than what he is now larger than life
yes i said for you're the marketing office of australia rugby you know i gave you a million
dollars to put up to build the game around two three players
who would you build him around right now because i look at like say mark the one i need to ask you
like the look plays a winger like he kind of looks different and cool he's gone to league
carter gordon who's the 10 we'll talk about we'll talk about him soon like you can't really build
around he's taken off to league obviously you've got tong and thor there like who else is there bro
just kind of yes bro it's a really hard one because like i don't know if you've watched many
rugby union interviews in it but it's like a lot of the boys
are so so worried about making mistakes in it and so i did an interview with rob valentini last year
or maybe it was the year before um when we went to camp he's the one that kind of looks like arty a
bit yeah yeah he's the most amazing player fucking best dude like he would literally be in the running
for best and fairest every week like just phenomenal player does everything like does
the hard stuff the shit is skillful stuff like he can kick he can do everything um but we've got a
he did an interview and it was like so nervous and shy and that asked him a question and you
could just see him like get intense about it but it was like if you see him in our own space
all right the dude's one of the funny guys um he's a he's got a great personality he's funny
he's smart he's intelligent and he's a phenomenal football you know what i mean so it's just like
finding ways to get the best out of these guys rather than just grabbing them and going oh he's
a player put him in front of the media and ask him a question you know what i mean because that's
not the way that um to get the best out of him but yeah like in terms of your question bro like
the guys that i would build around it's a really hard one to to think off the top of my head
because and shit tongan thor would be one got a guy like mark who they were sort of trying to
build around him but um i don't think they did a great job with that like he was getting sponsors
and stuff so i think he was sponsored by
andorama andorama yeah i mean he did some like pretty cool ads for them but um like
asic should have had him and i know they had him at one point um but it's just i think there's been
enough to try and build these guys i remember years ago you had honey badger and he was he
was like a nice point of difference yeah but see the thing was was like he wasn't a guy that was
just picked first picked every week so it was kind of like they were trying to build on him
and go back to i just said it was like his character was better than his football so it
was like really hard to um really make the most of it but they made the most of that during that
small period of time but he was a great football but um it started to become like more of a gimmick
than him scoring three tries a game and doing scoring epic tries as well about the post-match
um and then he started like taking the piss out of it like in terms of the media because they knew
okay lost the game go get a grab from him it'll be better that'll take the loss oh we just lost
the game um which is not really fair for for badge and but i think what he did really well
was marketed himself because he knew his time game wasn't going to last forever and he shot
his personality up and did uh he's kind of like he's like the bo ryan of exactly yeah yeah and
so if you look at him before that like he would have been not known to many people only rugby guys
and then he had his interviews and then he started like he was he used to research and
that just wasn't just off the cuff it wasn't just him just doing that he would think about it
kind of recite it rehearse it but that's who he was to the boys so he was always having these
sort of jokes he always had the one-liners but then when it started to be
um become like a thing monetize it and you like i was watching um paul george's podcast and he was
talking to one of the wmba players her name's a unicorn oh she she had the shoes yeah well and
he was saying are you monetizing this shit like and really getting onto and it's like interesting
because these boys think about it straight away they've got a cool nickname boom they go off it's
trademarked straight away jimmy buck it's trademarked straight on the other side yeah um
i'm just thinking about it
so when i when i was talking to that all blacks crew i think one of the biggest it's one of their
greatest strengths is they keep everything in house um i think the biggest downside of like
social media especially within rugby union is they don't celebrate individuals because
it's always about the team and when you've got the all blacks you've got 92 percent record over
the course of your history you're playing in world cup finals and losing by a point it should be about
the team but they don't allow that certain part of social media to shine through individuals
like they've got to be a part of the team and they've got to be a part of the team
they've got some really like arty like signed by rock nation like boys of sea calise as you are
um boating barrett both those boys when i'm talking to the boys especially the hurricanes
a lot of them just even scared to try bro they're scared to stand out from move away from what
everyone else is doing maybe besides someone like tj who's a bit older a bit more comfortable in
his skin but all the other boys like i'm scared of being judged because you're seen as not being
a team guy you know so it's like if you look at pretty much all the teams i play for like
it's like team motto is one team um you know i mean those types of phrases where it's like
everybody's the same so everybody's be treated the same everybody's got to act the same
and being a little bit different is kind of frowned upon so like i think that
during my time it was a little bit more accepted at a point like at the beginning of my career was
like me being a bit different was like hurting myself you know because it was like i had this
image all around like rugby circles that i was a very selfish person you know um that you know i
was my character was always questioned and um like you said so a lot of these boys are afraid to go
out i just wasn't really afraid i was kind of like well this is who i am and i look back and i went
about it wrong a lot of the times i got it wrong um there's instances that i had feuds with coaches
with um around the system and stuff like that because
at the time of who i was and i just wanted to be myself oh and not think about the consequences but
i didn't really understand them you know i mean so like i think that having guidance having guys
like yourself be able to go in and speak to these guys and say look being able to get your personality
out there it doesn't have to be done in this way that it's detrimental to the team
we can do it in ways we can help you explore options where you can uplift yourself but also
um the team ethos um and keep that team first mindset at the forefront of your mind but by
putting the team first doesn't mean that you disregard your own your own worth that makes
sense yeah um i was talking to ivan about panthers a couple weeks ago i wouldn't say too much about
what we said but i after that conversation i generally think there's going to be like mentors
or spaces within clubs like the smart clubs are going to figure it out earlier like the
panthers melbourne's and you know how like they used to have like priests in there or
sports size you know those little phases come in i think a lot of them are going to have yeah
chapmans i think they're going to have like business people come in teach the boys how to
build personal brand without exactly what you said so when i was talking to ivan coming off
free premierships so all the boys are starting to venture to do clothing and do vlogs and stuff
like that but sometimes it's taken away from like chasing full premierships exactly like you said
but i think eventually people are going to have advisors coming or mentors coming
they can help these but i reckon eventually bro that especially rugby
league they're going to have content creators that are going to help them build their own
personal brands and this is what i said to ivan i was like instead of like trying to tell them
what to do create an infrastructure around the club so they can do the things they want to do
without taking away because if you hung around me and i had cameras and i know how to film
vlog i'd be like oh cool let's spend two hours here and we can go do it where you get like
someone like joseph manu pissing in the con but he'll go around film it and then do all his own
editing and it'll take eight hours and he'll jump online and stream so i think eventually they're
start building infrastructure around personal brands and businesses so it doesn't take away
from there see one of the things with that though is like everything's about money so at the moment
for guys i say joey he's doing all i'm saying i'm doing a mad job like i love watching his
vlogs and everything like that um getting in these guys to start doing that all it takes is
time and money someone comes in to do that job is okay well i'm going to be doing these
amount of hours i want i want this amount of money blah blah blah as you said you're
if we're getting rid of something and replacing it with something that's more
like-minded to the direction of where everything's going like it'd be amazing and i think one of the
best keys with that bro is like giving these like guys an avenue to kind of express themselves
in a way that isn't i don't say negative like because back in the day it was just all about
when you express yourself was like drinking partying together
whereas i now being able to go and like seeing the boys do music and stuff i coming up with like
raps songs and you know things like that creating vlogs and that together what they're doing outside
of the game like really love that and that's probably what's lacking in rugby um but like
one of the things that i think will be key is like getting these content creators coming in and not
focusing on let's build the brand of wallabies like everybody knows who the wallabies are
like build this content around pushing these boys individually like you said to be names to be known
for something it's like say me doing slick passes like getting some of that on camera like every
other day pushing it out so their brand comes if their brand goes up what happens to the wallabies
brand rise just continues to rise rising tide raises ships say yeah actually i always think
about that and like um like a lot of analogies i get was always back to like movies like yeah
there's the avengers but every avenger has their own story and they're always going to be like
a story and it's from beginning to where they are right now and then collectively they become a team
and they go take on the initial if you look at like classic books or classic movies it's always
built around individuals no one's always exactly the same like more people get more screen time
and movies and that's going to just be the same as it is with social media until it gets to the
80 minutes on on football yeah um what was your wallabies experience like obviously there's a lot
of your name as soon as your name's in in newspapers it gets brought up in the news and
you and eddie james what was it all that about um i like it i've got nothing but sort of respect
and love for eddie bro honestly like he was my first um professional coach that i actually played
for um so he gave me my first opportunity i had him um at the barbarians like more recently and
so that was the first sort of time i got the opportunity to be with him and play under him
as a grand man so it was like a whole different experience
my memory of him was just shit scared of him when i was young and he does play a lot of mind games
and relation and stuff like that but um i had him as as a grown-up as man i just looked at it
the still wasn't afraid i wasn't scared if he had something to say or i had something to say
well go say it to you well if i didn't agree with someone i'm gonna have that conversation or
sit down and chat um so when it came to the whole
cup thing reason why i was just sort of um like sort of offside with it all was just because
we didn't have that conversation whether he was busy or not i felt that he should have just um
like caught in that conversation rather than just kind of like leaving us hanging so it wasn't
really too much so they just named the team and they they there was like a process of
if you got caught that meant like by
eddie it meant that you didn't make if you got caught by
we'll be our team manager in the squad and he had sort of said a day or so before that i was like
he personally like we sat down had a little catch-up before the all blacks game that i was
in the team and that that preparation camp was super important for me tonight find my strides
and really refine my skill set for this world cup
um then so you're thinking if i come in oh like i've heard him say that i heard him say the words
but i was feeling something else so i'm i met with me and sunny had like hung out together that night
in the hotel and i saw koda i spoke to koda on the phone and all we i said bro i'm not going to
welcome and he was like what do you mean and he was sort of and i was supposed to do this like big
interview with some uh
like greg this guy greg um about the world cup about the journey just to speak right up um about
myself and like i just really didn't want to do it i was making it really difficult and koda kept
telling me bro you got to do this thing like make sure you make time for this guy and i just kept
kind of pushing off i don't have time i'm like and it was just because i was just not feeling
great because i knew that i wasn't going to go to this world cup so i didn't waste all my time
story and and also waste this guy's time doing the story and have all this stuff because it was
a huge story like we're on the phone at meetings for like hours and i was just like nah i told him
i'm not going trust me and he sort of said like why why are you saying that i said just i don't
know i just got a feeling like and just sort of sense then i had that conversation with him
and when i left that conversation like yes i heard it so in my mind i'm thinking okay
i really need to focus on this
camp and sort of make a plan for what this camp's gonna so like for myself and
the areas that i really needed to make sure that i was a lot sharper then um after the game so far
lost that game kicked a goal to tie it up or go ahead yeah i remember down to neander yeah
and then i actually knocked the ball which gave them a scrum and that their scrum just
felt it out of my mouth and i was like okay i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm
gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it
scrum they end up getting a pin Richie Moe as she kicks it we lose so I took that a bit hard
because I was like I knew because I dropped the ball I came on with like about like 10 15 minutes
or 10 minutes to play trying to chase this game I get that kick that puts us in a different position
I'm still now we're drawing trying to we get like a three on one and I was just like in a hurry
just went boom and I looked and Whitey threw me the ball as soon as it hit my hands I felt the
paint of touchline on it and I'd already looked so I went to try and do quick hands and I'd already
boom I just started to slip straight through my hand I said fuck straight away in my head I was
like okay that's the game like we either score there or they're gonna get a pin and they're
gonna kick it I was like Richie's gonna kick this I just knew that that moment for me I was like okay
I already had a feeling I wasn't gonna make it but now that I solidified it in my head
because I know how Eddie is and he's gonna be super pissed off that I basically lost that game
so he's like gonna go fuck it I'm not taking him like he's pissed me off you know so that that's
how I felt and then when I went home and then didn't really get the um we hit you hear all the
other boys saying oh yeah messaging each other what time do we have to be at the airport or like
what are you guys taking?
stuff like this and so then I knew straight away but I hadn't been caught so I was like
other guys have been called say that they hadn't um been perked and I just felt like a little bit
like disrespected in that sense you know um I felt like I was close enough for Eddie to just
cause it like this is why or whatever but as I said like me I was like okay I'm well prepared
for my season back in Japan take a little break now
pressures of this so I'm just gonna continue doing my training go back and enjoy my season
um and having that mindset was sort of like to help me just get through that whole disappointment
because of course I was disappointed but my whole worth and reliance wasn't based on going
to this world cup whereas sort of had this conversation a few times I'd done that earlier
in my career I would have I would have acted out like I would have gone okay well I didn't get
picked fuck this I'm done
shit I go get on the post get smashed do this go whatever so it would have been a point where I
would have just had enough and like try to self-destruct yeah whereas I was like okay that's
disappointing but that's this part I've still got this this this to do I've got this to achieve I
have these things and this has actually put me in a good position because I've got this extra work
done got the opportunity to play for Australia again the opportunity to be around this coaching
and see what it's like
I did I learn anything from that can I take this back um you know so there's valuable lessons in it
to be able to take away as well did they fuck up getting rid of Dave Rennie oh for sure bro because
um the thing was was feel like these guys are starting to come along too you know what I mean
the games are getting closer right I had um and again this is like no knock on on Eddie but I know
but it was like we were in a meeting and one of these things and he said something
that i heard in this meeting um with checker as a coach was like um if they don't know what if we
don't if they don't know what if we don't know what we're gonna do how do they know what we're
gonna do so who's saying this eddie yeah but um check it said it before the 2019 world cup
um and it was like players like we had no game plans and it was just like about playing rugby
without a plan so it's just like off the cuff type of rugby and then when i heard that i remember
thinking like deja vu i'm thinking like i remember going into games with friends and it was like
everything was so well detailed and the game plans that he gave us so like my job as a
10 as a facilitator like i went out there and i knew guys knew their role
but my job is to make sure that we execute that to exactly how
and then also interpret it the way that they want us to play
be able to facilitate on the field but be able to adapt and have my own um sort of rendition of that
so when we're on the field and like hey this part of it's working we're gonna stick with so we're
gonna push this to the side and we're gonna keep going at this well this part's not working hey i
can audible it and add in these other bits that we were training because that's what we need right
now for this moment and i think that there was things that we did throughout the week
in our preparation um and the skill set that we were practicing and so forth that our team was
really on the up and so if you look at those games that we played those
six games we went six in a row um in south africa uh japan so forth then that tour wasn't great
but what that tour was was opportunity to see guys that they had question marks over
so they were like putting guys into it into the games like we wanted to win those games but you
could see that we were winning those games and we were winning those games and we were winning those games
and we ended up losing to italy which we still should have been able to beat south second team
but we didn't we didn't beat them so put a lot of pressure and hate on them but had to put these
guys into that arena and see if they could swim you know and so like him being having that
opportunity to do that and it was like the beginning of the end from you end up losing a
few of those games and then you end up losing a few of those games and then you end up losing a
lot of pressure but they definitely should have got it with players the respect that he had from
the players his ethos around it him being able to build and merge all the cultures because very
difficult australia is merging all the cultures they've got a lot of islanders maori salmon tonga
fiji and then we've got a lot of australians and different backgrounds of australians and then also
the indigenous culture of australia so being able to grab that let's merge that all together and find
this culture that is represented that represents all of those but ultimately we're still
representing australia which is a very diverse multicultural that is a yeah it's a lot more
diverse than he's 100 so it's like but and coming from new zealand which is a very multi multicultural
place and the heritage is culturalist maori background bringing that in that's being able
to blend that through
with um indigenous australia australia and pacific islands and everything be able to get them that
into a voice that was rugby was my second that's hard like now you're talking about it now because
like when i think about like wallabies back in the day come out in tracksuits anthem i feel like
the anthem's cool um but then see matilda you know it's not like the most scariest thing you
look at new zealand like we've got the haka um the moldy anthem starts before it we all learn moldy
songs when we were a kid oh like today was really strong over there it's easy to bound everyone under
there because they start to tell stories of like like moldy's tell stories really well and they use
that to sort of connect everyone yeah like and when i think about it coming over here it's hard
because a lot of the indigenous culture has been ignored forever for sure you know sam brown he did
a like a really good job or better than anything i've been involved with was bringing that into
the team and being able to sort of link all of that together with the history of the country
um then the overarching part is the way that we played the game like i see that have you played
with that much structure before no i haven't um but it was one of those things that put a lot of
time and effort to structure so i'd say the past six years so before that like so when i came into
the reds we played a game so like back then that era there wasn't a lot of structure and that type
of football was super simple like if you go back and watch those games so like from a defensive
standpoint teams all they used to have was pillar post key which is like this is the route pillars
one post two key is three so that's literally all that structure was to defense and then rugby back
in the day was just up and out it was like a soft trip so you always had time and then south
africans brought in this blitz defense and then so when structure came into the
game it wasn't until around 20 say 14 so you had the waratahs was checked they played this game
where you had had a thing called um so they had the hammers which was your front row in the middle
of the field and you had your sickles which were your sort of locks and back row and so basically
they would have a hit up here get up and just run across to the other 15 so they just do this swing
15 that's why they were called sickles but they're on like this um shave of the sickle yeah and so
you had your hammers and you had the ball and you had the ball and you had the ball and you had the
all they did your biggest boys in the team just moving up and down so run have a carry get up
get back and reload and get ready to carry these guys went from this 15 to that 15 so that was
like the structure that he had so you're always your landmarks you were trying to play off of the
rule of field 16 so it got to a 15 you had a short side or you come back to
um and at that point in time i didn't understand structure so like i really fell behind because
the way that we played at the reds throughout our successful years was all just give me the
ball and i'm like i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna do it
yeah but it was like so it's called ocean rugby yeah so like you're just playing um speed of the
breakdown so if the ball is slow so i'll be standing here and if we get quick ball off this
rut i'm just hitting the ball flat on the advantage line because the defense can't come up so worst
case scenario i get tackled just behind the advantage line or on the advantage line so we're
always moving forward and then if it got slow just drop back and kick boy you box kick um but
and so if it was slow
so i'd be waiting for the ball and the forwards would be coming around the corner it was slow
will would just play the forwards up so you play them up and i'll try and get quick ball now and
push out flat and that's how we played the game so it was just around the corner so you got to one
edge two-sided rugby was will would look take care of the short side so if we got like pretty fast
ball or slow ball and if it was like super sly and it was the defense got it wrong on the fold
because if you think about we're coming around the corner in a three fence is coming around the
corner and if it was like super sly and it was the defense got it wrong on the fold because if you
think about the same sort of thing if you beat them then you get the advantage they beat you and
the ball is slow someone slows it down they've got advantage because defense is right on the
finish line and sometimes we'll go short side or i'll just say to willie short side point point
point here run short side and play something there then when you get into structure and now like
the most common theme that teams play is a one three three one which is
you've got a back row a back row or a hooker on the edge and then you've got three and a
three and then you've got a three and a three and then you've got a three and a three and then you've got
your last flanker so then your flankers are able to just kind of like but that's the
most common breakdown 1331 um so then like that system i didn't really understand until
i started watching a heap and trying to figure it out so i was like okay so what the all blacks
and i remember one year coach at the rears thing was 2014 said okay we're gonna play this 131 pen
but he didn't really know
he just saw that crusaders were playing it so we didn't understand it at depth we just knew okay
you got three players across there and then when you're running against no one it looks really
beautiful when you're just having the team run we got three guys he hit one of them he might tip it
on or do a little inside ball come around you got another three guys waiting hit them come around
you've got a back rower there so he can run a blocker and you go out the back of it it's real
pretty to to trainers so you don't know why or so like if you get to somewhere and say it's slow
ball where you're gonna go so like if you play off the sideline and this carries ends up being
slow ball you just go back to the short side so we'd still try and play open and they just come
up yeah yeah so that year with the reds was tough because it was just like we didn't understand what
we understood this is where the people stand what are they doing for you what are we looking for
why are they standing there because we're just copying what's on the
house was it's funny you say that because like you look at the penrith system like everyone talks
about the penrith system everyone tries to copy it just can't quite know the bro yeah and it's
because you just don't know why it was all up all personnel is the second yeah for sure and
evidence evidence like if you stick to a system and every time you get points wins and eventually
premierships you understand the systems work you play two games in a row you haven't scored a point
you're like oh fuck this and we're all patient yeah and that's where we're like when you look
at the crusaders like their makeup of their teams
always had like a hooker who could like run yeah so you um taylor yeah he's a back row like
essentially a back row um can throw a pass can run and he's like solid so these guys are
back rowers and then so it means that the guys through the middle of the field are big and strong
as well um but yeah then like things started to change like you know now you get like three two
one three two one right it's faster system yeah because when you're coming off side you still got
three then you only got two guys through the middle so it doesn't bank up a lot of players
defenders yeah but a lot of the time the downside you hit them and they carry you're going to lose
a back yeah yeah so you're down the back all the time yeah um you know if you get quick boy you
might not need that guy might scan not need to push into number 10 get the boy on you know fastball
but really understanding like numbers
systems and that i just didn't take an interest in later in my career because it wasn't something
that you can get by on talent yeah and it will right the the way that defense was you didn't
need in the game so what had backed up evidence base to me was how we played at the reds because
we were skinning everyone with this this system because myself and will were good and crafty
enough with the ball in our hands to open up holes around the defense because as i said the only place
where i was really structured was one two and three because outside of that there were holes there
then understanding the system but then even furthermore once i came back into the wallabies
with um rams and dan mckella i really sat on dan mckella asked him a heap of questions and i found
him super interesting because he's got a really smart football mind and sense of structure he was
the bum he's coach for you so everything he did based off how he was playing and how he was playing
and how he was playing and how he was playing and how he was playing and how he was playing and how he was
playing and how he was playing and how he was playing and how he was playing and so everything
i had done in the past at the reds all we used to do was throw the ball in throw it off the top to
will because me and will were the best players so everything was just off the top straight to us
and so the ball was in our hands straight away whereas what they used to do was set up off
malls so you had more so they commit all their fours and they play like peel plays where the
hooker runs around you got guy running short guy on the inside so you're attacking the back of the
line out and once you start collapsing
that area so that that seam you up so much space you think about that 15 meters you collapse that
seam people come in now you've got all that space with guys coming around and you're ready to just
to get the ball to your best players out on the edge with an extra 15 meters um but i just never
really took time to understand that so i started just like watching forward line out sessions
looking at so i'd like review on the computer the forwards line out session not for me to
go okay oh we're playing this move i need to know it which is to try and understand what they're
doing why they're doing it if i saw setups in our own then i understand the flip side of what was
happening in the defense so then when i come back in and i got picks i was in the wallaby squad for
like about six weeks before i played so i had this time to just like understand that there's
and then i had my opportunity but i was like okay i know how i am as a man
i know what i used to be like the last time i played and when last time i played i wasn't bad
but now i'm like physically i'm better mentally i'm better there's all these things that nobody
knows about me the work that i've done i ain't closed doors even the stuff around the line outs
the scrums the fours play starting to understand my teammates and my coaches i was like okay not
that this is going to be a breeze but i know that i'm going to be able to give this level
so i know that i'm might not be it
10 out of 10 but i'm certainly not going to be below an 8 like physically i just there's no way
i can be this i'm going to be at least between an 8 and a 10 and i reckon if you look at that
old version of yourself and the new version of yourself the old version the new version of
yourself might be playing at an 8 but you could make the three guys either side of you go from
like a 7 to a 9 i mean yeah and that was the difference because before all i was worrying
about was how i turned up to game day in terms of like yeah i feel good like
confident um you know like i'll hate wow like shape yeah whether it's good
yeah i'm gonna so i can step i can use my footwork i can use all my skills crowds turned up
yeah i didn't care about that when we played against south africa i don't know if it was
gonna rain i didn't bother it didn't bother me it wasn't something i'd really factored in because
i knew okay if it rains this is the adjustment if if it's like great weather is the adjustment
right but i knew all across the board what i was going to do and i knew i was going to do it
and i wanted to do how i can make the players around me better um and that was one of those
things as i said like coaching point of view that i really enjoyed about being in that system with
those guys um so when i look to think about rugby league and social media it transfers onto social
media really well because a lot of the time the ball is always in play we've got 10 meters of
distance there's a lot of like composition that happens a lot more space so people get in size
that palmed a lot more often but then when i hear you break down rugby in a
detailed i've watched rugby my whole life but i didn't know anything that you said until i started
hanging out with you in japan do you feel like that part of the game is missing because when i
watch nfl quarterbacks and coaches and break down the level of detail that actually goes into an
actual game training preparation sure and all the set pieces that come with line out scrums like all
that sort of stuff like we don't have that in rugby league and our game moves a little bit quicker
which is great for us i don't feel like there's any media whatsoever around that part of the game
rugby rugby so this is the thing they they try to do like a stand documentary and i know they've
done one on the six nations which is really cool to watch if you haven't had an opportunity to watch
that get a good insight to the players but for me if if they did like uh is everybody which wants to
get the scrum out of the game like the scrum and buying out malls where he wants to remove it from
the game like from a viewership point of view but if you go and spend some time like i just sort of
and i say you watch anything in our i mean nfl about even the alignment so all we see is bang
them go together and holding each other like this and then brady gets more time to have a look and
throw a thing do you see the importance of that and if that guy gets it a little bit wrong he
steps his left foot forward instead of his right foot and a guy gets a bit of an angle and cuts
brady's time by like half a second it's totally different so if you if they did like a series
where it was about a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of
the scrum you would just see how intricate it is collision that they have and then if the tv camera
was able to kind of like capture that so you see the chatter between these front rows if you watch
a scrum and you see them talking to each other and that is it there's so much chat like shit chat
between like them um you know even when they're engaging they've got their foreheads on each other
and that's like talking to each other and they get like a little hit and someone might just do
something small where they're just pushing their
head into a guy um you know like the pressure that's around those spots the line out said the
intricacies intricacies around that change the perception of the game so then you would get it
to be like from guys who play the game it's always compared like rugby league and rugby union there's
chess first checkers the spectacle of league as you said because it's an easy game for tv
yeah and you can pick it up and say okay i sort of understand what they're doing here
but with rugby everybody's like oh yeah i'm gonna play this game i'm gonna play this game i'm gonna
i don't know the rules there's too many rules i don't know it and it's like yeah but like if you
could get a real close shot of that you go shit this is this is amazing it's like watching nba
you watch nba and for like the whole game you're just seeing it's just end to end but then the last
sort of 30 seconds of a close game that 30 seconds goes for like five ten minutes
because it's it's all about the smallest margin you know what i mean i think that that's what i'm
where rugby could sort of get an insight into that it might change people's perception a little
bit and even like i'm just thinking when you're talking in like when you go to an nfl game or a
basketball game or nba game the there's more lag time yes then stoppages but the market the
you go to the game you can um tailgate into the game and then whenever there's stoppages like
cameras are moving you know what i mean yeah there's like kiss cams and all that sort of stuff
so if they market to the game around like the actual experience of going to it i feel like it
because the rugby crowd is like a little bit proper like quake x yeah that's great but if you
don't know what the game is it's like you know but that's sort of like what we were just chatting
about is that when you get those intricacies intricacies of the game that experience at the
game you've got all of those and one of the the big things with nfl and that is that red zone
so like if you imagine this right so you're at rugby and it goes to a scrum goes down and on
the big screen they start playing
the other game that's on at that time you know what i mean so like you're watching the reds v
waratah but hurricanes versus the blues is playing at the same time instead of having them all like
one after the other they're all kind of like at the same time scrum goes down boom everyone just
looks at the big screen there's a lot going on on on the field and then everyone's watching this
and you see like a try from bodie barrett yeah that was sick and then oh shit scrum's already
getting ready to go again you know what i mean so it's like so many different ways to play the game
and that's what nfl have done well because they've got all that stoppage and lag time
they just fill it with stuff that's like um exciting to you mascots they do all that
yeah well um i think about this a lot because like in new zealand as soon as someone goes to
somewhere against the world everyone gets behind them like they could be touch blacks they could be
black cocks which is like our badminton team new zealanders get around new zealanders i feel like
ever in australia and especially because they're not the same but they're kind of similar in afl
um nrl and rugby but like i look at the experience of like when the matildas had a world cup whole
country just got behind yep you know i mean i don't feel like the wallabies or rugby have that
where like all the wallabies are going to there a lot of the league boys a lot of the league fans
are just gonna go oh fuck them it's not rugby league or afl people don't really care i sort of
disagree with that but i think it's because of the um results like bro i remember so when i was younger
we would we would play um a big game and you had like mcfanning um like you had all the league boys
messaging like you like guys really kind of like looked up to the wallabies like something that
they wanted to get behind but then when somebody's not doing well it's like it's very hard to get
support for it right because it's like you're not doing well for one year two years three
after everyone's like oh fuck you know i don't waste my time are they going to lose anyway
because all black wallabies is the equivalent of origin is yeah the amount of crowd you
but it's it's very similar at the moment as well it's like very heavily queensland dominated right
so it's like would have been four five years ago when they started like even though queensland won
it they put two series in new south wales to try and two of the games in new south wales yeah or
one of them so one new south wales one queensland one in melbourne kind of like make it a bit easier
i don't want to say easier but so they were taking it out of suncorp from having two you know what i
mean i mean the excuse would be
oh we want to grow the game here which is great but um similar to like the blitters though we're
like used to have two in new zealand like i don't think we've won at eden park in like
80 years or something like that so trying to move the games both away from eden park so that there
was a bit of percentage opportunity for us to win the game started things like that you know yeah
um but it is the equivalent and i think that the moment that we're able to win that
fact like be able to change the narrative a little bit because a lot of people okay now
the tyson the hoodoo whatever you want to call it is broken now we can sort of build and but if it
gets too much longer like there's going to be no one who wants to watch blitz like everybody's
going to forget what the blitz is always you know what i mean like you ask a lot of people in australia
what what it is they won't know it's true because it just hasn't been here for such a long time
yeah um obviously got carter gordon coming over
position to you probably had the same opportunity that you had back in the day
uh two questions how do you think you'll go and do you regret not like well i don't regret it
because of like i've my career i've like enjoyed what my career is and i'm happy with it but i i
do wish that i had the courage to go back and do it at that point because i know that if i look back
i could have come back at any any point um at the time did you think it was like this or that yeah
this or that and like you think that you're going to win the game but you're not going to win the game
but you're not going to win the game but you're not going to win the game
it's if you choose that now that's it and it doesn't go well that's it it's done like um you
you don't like you think at that moment it's it's this or that and that's it like and if it doesn't
go well well i'm finished in the game type thing that's how you think with carter gordon like i
sent him a message um i was speaking to him this morning actually and i sent him this message and
just said like what i said for a newspaper article that someone asked me about and i said i'm super
happy for him oh god i'm so happy for him i'm so happy for him i'm so happy for him i'm so happy for
him not because he left like if he stayed like i love the kid i loved um playing with him helping
him learning from him learning with him um as you said i was like man i'm glad that you had the
courage to go and do it and it just shows the mindset that you have and the belief that you
have in yourself because he's super talented he's going to go really well in rugby league because i
think that when he comes over to the game he's going to have a kicking game that's going he's
going to be able to do it he's going to be able to do it he's going to be able to do it he's going
to be able to put more time into it as well he's got a good kicking game or he's got a really big
boot so like things like 40 20s on an early um kick count so if he gets down a third tackle
deep in his half bang it's a does he have a big boot he's got a massive boot a huge boot yeah
and he's got good little kicking game too he's creative um but his past man like i'll watch a
bit of league and i don't think there'll be anyone in the game that they will be able to on the run
throw a long flat ball the way that he does which i think will be his point of difference in the game
and you know something that we just spoke about about rugby the defense has all the advantage
they're on the advantage line right so in rugby so you're always running forward they're coming
forward so you've got them right on the advantage line we sort of stand around about three meters as
a 10 so like if you're trying to play flat you're sort of three meters catching the ball at the two
meter mark so like they're right there
now him he's going to be getting the ball on the advantage line as a playmaker with the defense
back 10 meters coming forward so even if that's seven meters like it's still three minutes it
means you see that's a fucking luxury i mean that's playing off a line out off every position
so i think that his time in rugby being being so used to having guys in his face like that
it's just going to open up a whole lot more time so this will be a luxury for him as opposed to
the norm for every other league
player not to say that he'll be better than every league player but i think he's going to do really
well i think he'll be able to add so much value to the um side but also one of the things we spoke
about earlier about um his personal brand like whether he goes well or not there's going to be
people talking and watching it because he's the wallaby number 10 and some people be hoping he
does shit there'll be a lot of people that are oh everything you did for it but there'll be a lot
it'll be like one of those things that if you think about it like this if he does well
a lot of rugby guys who go fuck i want a piece of that because the game at the moment is seen
with higher value than rugby like the the way that it's going so the players are again like
you look on social media you look at the guys who are the top in the game and they're not even
representing um australia in that so just guys who are top for their clubs sure they got like
probably a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand five hundred fifty thousand five hundred fifty
followers or there or thereabouts making like if you get like a back rower on a bad side and he's
probably the best back row he's probably getting about 650 at the moment there you go like i don't
know the salaries of the guys in australia but i imagine predominantly most of them would be
probably only like between 250 and five like the best players i don't know i'm just i'm just making
that up but that's just what i think in union yeah and in australia yeah the best guys yeah
so you still got the guys like um
so if you go back a few years hoops is on like one two or something for like
four or five years as he was like there was a lot of guys over a million like when we were playing
um but there would be no one like taniyala would be around that somewhere he could command
easily that overseas um then guys playing in japan like everyone in japan would be
of the stars from any country would be over a mil um so like
money that's sort of thrown around for the work that you do as well so i look at rugby league
they work very hard it's a physical game but they're all earning really good money
so i think for carter if he can come and cement himself there'll be a lot of people death right
and a lot of people supporting but i think that he'll open that avenue and he'll sort of pave the
way for a lot more guys to want to do the same marky mark coming to the roosters that's my team
how do you reckon you go he'll go good bro because he's just he's got all the
skill set to be a great winger also like probably a winger or center like his aerial skills amazing
size he's a big boy he's not super quick like top end but he's just rapid like he can run fast and
move and he's just a big body he's gonna do super well bro like because the wingers in league they
take a lot of hit ups from dummy half right so they're taking a heap of hit ups he'll be able
to do that easily high balls he's going to score a lot of a lot of tries he's in a good system
too good players around him which fucking helps yeah but yeah especially come from like tars where
like they've struggled the whole year he's basically a superstar roster and they share
the same facilities and not same facilities but within the same postcode it's gonna be
it's gonna be crazy i'm excited for him he'll be he'll be good bro i'm excited for him um going
back the other way joseph suwali oh suwali sorry um how do you reckon he'll go oh man it's hard to
say bro like yeah he's he's got all the skill set he's his background is rugby union that helps
yeah so like it's not that he's coming and learning a new like i remember when
tamara tahu came over and it was like t was such a freaking um rugby league
has built his skill set and all of that but then when he came to union
as a center like he was going up against i remember this game we had against south africa
it was jean de villiers and jacques fourie both those dudes like 110 115 kilo that big
jacques fourie was huge six four six
six four and about 110 kilos huh just a big barrel and you watch this game and you just saw
the size difference so like tall long dudes where tamara wasn't like super tall he was super athletic
these guys were just massive and so it's just a different game so if you look at joseph he's built
like that like he's really similar build to like izzy yeah um he's long he's fluid uh he's played
the game again like i'll go back to joseph suwali he's built like that like he's really similar
to that is that a guy like t hadn't played the game so he was trying to play rugby league on a
rugby union field he's trying to get on that skip on the outside fan fan get the flick away
whereas from your centers you kind of need them being able to straighten up the defense other
defense by straightening up the attack i'm around here so guys could come around like basically
crashing and hitting up and then you use open side or short side defensive set being like a
pivotal role like a cornerstone to your defense um and so no one really put time in to teach it to
him too but like he he was a freaking i wish that he sort of had more time in the game i remember
left super after a year or so he sort of walked out yeah but guy like joseph i think he's just
going to walk in and um be a really good piece to have and as we spoke about with the social
media stuff he's already implementing that
so he'll help raise the awareness and the level of what the other guys are doing and
and train rugby have you met him have you met joey nah uh best dude bro like um even after that
origin we're out on uh i was out on a friday night and he was a maccas not we're both maccas
and we're always drunk bro we're just having this conversation but i talked to him quite a bit
but yeah he's got his head screwed on man and i think he enjoys like being limelight like yeah
for sure he enjoys being in the limelight but it doesn't affect who he is which is like the nice
balance you know sonny's got that aura about him when he's in the limelight and he's like
when he walks in the room you kind of like look at him yeah i feel like joey's got that about him
like i met him a couple years ago we're talking about nfts went for coffee and bro same thing
bro i was just like oh he's like an impressive dude like alarms going off or doing stretching
stuff like that so see bro that's that's the difference those guys who have this perception
of like that like they don't care about the game a lot but he's out there having alarms or when
he's got a stretch and stuff like this like just because you put out this image that you're out
doing rapping doing vlogs and stuff doesn't mean that you're not still focused i think that that's
one of the things that the the public really forget about because they see they don't realize
that the stuff that you put out it's only a smidgen of of your life so it's like even when
you do i do it a lot like certain days in my life and it's like there's still a lot of stuff that's
missing from i only capture a certain amount to put into like a 30 second reel or whatever
um but yeah because like stretch routine it's like
30 minutes it's not just like a three second clip of you doing one of the stretches you know
what i mean so it's like i think it's going to be great for him and he might be a guy that's able to
just like pave the way and set the example for a lot of these younger boys and rugby and if you
have a guy like him already doing these things he's going to have teammates to follow and do
some of the stuff he's and kind of like lean off him and because sonny had that effect or if he
come to league back to league and roosters you know a lot of boys were saying oh i'm
actually doing enough yeah like he'll do where all norm was training and then he'll be like last
one on the field and he was in the physio room doing all the stuff like mess if you look at it
like i was thinking about this the other day you look at a lot of league boys now pre-season they
have their shirts off thank you for your proper and outside back they're all like shredded now
and i think when i was playing like we might have had josh mantle and chico that were shredded and
maybe some of the other boys starting to see a six-pack coming through i deliver a little
craziness for sure bro and see that's that's one of the things that we were saying before is that
even with me like my diet and that like a few guys messaged me about it this week sort of said i've
had two weeks off um not two weeks off like i still trained while i was away on holiday still
ate relatively well but it was bad for me and i was like i feel like shit like it's a month to
get back into the swing of things and make sure my diet's like really good
um my training schedules consistent and so forth but then when i i look at that and look at what i
did when i was younger it was like moments that we trained for so it was like ah pre-season
pre-season was a time to get into shape rather than coming into shape and using pre-season as
a time to sharpen the sword you know what i mean so like if you've got that small amount of time
like an eight-week period instead of using that to get fit which is surface level so if you do an
75 hard yeah it's essentially an eight-week program right you do that and you get into this
mad shape but it's like it's not really ingrained into you has who you are yeah it has an ending so
it's like 75 days at 75 oh shit yeah sweet now you go back to a normal life or your normal life
so i think that an important thing for me and uh and you sort of touched on it with joey is that
being able to build those habits and disciplines that just reflect who you are
as opposed to i'm going to get in shape for this eight weeks and then i might play good
four weeks of the season and then i'm back to what i actually am now you start being inconsistent
um start having bad games bad days and then you start trying to figure out ways i can make it
better so how can i get back in shape okay i'm gonna have alcohol oh fries no this and that so
you're just taking away stuff yeah so you never really build the foundation so i think that that's
a super important key
something that i learned is just build the right foundations get the right habits and then you're
able to be consistent with say hypothetically we roll into next year and this is just me
spitballing but um lions wallabies lose oh and three just say for example we're all into the
world cup boys don't make the finals around what happens to australian rugby i don't know it's like
i actually is that the end of it yeah i probably don't even want to think about that man because
like if that happens
yeah i think there's it's not that it'll be the end of it like because wallabies will still exist
like there'll still be rugby teams that will still exist but the game as we know it which
is already in a really tough space it'll it'll be all but gone you know um so you think about
the flying effect think about i watch like some documentaries and stuff like all the time
you take one animal out of an ecosystem and that whole ecosystem collapses
so um if you think about the wallabies you take the wallabies or australian rugby out of this
ecosystem what happens to the all blacks hmm that was that was kind of going to be my next question
yeah what happens to the because south africa jumped jumped out of super rugby and they play
in europe so you take australian road or like super rugby you collapse that now what's going
to happen with new zealand because they're so far away from everything um could you make a like a
new zealand competition and they already have a really strong but like say like 10 of the 30
wallabies go over and play for crusaders or like that almost becomes it's very small you know what
i mean almost comes like the epl of club rugby that happened because i know the french comp is
super strong you could definitely do that yeah um but now would guys want to go over and live in
new zealand like yeah when you live over you know what i mean like it's it's a interesting thing
one of the aspects of playing and so i went and stayed in bordeaux go play in south orland or the
south of france that's where i'm that's where i'm leading to but it was like so ben tapoy one of my
best friends i went and stayed with him for like three or four days in bordeaux and he's our age
and he's still playing really well i know in the south in france at bordeaux a great city
beautiful place and we were talking about like the game에서는
as a whole right now the beauty of playing over there and being able to come back and play for
the all blacks or wallabies or whatever it is is you play with the french play with guys who play
for um south africa i'm sorry i was talking with him and khalisi about it and you actually get an
insight into what makes these guys tick into what how they see the game so like me and khalisi
talking about so that the behind the lines with south africa i'm like shit that's super
interesting that's something that we don't do in australia or i know you guys yeah but do you know
what i mean so it's like now you're around khalisi you're around the irish boys you're around the
french guys oh exactly so then when you go back and play for australia yeah you've iron sharpens
iron so you're being around these guys every day you see what they do every day you hear stories
what south africa did about what france do how they play why they do certain things now being
able to take that back to your country it's invaluable now if you go back to the model you
just spoke about and like you isolate yourself further you only know what you know so you only
know the way that you guys do it so you have no real insight into what these other countries are
doing so now you go into a game and you might have the best style of play at the minute and
everyone's trying to sort of copy you but they're
going to figure out their own rendition of it they're going to figure out okay i'm going to
take what the all blacks are doing but we're going to add our spice um and then that becomes the way
of playing now because you're so isolated what do you do you know so like there's there's no
there's no like second option so i think that that's really not the way to go they've got to
figure out a way to um to work this all out but when super rugby was um south africa new zealand
like we were speaking about it in coliseum we said fuck those are the days like the games were hard
you play against south africa you had this really physical game you go over against new zealand you
got like a physical fast game in the australian derbies were just like grinds but then the way
that they viewed us it was like really hard to play against the australians you play against
new zealand it was ultimate physical and like a super fast way of playing um so that competition
those three teams were one two and three in the world consistently so i remember one time we were
three we got our way up to two we had a game it's the all blacks and then we could have got to one
we lost so we're staying there like we're in reach of it um now south africa gone we're just playing
in this comp like you look how far we're sort of slowly dropping down and other teams are coming up
yeah so you introduce these teams like fiji see as good as it is having these guys in line i think
but if i think about this if i'm thinking like international rugby and that they don't really
want these teams that they invest a little bit into them but they should be investing more into
but for them it doesn't make sense for fiji to keep beating to keep beating these big teams
because the the small pacific island nations not bringing in any money so it's like they're never
going to invest probably properly in these places because
they're going to keep taking individuals they're going to use it as a breeding ground for them
they say that they're investing yeah that's yeah they want to get like roger over there
they don't want roger playing for fiji they want them playing in france and that you know so it's
like um but having like the drew and super rugby you see how much like guys who are just guys
playing on the islands the talent and the skill that they've got um japan are doing something
similar with the the pathways program that they have
which is giving great opportunity for guys to come through and play for japan
but yeah like i think that all this talk around the that that is a bit of a trip out when you
watch the japanese side is like big vgns and they do them with japanese to me it's crazy guns too
there's some crazy talent over there yeah bros so what do you reckon the like say let's put our
hat on in towards the future what do you reckon the three big leagues are going to be club wise
do you think it's going to be
as um english a the english comp the french comp and probably japanese i don't think the english
comp are they going down too yeah they're struggling like they're struggling but i think
they've had a little bit of a comeback like they've increased their salary cap and that but
um yeah the english comp is like a good comp like there's good footy in that play but
because it's privately owned like um it's up and down like there's a lot of bad stuff that's
happened to a lot of players that at clubs just clubs shutting down
and like owners london wasps are gone yeah the wasps are gone london irish like and guys are
just left without jobs like let's imagine going into training tuesday wednesday a day off and
you go to go back thursday and there's no club anymore like you've got your whole family house
everything and now you've got to try and find a gig somewhere like that happened to think of the
list of players like say 40 players countless staff like i'd hate to know how many staff and
like it's really difficult for staff as well
is um yeah like brad shields from um hurricanes he was over there for a bit
uh wasps went into administration yeah like he's scratching around for a contract exactly bro so
it's like it's a really interesting time like over there in um england french comps like really
strong um same thing though like they're do they have like private owners like back does that is
it so it's all the same like they're all um billionaires who own the the teams but also the
players and you know every player is paid right if you're a football player you go to aυ
it's the kind ofia where there's a lot of extra money making a lot of money through tv rights
like rugby is their number two sport you know so like i don't know the population of um france but
I want to um play another year at this level you know like it's it's super fun playing in Japan but
when I saw that level and that competitive side came out again I was like oh it is a different
level but to answer your question in the future the Japanese league the French league and then
there's a huge question mark over what could happen down there because the reality is is
it was only like what less than 10 years ago that this is the best comp in the world
so super rugby was the best comp in the world and now it's not it's not it's not even the
um top top two you know so can you see like a um almost like a champions league style
thing happen with clubs because that's what I was thinking where like say you get the best
two teams from each country say Crusaders Blues I don't know Brumbies over here what happens
right yeah so what happens to the rest you know so then like they've still got to make money
somehow and so and you're sort of sort of have the like national competitions like you said here
New Zealand has that the two best go on into a pool go play somewhere but then that rolls into
international there's just heaps of problems with that in my opinion because it's always your best
players who are just playing so much more rugby and they're just getting burnt out and the bottom
they're always just on break so then the clubs go well we're going to make you train to get our
money's worth pay you all year round um so one of the things that they do in Europe is they have the
European Cup and then they're the champions champions cup so it's like the top half of the
table and Europeans Cup bottom half and champions so they still have like a second tier competition
so if you're going to do that competition as you said you just go like top five bottom five and
have a second tier comp but
it's just travel man so I think if they do that have a Europe like an Asia Cup sort of thing
so it's like super and Japan get the top and bottom play in a tier one and a tier two
comp so you can still win trophies um there's a system like that that might be viable I know
that they're doing something in Saudi with all that yeah yeah like six nations and like the
rugby championship yeah yeah so they do like a it's kind of like a mini world cup
type thing that'll be cool yeah that'll be super cool to watch because it's like best teams and
the best teams from like Europe yeah because I always say this about like I always say this
about international rugby versus international league like international league is just the NRL
yeah they just throw guys in different yeah that are aligned with like nationality which is great
and realistically maybe the Samoa Tonga game is one that people watch but you look at the
international game of uh rugby union it's like you might not see these guys have the chance to
play each other for a long time
you know what I mean and the way Ireland play rugby which best to watch versus the way England
play rugby when they come down there and challenge the All Blacks it's always really interesting
because the styles of play are so different dynamic of players and that dynamic of different
teams and that's sort of the other part is around um what's it called at British Irish Lions play
against like a hybrid All Blacks Australia team or All Blacks Australia South Africa
I would pump him yeah
it'll be sick to watch yeah okay you know what I mean so it'll just be like because see you say
straight away I will pump him say that in front of an English person I would say fuck off mate like
you know like there's no way that you beat us but it's like that's that's the reason why it's
interesting because it's like conversation you know and the idea of it um but yeah bro like
there's there's so many different ways and avenues and that's the the upside of rugby is it's a world
um so yeah it's kind of weird that you see like um like rugby league we look at union and go
internationally this is the dream and then union look at league and like clubland this is like the
dream it's always oh always one which you can't have the league players always just say to me is
that I really want what's you know I want to come over and play like I want to travel and like see
the world and all of us can but I just want to stay home I mean I love to just like be able to
play and stay at home and so when I play club rugby I just want to stay at home and I just want to
stay at home and I just want to stay at home and I just want to stay at home and I just want to
be in like 20 17 18 I think it was and the furthest I had to travel for a game was a gold
coast yeah yeah like 3 p.m game down the gold coast I was loving life so that was like an
interesting time bro because it's like that whole thing where I actually got to stay at home and not
travel because I used you would spend at least half the year in hotels it's like you know but
it used to be fun when I was younger because it was so new then it was like you know as you get
older you're like love your time at home and I just want to stay at home and I just want to stay at
home and I just want to stay at home and I just want to stay at home and I just want to stay at
you love that aspect of having a routine um not being able to like live out of a suitcase
so everything as you said one what you what you can't have sometimes um yeah yeah when you're
saying you want to be in relationships when you're um next question so I obviously um been in this
game for a couple years now obviously being always been into fashion ever since we were kids and
have money like you try and dress the best you could
what you had uh how's that experience been well it's been um it's been super fun man like
there's ups and downs highs and lows um there's been some great lessons too but it's just like
for me the thing that I just love about it is that like because it's so new to me I'm just
learning so many different skills I'm meeting so many different people getting insights and
a range of different things but as the brand grows
I just see the growth in myself and like especially through clothes I look back at our
first drop and stuff that I was putting out like holy and I was so proud of it at the time I was
like man I was just so proud to see it on people I just wanted to wear it everywhere um and I look
back at it I'm like what was I doing but it was just like the growth of that and that's just from
a like clothing standpoint then when I look at it from a knowledge standpoint I was like oh my god
what I've learned the things the mistakes I made um the things that I just kind of like thought is
okay this this person's doing now you just kind of paste it type thing and but not understanding
the why and how like just for a quick example it was like something to do with shipping
and I remember going oh it's just kind of like going off looking through heaps of brands that
I like or like going online and just sort of seeing what everyone did and it was like let's
say someone's most brands were like
$100 free shipping okay so like that's about so that sounds right let's just do $100 free shipping
and it's like everybody who purchased basically got free shipping so we're paying for everyone's
shipping and then so like the bill that we had for shipping I was just like oh my gosh so like
he lost a lot of money because I just didn't understand that I just was sort of like okay
if everyone's doing that and some of the brands that I was looking at
weren't even clothing brands like so their product the cheap exactly so their cheapest product
might have been like 50 bucks so it was like okay if you buy two things you basically hit so then
you had to buy the third thing just to get out of my head to get free shipping that's obvious now
yeah so obvious now like you sound like an idiot but it's just like okay yeah that makes sense
um how do you get the name sure so I was just like
asked how to say it or I hear people saying like the wrong name um by Shousai it just means detail
in Japanese and the reason I sort of came up with that name was that I was in Japan at the time when
I decided to actually go ahead and start the brand and then for me detail was like the most important
aspect of not only clothes but life and you know when we're talking about detail it's in how you
live every day so having routine discipline great habits and just all of that comes from the
foundation of detail you can't have good habits good routines and good discipline by having no
detail in your life so that to me just like really um made sense to use that in the clothing because
even when I used to buy clothes I'll buy someone's clothes or buy a brand's clothing and I'll be like
I love this but yeah they've just missed this and then so like I think I'd go and try and change it
myself but I'd also be like okay if I made a hoodie I want it to be like this you know like
um finally to me I've been able to like kind of kind of like affect the hoodie to how I
like to wear it um and other things but I just think the the smallest of details
make the biggest of the what's the biggest misconception that oh what's like what's something
you mean about being in the clothing game obviously i've got my opinions but what's yours
well there's i can you could answer this many different ways but it's like the biggest
misconception to me is how easy it is so people think you okay so you buy a t-shirt for ten
dollars you sell it for 50 and you make 40 it's not how it works like you know what i mean like
it sounds like there's a like a lot of money to be made so if you just get a t-shirt sell it for
50 bucks you bought it for 10 like there's your 40 bucks you do you sell a thousand that's a lot
of money you know yeah so but like the truth is is that a t-shirt you bought for ten dollars
the marketing that goes into it how many of them you might give away for like advertising for
gifting um also like as we said shipping so it costs to get it to you it costs it to get it to
someone um if you're going to put something on it
like the depth of it is just like you can go so deep into it if you wanted to
um but it's just not as simple as that you know what i mean so it's like figuring out how you can
maximize that 40 that if you're buying it for 10 and there's going to be 40 to be made but there's
all these other costs and for me the the difference was is that because i play sport it's not my day
job like i'm not reliant on this making money and i'm not reliant on this making money and i'm not
making money but trying to figure it out and get it all set up i was paying a lot of people to do
jobs that i didn't know how to do and trying to figure out okay so now i get it now this is
something that i can and then i can slowly take money back out of it you know what i mean but
yeah there's bro like that question just gets gets me thinking about everything now you know
yeah i think one of the hardest things to do and especially in the space on the clothing where
you're in where design focus is like trying to sell what's on here and then you're like
hand uh trying to get rid of old stock market new stock and plan for stock in the future
yeah because by the time like your new stuff comes around and it's ready to push the market
you've already been looking at it for six months you know what i mean yeah and you half get over it
you're like oh fuck is anyone gonna like this but the consumer hasn't seen it yeah for sure
yeah i always struggled with that that's a huge thing for me yeah that's like as soon as i get
new stuff like i look at them all and i'm like i hate it yeah and then i'm like everyone's gonna
hate that they haven't even seen it but i'm excited
about this stuff and then i see it for a couple weeks and then i'm not everyone's not gonna like
it and so it's one of those like imposter syndromes as well so i think like okay like
i don't even know what i'm doing like this is gonna go shit i fuck it like nah and then i get
like kind of want to be a little bit destructive it's kind of like what i was talking about with
rugby now i'm starting to understand take my ego out of it now why did i start making these clothes
because i like them it doesn't
mean if everyone doesn't like them okay i can live with that but i want them to like it because i
want them to buy it and i want this business to work but i also have to get my head around
i make something i also got to keep in mind the audience as well but they're not like the full
focus you know but yeah like it's funny because even some of the new stuff now we're getting
ready for a launch in like two weeks um all that stuff like i still love it but i'm like
we have another launch that's going to come out about a month or so after it so we're already like
focused on that like we're focusing on pushing this stuff also super focused on that and then
what's really difficult for me is like planning ahead yeah um because you know why because you
live live week by week most of your life yeah well it's like me and you we went and did um
groceries right and so for me i always only buy groceries for that day or maximum the day after
like planning too far ahead like it's scared i'm like oh where will i be what will i be doing
um you know like in the sense of i know what my training and that that i have to and what i need
to eat but i like to just go and get things that day because it's part of my routine so then planning
ahead with clothes and that like it seems so far away from for me like planning for september
and november right now like our manufacturers like pressing me about that and i'm like
hold on just like chill like i've got to sell stuff next week and if that doesn't sell and i've
already like paid for all the stuff for september um november like it's it's really quite hard to
get your head around but that's just the the place that we're living in and that's part of the
excitement that's like game day right so when we have this launch i used to get super nervous
around launch i just will be like okay once it goes bad once it goes bad and he started trying
out of it and then it goes well and you're like okay so can breathe for a couple weeks yeah but
it's like it's it's even just like uh learn a valuable lesson the other day or the other week
about it's also just being honest with your customer and something went really well and
i dropped before so we basically like ordered a heap more of that like large sizes and then
the next drop the large sizes didn't like sell as but the clothes were totally different so it's
like okay it's not just because we got a audience with large sizes it's they like that particular
stuff so then we're like okay so what are we gonna do with the stock and should we just give it away
to charity and because i i really enjoy the fact that being able to have a clothing brand i was
coming into winter being able to help people may not be as fortunate so we end up going putting
aside a big portion of the size of the clothes and then we're like okay so what are we gonna do with
the sizes to be able to give away and then we did this like uh it wasn't necessarily a sale but we
just put everything on the website at a certain price and we just told everybody up front hey we
ordered way more of the big sizes than anticipated so everything's gonna be like 40 bucks and pretty
much everything sold out in like about 24 hours maybe just a bit more yeah over the space we
launched like friday
6 p.m and it was all gone by like saturday saturday night something like that and then
we still had able to keep that bit and give it away to charity and get messages in from people
in those charities um who said like oh you know like it's changed changed my life like being able
to have new clothes like i feel confident about going like there was young kids who go to school
and that messaged me saying i know the new clothes thank you so much gave me the confidence to go to
school knowing that i had like nice fresh clothes and fresh and it was like not something that was
ragged and um holes and it was something like that so like for me that that is an aspect that
i was like to the team moving forward i want to continue to do that and whether we when we get our
product we put aside a part of that at the start so that like if we sell out of everything we have
that part that we want to give away to charity regardless um because like it's just one of those
things that as someone in a privileged position that feeling of being able to give back is like
super important and it just continues to make you understand and feel grounded and appreciative of
everything you do have you know like even running a business it gets hard but it's quite a privileged
position to be in to be able to run a business right well that's my opinion i love that um we've
talked about this in the past but like do you ever feel guilty about being successful or growing up
the same same sort of household same hometown obviously you've gone on to be a lot more
successful than i have in terms of um football career and probably monetary wise and i think
one thing we both do is like we try and take everyone with us and a lot of the times we end
up getting burned yeah bro like i don't think guilty is the the right word but what what happens
with me is like i want to help everyone so like i see someone even like say um
for example at a at a grocery store like i'll see a family and they've got like a big um bunch of
groceries and i'm like i just want to go and pay for it you know what i mean and i'm like
that's how i feel in my head uh sometimes i see um my mom and dad and and my mom will message me
about something and i'm just like yeah don't worry like i'll sort it out or whatever but it's like
you also just can't do that all the time you know what i mean because it's like at the end of the day
i know that i've gotten to where i am through hard work but i also know that i've gotten to
where i am through the help of a lot of other people so i understand why we want to go and
help everyone um but at the end of the day you've got to be quite selective with that i think that
that's also a skill um i think it's learning like recently yeah right it's a it's a skill man because
like and it's the same with friendships for us like just because you've known someone a long
that friendship is like good for you you know what i mean because sometimes like people come
into your life for a small period of time but you also got to be a good judge of character to be
able to say okay this person is helping me with this but they also get this out of it you know
what i mean so like that's where it's like that part of i want to help this person like but am i
going to get burnt by doing it you know what i mean so it's a really good thing to be able to
really interesting space to be in we need to draw the line yeah where do i draw the line well like
i'm really so like a few years ago i used to have this thing where i'd say like i used to call
everyone my friend right like that that i associated with and it's not that i say this
to them but it's just like i can basically now say these people are my friends these people are
acquaintances are they like at a certain like arm's length distance yeah
so there's certain things i will and won't do for them um and then like so those people on their
inner circle is like i know that i'll go and do whatever it is if they needed anything whether it
was um financial help or it is just somebody to talk to whether it's um just time um those type
of things um advice on certain things you know i'll tell them um my deepest and darkest secrets
with guys on their outer who are just acquaintances and those people might not necessarily know that
they're on that like outer level so why anything to everyone but it's just that i know what i need
to continue to function at a certain level the type of people i need around me and that and i
also the type of people i want around me you know so it's like once i was able to differentiate that
and learn that skill then that was a point where i was able to make sort of huge in rows and
gain a lot of people and i was able to make a lot of people and i was able to make a lot of people
gains in my own life because i was holding myself back by accepting everyone and just saying oh yeah
they're we're all friends so someone asked me yeah 100 yeah you know what i mean yeah i've got you i
got you don't don't worry i've got i've got it so you put yourself out by looking after people that
don't necessarily have your best interest at heart yeah it's hard to get like i've got it with you but
i wouldn't have with too many other people where i've got a friendship where like it's not transactional
like you don't need anything from me i don't need anything for you but just kind of as bro it's
refreshing yeah and i've got a lot of people that i've got a lot of friends that i've got a lot of
and bro the thing with that man is like those are the relationships that you invest in so it's the
same way we invest in our brands invest in whatever stock market or whatever you put time
into those because it's not as you say it's not transactional so it's not there's energy
bros like if you're if it's transactional like at some point i'm just taking taking taking taking
taking from you now there's going to be a point where you get the shits with me because it's
it's one way and then you're going to expect something back you know what i mean so now when
you're expecting something back and it doesn't come what happens now yeah you know what i mean
and sometimes it does come like you're sitting there waiting expecting and then it comes and
then this person's just give give give give give give i you know we're good we're good friends
you know what i mean but you dive into that and there's something that is actually needed at depth
oh i'm gonna sign up for this yeah they're
like that yeah because i i'm like you bro like i used to give so much so much and then i got to a
point where like i was expecting something in return bro and sometimes it was just a thank you
you know i mean like where we grew up is like you go to someone's house you use your manager you
have to help clean the house and then you say thank you on the way out so it's just like yeah
i don't know so when you think about your childhood values everyone grows up different you just got to
realize that too don't you yeah no i feel that bro but like i said that's one of the things that like
time into figuring that out so now the expectation isn't there yeah because i know what i'm giving
this person like the level of energy i'm giving so the output's not a lot so that when i do give
time and energy to that person i know that it's it's not exceeding my expectation god yeah that
makes sense i was thinking about this the other day where um like when i used to go into a room
i used to be myself every single time yeah i don't think every room every circle every meeting needs
and choose when you rock up as yourself yeah and this that's what i said it's the level and how
you give so it's the same as social media on our social media and i don't really go into depth on
my social media but i give out enough so i give out this version where it's not um so i don't sit
down and pull my heart out to social media but i know that i have valuable experience in a lot of
things give that out so that's like a certain level and i don't really go into depth on my social media
it's the same as we said like social media is essentially a type of friendship all those
people who follow you are following you for something it's okay i need to give some type
of energy to them but it's not wholeheartedly everything that i have you know and there's
probably some people who are really good at doing that and being able to give that full version of
themselves um kind of leave nothing for yourself though hey that's what i mean you know so then
that's like your whole life is film so i think that maintaining like a smidgen for yourself and
those people in that close circle that we spoke about that is basically behind closed doors is
super important yeah 100 um relationship skills obviously you sit in a pretty previous position
solid four out of ten on the look scale um what's your thoughts on relationships as you sit here
um as we sit here yeah i mean
like it's an interesting one uh do you think they can survive in today's day and age
mate like there's there's a lot of like surviving relationships um me i'm very proud of you know
my relationship stuff and like i don't really put anything out on social media or anything like
that from seeing someone or anything like that um you know i see people that are quite like
open and frivolous with it like you see someone with a girlfriend posting pictures of their
of them like you know one week and then two weeks later they disappeared and then
there's a new person in there like three weeks later you know i mean shout out jordan timmy
that's just it's just not for me bro like i get um i'm like once once i do have a solid
relationship and that then it'll be out there like the last girlfriend i had was like
like proper full-time um was like six five years ago something like that
um yeah i think about like relationships a lot like recently but like even like the
amount of temptation is out in the world like um temptation for everyone to they always think
they're the grass is greener on the other side and then we talked about instagram and social
media a lot like it's not hard to like find like other girls and you're always gonna like how we
talked about before rugby you're like all the boys that have played league want to go travel
all the boys that play union want to stay at home so i don't know like when i think about it there's
no like really strong
um influences of great relationships because i'm only looking online i feel like the best
relationships are the ones that are like you said private or behind the scenes stood the test of
time yeah well it's it's interesting bro because it's like there's just so much access right like
so as we said like um if you think someone's good looking you get money was yeah like back in the
day is like what i want to say back in the day but like um there's a lot of a lot more work
that had to go into it so that when you were in a relationship seemed a lot more solidified
whereas like nowadays it's um it's a lot easier to have like so for people to come and go
because the access that that you have yeah you know i mean does that make sense sure yeah because
you you see that like now if you follow someone or something oh everyone's like oh are you seeing
this person or whatever you know so it's like oh or whatnot but yeah um
right this is probably one of those conversations where we need jay simeon
he's the last one i was thinking about you know how we're talking about subscription models today
um i reckon like there'd be a market for people that one picking up girls because a lot of people
i know girls that um do hinge profiles and tinder profiles that's their job they help people
oh yeah set that up and i was thinking about something the other day i was like bro you'd
be perfect at this and then if you get to the other side of when people are breaking up and
how you get past this because i just be hitched
yeah i feel like he could do that because he's like he's got enough about him you'd obviously
have to study like the psychology but he are you gonna be done two or three online courses
and basically rip through the material from it it'd definitely be a space for oh fucking
i was there's that many dating so start signing up oh those two together yeah heartbreak horrors
yeah um bro what's your plans for the next five years next five years bro um well like i'm i'm
at the latter end of my career with footy and i'm not going to be able to do anything
so like ideally i want my business show sign that to be in a in a space that i can walk into
that i finish and be able to like put majority of my time into that um outside of that bro like
i'm just enjoying learning about business um do you enjoy being in like business like because i
remember when i left football i was gonna go i was like there's never gonna be a group of friends
like this or the conversations that we have and when you're at that age in your mid-20s and it's
girls and partying and going on benders like that's what you talk about but i remember you
coming into a meeting with me and jakey from g'd up and you're like yeah being excited about because
that's the path where you're going yes and you're novice bro you hundred percent everything that's
the thing bro like i'm right now i i know where i'm at in this space like so and there's one of
those things bro is like when you retire from sport like you're late 30s or mid-30s something
something like that right so you're still super young
so going into clothes while i'm still playing when i came into that meeting seeing guys who
have been in that space for a long period of time were successful in their own right
and the things we were talking about i was like oh this is like i love this because
it was like it's like being in a strategy meeting for a rugby game
everyone was trying to figure out okay how do we beat this team which is the manufacturers
um logistics and also the consumer right like how do we figure out a way to be able to make all of
this work and just that conversation was super interesting to me um but like business conversation
for me being at this level i understand i'm at this level but i also understand the experiences
i've been through so i'm not afraid to speak up if i think that i know something but also to ask a
question that may seem stupid because i think that that is the most important thing is like
i had this conversation with um one of the girls um who's starting her own brand from the matildas
which i'm super excited for and i'm looking forward to being able to support that with
alana kennedy um but we're having this conversation about it she's asking me a few
questions and i just said look one of the main pieces of advice i'll give you is do not be
and too proud to ask questions about things you don't know because you don't want to sit in a
meeting and go i didn't understand any of that or you know exactly and you're the one paying for it
because it's just like one of those things where you go the question might sound really stupid
to me but it might be a really good question and you also will get an answer to it
like because these people know and there's no point like you're not going to grow you're not
going to start understanding that because every question you ask and get an answer to
or if you don't get an answer they don't know it and you go find an answer that little bit of
knowledge is going to be gross so then you add those up daily and so like i just said i'm down
here but this is where i'm trying to go if i'm not going to ask those questions i'm down here i'm
going to stay there yeah no no it's funny um so yeah next five years so show so i hopefully walk
finish your career walk straight into that yeah that's that's that's the plan um you know like
got a few other sort of business things that we've got
um sort of on the move and that but that is probably the main main focus because if i get
that right that's the the part that i really enjoy so this is the equivalent of what rugby and sport
was to me like fashion yeah you know so like although i have other business interests this
one to me is like that one that is like could potentially just replace sport um and have the
same level of love passion maybe maybe more because
a different um place in my life um it's a lifelong game too you know what i mean it's not like shit
i'm ending soon you can play as long as you want 100 and the the thing is is like there's there's
been days where i've wanted to quit honestly like there's been days where i'm like fuck this shit
like i'm fucking over this i'm gonna close it all down pack it all up and then we find out how
we find a way um to get through and then like the feeling like that you have endorphins you
get by figuring that out like problem solving is one of the best feelings but i mean clothes is not
going to be everything that i do so like i'm really passionate about um about like just for
myself the growth that i can have in areas of my life when i finish playing that i never thought
i'd even get into so like what i mean by that is like
i think that's something that i've learned as a kid with like we spoke about briefly this morning
like father at some point um like i feel like i look at some of my teammates who play rugby
or some of my friends who are involved with sport have jobs and then the fathers so i really admire
the strength and character that they have i think that that's at some point it'll be something that
i'd love to do um okay and be i think that that they hopefully is
within that that five years that we just spoke about catch is just finding the right person
yeah to grow the kid with yeah to grow a kid with yeah um anything else you want to talk about
no appreciate your time okay i'm over appreciate it thank you