Difficult year in 2025, hits the ground running in 26.

Yeah, massively.

And you don't have to go back too far.

Top try scorer last year, Carlo Tassano.

So you've got to be an Aussie back rower if you want to be the top try scorer.

So, you know, Charlie started incredibly well.

And it's not just... on that attacking side of the ball.

Can I ask you, with Leskis appointed to take over, how much involvement or input will he have or does he have for those three test matches that you are still in charge for? Well...

And was it a case of trying to get the best minds into a room to try and see how we can evolve the game? Was that a difficult task to do when you were over there?

Yeah, it was really difficult because it was during COVID and everything was done.

I went back down to New Zealand.

So everything was done at the end of the day and the start of the day.

So it was, yeah, it was...

Hard to make a change in that sort of situation.

Yeah, because I think you need to get people together to really be able to drive change so that you can read body language and genuinely get support for different ideas.

The All

Yeah.

Um, and I was an athlete.

I was, uh, I played three sports a year in a small town high school.

You know, from my sophomore year on I was varsity every sport.

It wasn't because I was a great athlete, it was simply a numbers game.

And at the right point when I realized that, um, I was never gonna be a professional athlete and college recruiters were not knocking down my door, you know, somebody said to me, "You know, Schmidt, with your big mouth and your love of sports, you ought to be a sportscaster." And it put it in my head.

And at that moment, I wanted to be the local guy on TV.

Yeah.