How did that work out? Why did you decide to make the change? And what was your mindset then? And where were you thinking your career was going when the initial plan hadn't quite worked out?

Yeah, so was raised in Christchurch and went through the systems there.

And I mean, it's a pretty hard pull to crack anyway.

There's a lot of talent that goes through there.

So I was grateful enough to debut for Canterbury and Crusaders, which, you know, that's a dream that I've ticked off.

And so...

i just suppose the pathway that i'm on is supposed to be in this direction and um the league stint was i learned a lot um i suppose the way it popped up was i was playing club rugby um had just been i wasn't on contract um and so for the season i'd played this that would have been my fifth club season so i was like well you know it's all good and well playing um club rugby but we ended up playing a league team in a pre-season fixture for our club and um i just had a bit of an eye-opener and played hooker and had a bit of a run who thought oh this this this is really fun so why not give it a crack and then just registered for the local crushers team and wasn't tied to any clubs or anything so I just thought I'd give it a crack and learn some different things and how they play and then decided if I did want to go play league it wouldn't be in New Zealand it would be over in Australia where obviously league's very massive so got in contact and Carmock or Hunt gave me a call said yeah we're happy to have you over at the South Slogan Magpies and just gave it a crack moved everything over and I wasn't on contract or anything so nothing to lose.

you working at the same time as while you were in the academies and those kind of things? Did you have another job on the side that brought the money in for you?