Between Two Beers Podcast: HAMBASSADORS #6: Remembering Our Football Roots, Our Next Guests, Underrated Episodes

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Welcome to episode 6 of Ambassadors, our show which takes you behind the scenes of the

Between Two Beers podcast.

How are you doing, Shay?

Good.

I'm getting used to this fortnightly ambassador situation that we've got going on here.

It's really enjoyable.

Yeah.

What are we starting with today?

We're actually straight to the fun bag and I feel like this one's directed at you.

It's from a B Holloway.

Thanks for organizing the hire a hubby this week.

Do you think he'll be able to do jobs at our new house as well?

Signed Bonn.

Signed Bonn.

Bonn.

Yeah.

That one is.

That one is aimed at me.

Yeah.

So moving house.

There's a lot going on in your world, isn't there?

Yeah, there is a lot going on in my world.

Four kids.

New car.

I am secure enough in the man that I am that I'm okay hiring a hubby to come around and

just do some odd jobs around the house.

I'm glad you clarified that.

I'm glad you clarified that.

Odd jobs around the house which I'm not capable of doing and it's jibbing and plastering

and touching up little windows and things and it's not my wheelhouse.

So we hired Jeff, handyman Jeff, Jeff the hubby, Jeff the hubby and he came around yesterday

and he did a bloody good job so we're thinking can he just do all the stuff.

Like the soda plumbers that he had around.

He's an older gentleman.

I don't know if he knows.

I don't think that precludes him from being a fan of the show.

I don't know if he'd know what a podcast was.

Okay.

Respectfully.

Yeah.

But yeah, good question, Bonn.

I would love to get him around to the new house.

You've got movers coming in.

Yeah, we've got movers.

You've got to get movers at our age.

You don't want to be asking your friends to come around and help lift couches and fridges

and things like that.

I remember when we had to move the spa pool for Gavin Douglas.

Yeah.

We don't do movers.

I've been the guy, I think I've been like the number one person that gets called when

someone's moving.

Because you've got that big frame.

I guess I do have the ability to drive a truck.

Yeah.

You have a base of a pyramid and also a good sturdy bottom to cover some large objects.

Yeah.

I want to, thankfully one of our other friends, Sam Wilkinson, had me on the list to be a

mover for him, but then took the Holloway, the book of Holloway and got in movers to

do a job.

Yeah.

A mature decision.

But on the handyman thing, I have a theory and it's kind of excuses why I'm a bit useless

in that department, and discussing with other football players, there was about four of

us when we were, when this theory came up, we were thinking, I spent so much of my youth

playing sport and practicing sport that I didn't have the time to learn simple things

like how to put up a shelf, how to fix a tyre on a car.

Oh, you haven't got the tyre in your locker?

No.

I do now.

Okay.

That was the first example that sprang to mind from my youth since I conquered the tyre situation.

But do you think there's something to that, that people that perhaps were better at sport

and practice more when they were younger now?

Well, no, because I wasn't good at sport and I'm not a handyman, so your theory doesn't

stack up to use me as a sample size of one.

Like I'm not very useful at doing anything other than like maybe some screws.

Why are we so useless?

We're good at other things, eh?

Talking.

Maybe.

Well, that's what I mean.

Can't talk.

Reversing a trailer is another, even just, just dealing with a trailer is one that's not

really.

So I can back a trailer.

I've got a lot of experience with a trailer.

I would love to see.

No, I do a lot of trips to the dump and we've got quite a narrow driveway and a trailer

has to come in and out and I'm back and I've got that one in my locker.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Wow.

Very much so.

That's a real, that's a shock to me.

Yeah.

There'll be listeners who probably thought, Steve, he seemed pretty onto, I can't believe

he can't do simple things like put up shelves, but.

There will also be listeners that think this is very much in your wheelhouse.

Cooking is another one of yours, which I would suggest.

Cooking with kids, I've improved.

I've got a few, I've got a few recipes in the repertoire now.

What have you got in your locker?

Bloody good nachos.

No, I don't.

Sweet chili sauce.

No.

You do a good part.

Why would you do that?

Oh, you wound me up.

You pissed me off already with a sweet chili sauce.

Just for anyone out there, you don't put sweet Thai chili sauce and nachos.

Yes or no?

Yeah, you do.

No.

Remember, we went on a junket down to Queenstown together.

Yeah.

I was allowed to take a plus one.

I took you for some reason.

It was our baby moon.

I think Bon was pregnant.

And we had to, I had to write up my experience of treble and part of it, they got us some

interview with like one of the top chefs at one of the Queenstown restaurants.

I was like, what the fuck are we going to ask this guy?

I've got no idea.

I don't know anything about cooking or food.

And so the only thing I could think to ask him was, is it okay to put sweet chili sauce

and nachos?

And what did he say?

What did he say?

He didn't seem to have a problem with it, but I think he was just appeasing you because

you were supposed to write a review of his restaurant.

No, no, no, no, no.

He thought it was a good idea.

He gave it the take.

That was a sum trip, wasn't it?

We sort of landed in the afternoon straight to the casino, $100 on the blackjack table.

We won.

And we doubled down.

We walked out.

And then...

No, we went back.

We did twice.

Did we?

Yeah.

I don't know the rules of these things.

I just got $100.

I was going to get $100 out.

We put it on the table.

And then we walked out with a lot of money.

And those were in the good old days of drinking and gambling.

It's interesting.

And your comment that you rate yourself as a cook, because we went out for dinner the

other night with your new partner, who you've been with, what, six, seven months now?

And I asked for the ratio of who does the cooking.

And it seemed like, if I remember correctly, a 90, 10% split.

Her doing 90% and you doing 10%.

Quality doesn't equal, like, sorry, quantity doesn't equal quality.

It's up to the plate, my friend.

Yeah.

When I do cook, I cook amazing meals.

I just don't cook them very often.

I just do a little bit more.

Maybe just do a little bit more.

Maybe you should put them in your own shelves.

Moving is traumatic, though.

One week to go into a new place on Wednesday.

And it's going to be a stressful few days.

Forbiddy?

Yeah, Forbiddy, Hamilton East.

And because we've had the snip, of course, that's the end of needing any extra bedrooms.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's one way to look at it.

Yeah.

Snip update for those interested.

Went well.

A little bit of a, to tell my snip story, they sent out an email with a video link in it

and said, make sure you watch this video.

It will explain everything you need to know ahead of the procedure.

So I clicked on the link.

It's a YouTube video, 25 minutes.

I watched the first minute or two and I was like, all right, pretty, so whatever.

They will explain it.

They will explain it to me, like, once I get there.

They'll go through it again.

I'm not watching a 25 minute video.

I get it and it all happens quite quickly.

You go sign in, you sign a form, you go and the surgeon says, I'll come this way, Mr.

Holloway.

And I got into the room and he said, did you watch the video?

And for some reason I said, yeah, yeah, watch the video.

Why did I say that?

I don't know why I said that.

Why did you say that?

I don't know.

I just wanted to make it sound like I'd done my homework.

I said, oh, brilliant.

Well, you know what's going to happen then.

And for whatever reason, again, my brain, I was in too deep and I didn't want to come

clean.

Drop your pants and jump up on the table and we'll get started.

So you can imagine not knowing what's going to happen over the next five to 10 minutes.

I would have watched the video.

Yeah.

I know.

There was a lot of mistakes made that afternoon.

But do you, this is really niche areas.

When you drop your pants, do you keep them around your ankles or do you go all the way

off?

So you start by, he says, just get in the video, I'll watch the video.

We'll link the video in the description.

Just get changed into your underwear and then you get up on the table and then you drop.

Change into.

You would have already been wearing them.

We'll take your pants off.

Essentially.

Yeah.

And then you take it off and then he sort of covers it, but some pieces and then there's

a little towel there.

It's all very discreet and very well managed, a little bit of a prick in the old testicles.

But yeah, look.

So they went through scrotally, did they?

Yeah.

Not through the urethra.

Like you thought.

Like I said, I said Anas, which was very wrong.

So yeah, anyway, look, would recommend would do again.

Pretty painless.

The only thing in the aftermath was quite a fragile area with young kids jumping on

you all the time on couches and things and they are around the height of your balls.

So there's a bit of defense going on there, but a lot of hard sold shoes too in the kids

footwear department.

Yeah.

That's kind of my take on it.

Yeah.

What are your kids?

No, we're shoes inside.

No, not inside.

Animals.

How did you feel about sharing that procedure online because I got some interesting feedback

around it?

What did you get?

Someone in my family suggested that there was no need for you to share that on social

media.

Yeah.

And then someone else said, I was scrolling through and then Stephen came up and he was

talking about a vasectomy.

Yeah.

Did you get much feedback?

I got one of my friends from overseas thought it was a sponsor.

You know, I had said Snip Kings.

You said that a lot.

I thought it was an advertisement for a vasectomy company.

Yeah.

I thought it was an interesting area to advertise, but no, relatable content I'd heard that was

there.

That was the advice we got from our marketing guru Marcus.

Anyway, moving on, right, question from the fun bag from Andrew Vaughnman.

He asks, stuff, do you know Andrew Vaughnman, bloody good bloke, is Woodsy the sweet spot

of Hamilton slash no Stephen Seamus slash footballer slash notable guest when it comes

to BTB.

Yeah.

Yes, Andrew.

He is very much the sweet spot for that.

I can't think of anyone more suited to the Between Two Bears podcast and our origin story.

Only took us 140 eps to get him.

Yeah.

Couldn't get him in country.

But as a test, I think the Zoom link was good.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah, it would do again.

Yeah, I think Woodsy's at that point in his career, 31 years, he's achieved a lot in the

game where he's kind of ready to share his story.

So up until our chat, which was nearly two hours, it had just sort of been post-match

interviews and little sound bites.

The longest interview he'd done might have been 10 or 20 minutes.

So I think he was ready to talk and we were quite excited about digging into some of those

areas.

Like had some really cool feedback from people outside of the football circle who perhaps

didn't understand how hard it was for him to get where he is.

You know the journey of six clubs on loan spells in order to get.

You see the $8 million a year in the world-class players now, but you don't perhaps understand

how hard it was for him to get there.

Yeah, and it's a bit of a cat, I think, to our loyal football supporters to have football

guests back on the show.

We've had three in recent succession with Rebecca Stotz, Sirai Barrowman and Chris Woods.

So getting back to those roots, which is good.

We also had an interesting question, whether Woodsie keeps all of that $50 million for

his transfer fee.

No, he doesn't.

He gets a percentage of that.

But it's a good question and a valid question.

It plays.

We were back into the football fraternity last weekend, weren't we?

Community.

Football community.

Yeah.

Fraternity specific to men.

Well, sorority.

Sorority specific to women.

Community, everybody.

Malvol made the Chatham Cup final and it was quite an experience at North Harbour Stadium.

We were both there.

You got the call up to be part of the matchday squad.

Yeah, I was asked the week of if I would be happy to come on the team bus and be in the

dressing room and just be a presence in and around the game day, which I was happy to

fulfil and oblige.

I hung out in the dressing room, watched the first half on the screen in the North Harbour

dressing room and then came out after Malvol pulled a goal back through Luca Lim and then

just stood in the tunnel next to the 12-year-old ultras that were yelling abuse at the security

and referees there.

A bit of context for those not familiar with the Chatham Cup or Malvol.

This was their third visit to the final.

Big underdogs.

I think Christchurch were paying like $11, Malvol were paying $11 for the win at the

TAB.

So we turned up, not really expecting much.

Terrible venue for a final North Harbour Stadium with about 300 people there.

But inside that Malvol unit, it felt like there was a lot of people until you saw the

shots on TV.

Yeah.

I was like caught up and I was like, wow, a sea of red.

This is amazing.

And then I watched the highlights back from the reverse angle and it was a lot of blue

seats with some pockets of red there.

But the most amazing fit.

So it looked like to me, Malvol was going to lose about five-nil on the first half.

They were getting pumped.

They hung in there and then with the last kick, the 96th minute, their goalkeeper scored

an equaliser and the Malvol zone was gone.

Did you go ballistic?

Oh, ballistic.

I was hugging.

Hugging men around me.

Which is fine.

Yeah.

Oh, you didn't know them.

Yeah.

You got to ask permission if you're going to hug strange men.

Yeah.

I didn't ask for consent.

But it was like, delirious.

It was amazing to be part of.

And then you assume, because there's these storylines like Elmate, Aaron Scott, guest

number one, four kids, he's playing in his 100th year.

This was his last game of his career.

Shit, is he going to come back?

Is he going to be part of the greatest comeback ever?

And when the Chatham Cup final, it goes to penalties and they lost.

And he was the last penalty taker and didn't get a chance to take a penalty.

It was heartbreaking on the pitch.

Yeah.

It was tough scenes.

But yeah, the thing, the club.

Great day.

And it made me think, like watching Grassroots Football, watching Malvol play is my favourite

sporting experience at the moment.

Better than watching any elite stuff on TV or even live, sort of Super Rigby or Warrior

Games.

That's fair.

That plays.

Yeah.

Grassroots Footy.

Hook that shit up to my veins.

And kind of along the same lines.

We've been from Luke Finlay, actually, about underrated eps.

So if Grassroots Footy is underrated sport, what are our between two beers underrated

episodes?

Oh, nice seg, man.

Yeah.

Shall I go first?

Yeah.

You go first.

What do you got?

I think Chelsea Lane, for me.

We re-released that one, didn't we?

We did re-release it.

So maybe it isn't that underrated.

But she is Aussie by birth, Kiwi by choice, physiotherapist who pulled the curtain back

on the world of the NBA.

So the American Professional Basketball League and dealing with multi-million dollar athletes

day in, day out.

It was fascinating for me.

If you haven't had a listen, make sure you get onto that.

Another one in our early catalog was Dave Williams, who was doing seven peaks.

I think the seven tallest peaks.

Surf to Summit.

Surf to Summit.

Yeah, that's the one.

Surf to Summit, the tallest peak on each continent from the nearest coastline.

So I think Kilimanjaro in Africa, he did four marathons or something back to back.

I've probably got those numbers wrong.

It's probably more than four marathons, but it was a lot of running.

So just incredible feats of endurance and mental strength.

And then Daniel Kediopa, for me, was an amazing episode.

I'm a bit gutted that we filmed that one in the Hamilton export beer garden studio.

We didn't film that one.

And that we didn't film that one.

We recorded that one down there, and that there's no video.

But the audio is enough, there's some incredible messages, and he's a special, special man.

Yeah, those would be three underrated ones for me, I think.

Yeah.

And you?

I would say, so I went back to the old football days.

Michael Guyther episode was when we had a guy who was a fucking character,

like an off-field legend, a bit of an on-field legend, too.

But we kind of just got the best of his stories and it kind of set the template

for like just getting really interesting yarns from other people.

Prolific comment are actually Guyther as well.

Yeah.

I think every time it's don't sleep on episode nine or whatever he was.

Yeah, I like that one.

Brad Smaylor.

I think about that episode a lot, like such an inspirational journey

that the headspace he was in and is in now.

I think about that episode when we finished recording

and we were getting ready to complain.

Well, I was about, oh, shit, I've got to drive back to Hamilton now.

And then seeing him.

I'm not sure what the wheel himself out of the studio,

where he couldn't move anything from his neck down, being a quadriplegic.

And that perspective is a thing which is regularly coming up with these guests,

these amazing guests we've got.

But that one in particular was fuck, man, who got nothing to complain about.

And the other one was David Higgins, which was early doors.

We were still pretty much a football show.

He was one of the first guests to take a punt on us when we were nobodies.

That man's mind just operates differently.

There will be new listeners who weren't aware that we did one with Higgins,

but go back and listen to that.

Yeah, Higgins and kind of the back workings of the event scene

was really, really interesting, as was our recent episode with Hamish Pinkham

to take us behind the scenes of Rhythm and Vines and that journey

from conception to delivery to growth to where it is now

really well received out there in the universe.

Yeah, Pinkham was super popular.

What a guy to went for a couple of beers with him afterwards.

Just such a normal bloke.

But what he's achieved is quite incredible.

And he sent us a nice message afterwards saying,

it's not often you actually get a chance to reflect on what you've created.

You know, to have started Rhythm and Vines as a 21 year old, 20 years later

to see the beast it's turned into and tell the story from the beginning in detail.

He's like, yeah, it was just a really cool thing to do and be proud of what I

have. I think a lot of people, when they are successful like that, it's just

it's so go, go, go that you don't actually get a chance to perhaps properly

reflect. But he did and listeners loved it.

Yeah. And I think his crew sent us a little bit of a thank you in the mail too.

And I thought it was VIP tickets on that flight, that one night only

flight down to Gisborne.

Yeah. But it wasn't. Maybe that's still coming.

Now, you know what?

There's been two guests who sent us hand written thank you notes.

Yeah, that's one of them.

The other one, Steve Dunstan. Yeah, it's such a class.

It's such a classy move.

But yeah, who knows? Maybe the VIP tickets are still signed books too.

Are a are a nice little touch.

And we've got a few giveaways for some future episodes coming up.

Oh, the tease. All right.

This lends us into the next question from Steve Smith.

Can you tell us what Ips are coming up?

No, we're not going to tell you that we're going to tease them.

So I've got a list here.

Describe the next guest without saying who it is.

Absolute hero of mine.

I'm only going to say growing up like absolute hero of mine as an adult.

And on the promotion

wavelengths at the moment.

So really happy that we were able to speak with this person.

Yeah. Next person on the list, I'm going to give to you.

Yeah. One of TV's biggest stars, I would say.

Female presenter, who was an epic chat, so fun, so lively.

So much variety in that one.

A low key legend coming up who we was the inspiration for the low key legend series.

Hello, Variety.

This is who you had in mind when you were talking about this concept.

Correct. We have one of celebrity speakers.

You're just going to do them all.

No, carry on, mate. It's fine.

You do the last one.

No, no, no, that's all right, mate.

You carry on, mate. You're doing a good job.

We have one of New Zealand's most prolific speakers.

And they have a few of their books to give away, signed copies of their books.

I think some of the last you can find in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

This guest has done 43 talks around New Zealand this year.

So he told us celebrity speakers.

Number one most popular guest is David Latali.

And number two, I think, is Jazz Thornton.

And this guy's number three.

Good, good number.

And you've said it's gender.

So your gender revealed.

I may have an episode.

Not such a great tease.

We've got an Olympic hopeful for next year coming up as well,

talking about their journey and some of the adversities that they've faced

and their outlook to Paris 2024.

And I'll finish it off with one of the greatest coaches in New Zealand

sporting history, and I don't think that's overselling it.

No, that's quite vague, really, because there's a lot of them out there.

Yeah, so good, Les.

We're really excited.

This is the most advanced we've ever been with the podcast.

So when people come in to record, they often don't see it released for about six weeks.

But it's a good place to be.

Great place to be.

Yeah, and Hambassa has gone well, too.

So thank you so much for your support.

There's a lot of people listening.

We were worried, well, not worried.

It was a bit of an experiment to see the podcast had always been keeping us out of it.

Designed around just bringing the best out of the guests.

So we try to remove ourselves as much as possible.

Like, well, are people interested in behind the scenes?

Are people interested in my vasectomy?

Apparently they are.

Turns out they are.

Turns out they are.

They're also interested in my journey with not drinking, which was being an interesting one,

because that's something that I kind of just didn't want to make a big deal out of.

And we released a social clip last week, and I got some really nice messages about it.

And it's cool.

It's cool that I guess people look at the stuff that we're doing and think that it's worth their time.

When you might not necessarily put some so much kind of emphasis on what you do as a person.

But yeah, to have a group of people, a universe out there that is interested in what we do is really humbling.

People love that at the moment, eh?

The old...

Universe.

No, people love it.

Someone gets off and say they're giving up the booze.

Yeah, mate.

Get on it.

Or get off it.

No, you do you.

Do what works for you.

Do what works for you.

No, no.

No, but we have had...

When we get messages from people and we get quite a lot of really thoughtful, well-written emails and Instagrams,

we had one from a teacher who said that the Paul Henry episode had inspired her to change career path.

Like, things that you wouldn't even really consider is really cool that it's having that sort of wider influence.

And I'm actually going to read...

We got a really cool email, which I'm going to read in its entirety to close out the app from an anonymous.

Says, I've just finished another ambassador's app and wanted to offer a different angle if I may.

If I recall correctly, you went into a bit of detail with the feedback you got from listeners about some of the things they don't like,

such as overuse of the word journey or the between two beers universe.

I have a different angle of that episode I want to share.

I have an autistic daughter.

Yes, love the Sonya Grey yet.

As part of my own journey with learning what she is currently dealing with,

I went and got myself tested after way too many aha moments.

I sat on the moa for an hour after listening and found myself a little frustrated.

So much so, I needed to send you guys a note.

My alternative angle is this.

I realized that all of your repeated phrases or catch cries are one of the many reasons I enjoy listening.

So much, it turns out.

I am, probably two more shrink sessions to go, on the autism spectrum and as a mid 45 year old data too.

I love knowing that there's a lot of consistency in what you're saying.

Short version, the repeated phrases I love.

My autism means I love routine and consistency and I love knowing what I'm going to get.

Your so-called overused or over repeated phrases, a real sense of comfort to me

and something I would hate to see you change because the odd listener doesn't like it.

By your own admission, consistency is one of the things that makes what you're doing so good.

I just wanted to balance the episode feedback a little.

Keep it up.

Feel free to repeat as much of the phrases you want because for a guy like me, I just love it.

Keep up the good work, up the wires, go to the Black Ferns.

Man, I will never win the league again.

And here's hope that all blacks were faking it against the South Africa team.

Really cool feedback.

I think that the whole phrases thing, we overthought and I think it threw you off a little bit.

Really threw me off.

Yeah, I really did.

Again, it's the silent majority and the vocal minority.

That's cool.

We're using Journey and Amazing and...

Universe.

Universe all the time.

So we're back.

Yeah, really cool email.

Thanks for all of your correspondence.

And we'll keep this thing going.

Yeah, if we actually put a call out for questions, try and keep the up the wires to a minimum.

We were inundated this week when we requested for questions from the audience

and it was just like a screeds of up the wires.

So love that people are getting behind the wires,

but it's always good to answer real questions as well.

Up the wires, mate.

Thanks again.

Catch you next week.

Enjoy.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.