Between Two Beers Podcast: Russell Packer: From Prison to an MBA, 13 Years in the NRL, and more!

Gentlemen, we want it all.

We want to be well read and not have to read.

We want to save room for dinner and fill up on free bread.

We want to own a motorcycle and not be accused of going through a midlife crisis.

Sadly, we can't have it all.

Unless we're at Sport Clips Haircuts, where we check in with the pros in men's hair

and totally check out with Sports Watching Shampoo Massaging Relaxation.

Sport Clips, it's a game changer.

On this episode of Between Two Beers, we talk to Russell Packer.

Russell is a former rugby league player who played for the Warriors, Tigers, Dragons and Kiwis

across a 13-year professional career in the NRL.

After retiring from league two years ago, Russell returned to New Zealand with his family

and is now a businessman leading a property development project in his hometown of Foxton.

Russell's footy career was divided by one major incident.

In 2013, he was sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting a man outside a pub in Sydney.

It's a definitive part of Russell's story and the impressive man he is today

is reflective of the lessons he learned about himself through his darkest days.

We talk about what happened that night in Sydney, how he passed the time in jail

and how it changed him, how he got back into the NRL and became a senior leader.

That time, he pissed his pants for the Warriors, his MBA journey and thirst for learning,

the realities of raising an autistic son, volunteering in the community and giving back.

Unfortunately, we had a slight technical glitch about a quarter of the way through this one

and lost some of the chat about his childhood and the Warriors, which you will later hear referenced.

Russell's life has been one hell of a ride and the thing that stuck with me on this one is his appetite for self-improvement.

His thirst for learning and growing and being a better man is really impressive.

If you're only no rusty from a headline, this ep will change your perception of the man.

We're so proud to be able to tell his story.

Listen on iHeart, or we've got your podcast from, or watch the video on YouTube

and follow us on Instagram and TikTok to see the best video clips from each ep.

This episode was brought to you from the Export Beer Garden Studio.

Enjoy!

Russell Packer, welcome to Between Two Beers.

Yeah, cheers lads, thanks for having me here.

It's a privilege to be on and looking forward to it.

So are we, we are fizzling for the set.

We're excited to have you in the Export Beer Garden Studio.

You've made the trip over from Papamoa today,

combining the pod with some birthday celebrations for your partner, Lara,

who you've been with since you were 16. Special night, Claude?

Yeah, we'll see where the night takes us.

We're pretty old now, so we don't go too hard,

but you try and get out for a nice dinner somewhere

and go to get out of Papamoa and come back up to the big spot.

One of my favourite things about this, Russell messaged us early doors,

just confirming the start time, three o'clock.

Yeah, that's cool, and he just made sure.

I think he said 16 years almost of rugby league

and never want to be late for anything, always double check the time.

Five minutes before, bro, I'm going to be late.

Man sent me the wrong way. He came in, he was mortified.

Mortified. One training you were late for in your career?

Yeah, yeah man, got burnt pretty early on when I was at the Warriors.

I was just 18 when I made my debut there.

And I was in the team, read the itinerary wrong,

and training was at 9am, I thought it was at 12,

so I was doing stuff in the morning, team manager rang,

and he was like, where the fuck are you?

And I was like, oh, so it was pretty embarrassing actually.

As a young kid, I'm in the team and captains run and you're not there,

so your spot's not really secure.

And ever since then, I've always been hard out about time,

even before that I was, but yeah, I'll blame it on my nav man

because it took me through some road works here.

You're amongst good companies and even it's very, very hot on timekeeping as well,

so you get annoyed when he wastes my time, man.

And I do waste a lot of your time, a lot of the time.

Real quick, what was a fine back in those days for missing a captain's run?

There was a bit of money, maybe 500 bucks or something,

but the punishment was more, so from the boys, especially the older guys,

you always feel like you're letting people down or what you said,

but you're taking their time where you've agreed to come,

and it's just a little thing, but it becomes an important thing

when you're trying to be a professional athlete.

So we reached out to you to come on the pod after you followed us on Insta,

and you said that Izzy Whitley struck a chord with you,

especially his line about having someone you had to smooth the rough edges on.

What was it about that pod that sort of connected with you?

Oh, it was cool listening.

As I said, I know his business partner, Aiden, that runs Fit Out Solutions.

He's a good rooster, and he kind of told me the story about Izzy,

and then hearing a story where he grew up over in Gizzy,

having that experience kind of being able to connect with all people,

different people and different, I guess, hierarchy and status and whatnot,

and making his way over here.

I just really love that, that I like reading books and listening to things

and education kind of pieces,

and coming across something that you should hire for strengths

and accept tolerated weaknesses,

and it's basically saying that it's better to have a few rough edges

that you can smooth out.

They don't have any edge at all.

It's hard to create it, and it's a little bit easier to smooth out,

but just, I guess, in my life kind of resonate with that,

because, you know, it's definitely got a few rough edges.

Yeah, that's so cool that you've had a takeaway from a pod with Produce.

That's a little moment for me, but we're going to get into the rough edges

and we're going to get the whole story.

But before we do, Lara has come through big time in the research,

and she has suggested that you recently took up golf,

and you might have got a hole-in-one semi-recently.

Just before you left, I don't normally allow...

It wasn't a might, it was a definite hole-in-one.

I don't normally let golf chat play,

but seeing as we are in the ACC studio,

you did play in the ACC Open down in Te Puke.

I'll let this one play, so indulge us with your hole-in-one story.

Yeah, shout out to the Te Puke golf club.

Benny Martellino got me into golf when I first moved home,

and never played golf before.

I always tell the story.

There were teammates with Benji Martell at a few different clubs

at Wests and at Dragons,

and I think he plays off of five, like he's really good at golf.

He's obviously Benji Martell, so he's the people who invite him to golf trips.

When I was at the Dragons, they had this five-day thing at Jack's Point,

staying on the course and all that,

and he was like, oh, do you want to come?

I was like, nah, bro, I'm not into golf.

Now I look back on it, I was like, oh, that sounds like a mean trip.

It's Jack's Point down in Queenstown.

Yeah, bro.

Yeah, the Dragons boys went there for a week,

and yeah, so it was golf and team bonding and whatnot.

But yeah, Benny took me out to Te Puke,

and I can hit a ball, but just not very accurately.

And this was before.

And I got a birdie, and I was like, oh, this is mean.

Yeah, I think I'm going to get good at it.

Don't act like you've ever got a birdie.

Don't act like you've ever got a birdie.

Yeah, so I just went out the next day.

I just asked Ben, oh, how much did you spend on clubs?

And I was like, oh, sweet.

I don't want to spend more than that,

because pretty expensive the golf clubs want to get into it.

And just went to the golf shop, brought clubs that were way too short for me.

I was just like, oh, I'm playing golf tomorrow.

I kind of want to leave with a set today.

I don't really care.

And I've played with those for like three months until the Club Pro,

Jacko down at Te Puke, see me swing in,

and he was like, bro, I think those clubs are too short for you.

So he fixed them up for us, and they're legends down there.

But the whole of one story, I was playing with Benny

and one of our other mates down in Papamora.

And I just missed the birdie part.

So, you know, I was playing off a 29 handicap.

So birdies were like massive.

What are you, Steve?

Oh, about 20?

Yeah.

I'm playing off a 13 at the moment, but then I was like 28.

So a birdie was like massive.

I'll jump up and down for a birdie.

Missed a birdie part on 16 at Te Puke, which is a part four.

And then 17 at Te Puke's nice little part three.

And I just walked up without hesitation,

put the ball in, smacked it, and there's like a bunker

and then like a little grass mound over.

And the pin was behind that.

So I was like, yeah, I'm going to have a good chance at birdie again.

And me and Benny and Azul were walking up and about 60 metres up,

like getting close, I couldn't see no white speck.

And I just chucked my clubs on the ground and just ran.

And it was like, man, I think it was quite late in the night too.

And I reckon I would have woken up some of the farmers

if they're having a midday nap.

But man, I was pumped.

It was like, I'm a pretty emotional person.

Like if someone, if you've done a long ass putt for double bogey,

but I would jump up and down.

Which wouldn't happen to me.

Very clear, which wouldn't happen.

All right, you made your point.

Yeah, so I got up, I had a look in the hole and I was just, yeah.

It was kind of, I don't know, I don't want to relate it to footy

because it's different, but it was almost like a game

when we scored a try right at the end.

It was just like, yeah, I was pumped.

Etiquette, Etiquette, you got to shout the clubhouse

when you get back in, right?

Now they changed the rule.

They put on a shout out there.

They give you, they give you a couple of options.

Yeah, I think I was just at the golf club the other day

and one of the older members had a hole in one.

I think they give a bar shout so they put on two hot bottles

or whatever it is, it's equivalent of 150 or 200 bucks.

Yeah, nice.

I love, by the way, the detail that golfers,

recreational golfers go into when they retell their stories.

It's amazing.

It actually is genuinely amazing.

I do, I do, I give Stephen a lot of shit,

but it's cool for people, I think, to find that pastime

because for some people, they absolutely love it.

For me, it's not for me, but yeah.

You've got a beautiful swing there.

I know I've got a beautiful swing.

Well, the story that I mentioned about Benji,

I didn't really understand, you know,

that kind of mental aspect of golf,

like getting out of the house,

like it hits on a lot of good things for your wellbeing,

your outside and the elements and the environment.

You're generally with a couple of good friends

or you're meeting new people and you get to walk

and you get to move around.

Yeah.

But exercise, it's a challenging game

and it's like, you know, even Tiger Woods can do a bad shot.

So it's like, you can never master it.

And that's...

You're speaking a statement so good.

Yeah, totally relate to you.

That's the part of golf I didn't appreciate

from the outside was the social element of it.

So I've recently started, I don't know,

a year or year and a half or so ago.

And one of my good mates in Hamilton, we go out all the time.

And he's a best mate who, over the last 10 years,

we haven't had that many good conversations,

but you spend three hours walking around a golf course

and you connect in a different way.

Like a friendship is stronger than ever

based on seven rounds together, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

It's the next side of it.

Well, from that perspective, why I love playing

and playing with different people is because,

I guess in society now, we're so busy

and when we're around people, we're not that present in general,

you know, like, whether we're having a conversation

at the coffee shop or even when I came in here,

I was texting my missus back.

So you're talking, but I'm texting her back

and you're not fully present in that moment.

And I think with golf, like, not many people walk around

with their phones texting and they put it on airplane mode

or that's your time and you give your time and energy

to those people.

And I think that's why the connections with people

that you play golf with become so good

because you give each other your energy

and, yeah, people like that

and you get to know people really well.

So right, man.

So my life is just always with a screen attached to me

and golf is the time where the phone goes in the bag

and it's three hours and you're detached.

Yeah, it's special.

Golf and swimming, two releases.

Yeah, no, actually, I rate that.

I rate that.

So, like I said, Lara has pulled through for us big time on this.

She sent us so much gold, like maybe the best,

like, inside lines that we've had.

So much goodness to come.

But a bunch of photos and videos

and one of them was of you in...

Sydney.

In Sydney with Wim Hof.

And I think Wim Hof is in a nice bath

and you're sort of dancing behind him.

And he's a character who I find incredibly fascinating

on big into the cold immersion.

But how did that come apart

and what part does cold immersion play in your life?

Yeah, yeah, massive.

So got interested.

I read a book called

What Doesn't Kill Us by Scott Carney.

And then I met an awesome dude,

Kiwi dude, Nigel Beach,

who's a Wim Hof instructor.

He's a legend of a bloke.

And he actually came when I was playing for the West Tigers

and done a seminar for the whole team.

We played up in Whangarei,

but we stayed over in the shore for a few days

and had a little camp back in 2019.

And Nigel came over, done breathing techniques.

And, you know, I'd been exposed to it by reading

and then trying the ice baths

and trying to get into a little bit of meditation

and all these kind of things that are associated with that.

And then when I met Nigel,

he brought us, you know, ice tarps

and all the boys had a go at it.

And it was awesome.

And then I just kind of picked up from there

a couple of the boys and at the West Tigers,

they were interested in it too.

So, you know, we used to do it together and Lara's done it.

She's actually everybody that doesn't kind of know her

because she's quite quiet and I'm not so quiet.

But she's a really determined person

and, you know, we got quite obsessive about it

and she stayed in there for nearly 40 minutes one day.

Yeah, bro.

What sort of temperature?

Oh, it was low, man.

It was like around a degree

because we used to get these little pool things

and she was like, oh, yeah,

I'm not going to die in my own life.

If you worry about dying, get out.

But, yeah, she didn't die, obviously.

She made it?

Yeah, she made it through the other side.

But, yeah, and through Nigel,

Nigel connected me with Wim Hof

and a whole bunch of other people

and invited us over to a house of instructors

and, you know, got to do an ice bath with women

and some of the other people that were there.

So, yeah, they're all cool, man.

Everyone, I guess, kind of gets into the cold exposures

and it's, I guess, it happens at a certain time

for people when they're kind of searching for things

or, you know, you're like, oh,

I need some kind of adversity in your life

or so that's kind of how I found it.

I was like looking for things

and I just listened.

We're talking about Diary of a CEO

and I just listened to the one with Rich Roll,

you know, the podcast man and the lawyer

who was an alcoholic and, you know,

being through a heap of shit in his life

and he said some people are wired for extremes

in his podcast.

And that, you know, struck a chord with me

because he talked about balance and that

and some people are obsessive.

Like, if you're good at golf, you're normally quite obsessive.

You practice six hours a day or whatever, you know,

you got to have some level of imbalance in you

and, yeah, I guess things like that

if you're searching for things.

It's like positive adversity, the ice bath

and once you overcome it, it's pretty cool.

So a man drawn to the extremes kind of sags

quite nicely into this next story,

like, has fed us and it's about a snow planet.

So she said this one time, he said,

you couldn't ski but refused to let go

of the conveyor belt.

And so you got dragged to the top

and decided to come down the expert lane.

He said it was an incredibly painful watch

for everyone involved.

But somehow from that, you got the confidence

to try out the expert lane up in the mountain

in Queenstown.

So the question is, is it true

that you rolled all the way down the hill

and the ski patrol had to come in and check on you?

Yeah, bro.

Any of the boys that went to that Queenstown trip

in 2013 at the Warriors will probably remember this,

but the snow planet one was way before that

when we were younger.

I think I was on skis and I'd never really been

to the snow before.

And I'm overconfident by nature.

So I was like, oh, you're sweet.

And you know, those little things that,

what are they called?

The seats that come around.

Little toe ropes.

Yeah, like the toe ropes that you meant to put in your bum.

Yeah, show us how to do it.

And I was like, oh, sweet.

And when I put it in, it slipped out.

And then I was like a little bit,

I was probably like 15% of the way up

and I was just like, oh, fuck it.

I'm just going to hold on all the way to the top.

And I got up to the top

and I had snow all down my fucking pants.

And yeah.

But once I made the commitment bro, I was just like,

well, I'm at the top.

I'm going down the way that they intended.

So I fell all the way down.

And the one in Queenstown,

we had a massive few days down there.

End of year, boys trip kind of thing.

Like a Mad Monday situation.

Mad Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Yeah, it was a team bonding trip.

And we ended up down there.

We had had a big night the night before.

And one of the Aussie boys that used to play here,

Toddy Larry, he's a legend.

He was like, oh, let's all go skiing or snowboarding.

I was like, oh, fuck.

I'm probably going to be hungover as man.

And obviously my experience in the snow wasn't that,

wasn't that positive.

So we all went there.

Most of us were pretty like, pretty hungover.

And same thing, man.

We were all on the beginner slopes.

And I think I grabbed the snowball that time.

The shoes were like too small.

I had sore feet.

And, you know, the carousel thing.

And then it came around.

And I think they had one on the outside that went up.

And I was just like, oh, fuck it.

I'm going to go up.

And by the time I got to the top, I was regretting it.

Like, because I was by myself and I was like, ah.

And then same thing.

I'm like, whoa, I've come this far.

There's only one way to go.

There's only one way down.

And, bro, I was bailing probably, like,

I reckon every 15 meters, like,

because I didn't really know how to snowboard.

And one of those dudes in the red coat came over to me

and he was like, bro, I've been watching you for, like,

a little bit.

You look like you're struggling.

Do you want me to get the snowmobile thing to come and get you?

And I was like, ah, nah, bro, I'll be good.

Pride kicks in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was like, ah, nah, nah.

I want to just see if I can make it down myself.

But if I was in hindsight, I should have took the snowmobile.

But, you know, then I wouldn't be able to share this story.

Was that your only run of the day?

I'm out, guys.

After that, yeah, literally after that,

I remember I took everything off and walked inside the warm thing

where the other boys were going and, yeah.

Things you do when you're younger.

We'll be right back after this short break.

She said that it happens in surfing too.

She says, you always go straight out to the massive waves with the experienced guys.

Get smashed and go again.

Way out of your league, but there's this deep belief in yourself to keep pushing.

And I want to sort of link that up to that belief that has helped with your studies

because she's also given us some great info about the MBA program.

Can you tell us about the Australian Graduate School of Management MBA that you did?

Yeah, yeah.

So I guess those stories probably just represent, I guess, my character or whatever that I'm willing to take on.

Challenge that most people, you know, wouldn't do it or whatever.

But obviously everyone at Google's my name knows that I went to jail

and I've been in trouble and whatnot.

And when I got out of jail, I was always smart at school.

Like, I went to high school yearly.

I was the head boy of my college, believe it or not.

But I always done well academically.

So the actual work wasn't, you know, I wasn't concerned about doing that kind of stuff.

But when I got out of jail, I think people just looked at me and thought,

oh, he's just a big dumb cunt.

Which quite a lot of people do say to me when I meet him.

Like, I thought you were just a big dumb cunt.

I didn't finish school because I signed at the Ways when I was 16 in typical fashion of me.

I made the decision to leave school early so I could come here and start training.

And I had enough credits to pass and I had a scholarship to go to uni and whatnot.

But I just, I went all in on rugby league and probably not what they tell you.

You know, hedge your bets and not everyone can be a professional athlete and all this thing.

But the same thing, I was just like, well, I'm going to put all my eggs in that basket and go hard.

So I didn't finish high school.

When I got out of jail, I wanted to go to uni.

I wanted to do something with my mind because I had a lot of time to think in there about, you know,

some of the issues that I've had in my life and why those happened and what's the future look like

and what can I control when I was, I wanted to do a business degree,

but I had to first do a community service degree through TAFE.

Done that, got into uni.

It was kind of like an opportunity to get into uni because I don't think people thought I could pass or whatever.

And I've done accounting and I've always been good at maths.

At high school, I liked maths. I'd done physics and all that stuff.

So more of a black and white brain or maths orientated brain.

And I got good marks in the accounting subject and that was just a commerce degree.

And then the next year, I just done undergraduate papers, commerce degree.

And I had, like, good marks across all of them.

And Ben Cray, you know, the old player from St George.

Yeah, Ben and Cray, he had just retired and he moved into the education and wellbeing space.

And he came to me, well, yeah, it would have been Ender 216, beginning 217.

He goes, bro, like, I've known you for a couple of years now because I've been here.

There might be an opportunity for you to jump out of that and get into a master's programme.

I was like, oh, yeah, fuck you, that sounds all good.

I'll give it a crack.

And yeah, so then...

To give it context, though, it's like, I've got a note here.

That school is in the top 10% of the world's business schools, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's ranked in the top 50 in the world in business skills, AGSM.

So it's an awesome place to learn.

A lot of really successful people have been through that institution

and, you know, they're making a big mark on the world,

but it's a University of New South Wales business school.

But I didn't actually start there in my...

I started the programme that Benny recommended that I do was a graduate certificate in business,

which implies you normally graduated from something previously,

but they said, you know, they take people that have worked somewhere for 20 years,

but they never went to uni, but they know a lot about business

and they just want to formalise their education or their knowledge.

And yeah, I went there.

I graduated from that in 2017, so that's kind of like the stepping stone.

That would be, yeah, the under-20s of the MBA.

And then once I graduated from there, I went to...

I applied to go to AGSM.

Yeah, because I just...

I wanted to challenge myself and I was moving to Sydney at the time from Wollongong

and the campus was located there, so I applied and had to write a big

kind of entry kind of thesis of why you want to attend.

And yeah, it's not like it's hard to get into or whatever.

Well, I understand that you're making that story because it's an incredible achievement

just to get to the start line.

Well, I'll tell you the rip like that, and you know,

bit of serendipity or whatever we're talking about,

the reason why I'm coming on this podcast is at the same time that I listen to the Izzy One

and then I'm listening to another podcast that says like,

imagine if you just lived your whole week where you couldn't say no

and they talk about the Amazon yes and then you come to me

and I'm like, OK, I'll say yes, and here we are.

But when I was doing my research on AGSM, again, just fate or whatever,

but Marina Goh, who's an alumni of AGSM,

and at the same time she was the chairperson of the board at West Tigers.

And when I got the brochure, she was being smack on the middle of it

and so I had just signed at the West Tigers, so I asked Ivan to put us in touch

and Marina became a bit of a mentor to me going through that process

and gave me a lot of encouragement to go for it and then I applied

and graduated in 2020.

With top marks?

Look, I wanted over there, if you get over 80%, you graduate with excellence

so that was my goal to graduate with excellence.

When I first started, that was in 2018.

I ended up graduating with 79, so one off.

But in a way, I've reflected on that a lot.

It's like, what is enough?

It's like, one more mark and that made me different

and throughout my MBA journey, I had a lot of injuries.

I had three surgeries on my foot.

I got two screws.

I was playing with a few injuries

and then my form wasn't good and wasn't really getting played much at the West Tigers

and I was getting older and my perspective on life just changed a little bit.

It was cool to strive for things, but it's not the be all

and end all of there's a big cost, so probably to go back to that balance thing

just brought a bit of perspective of sometimes one extra mark

and a little piece of a name on my degree would have been cool

for the street creditor of a whole one.

But it doesn't mean anything about who you are as a person

and how good at golf you are.

It just means that you got it one time

and that's how I've explained it way to myself anyway.

I think it's something to really be proud of.

This is an incredibly difficult school you've graduated with, in my opinion, top marks.

I want to start building into the rugby league stuff.

You made a comment there because you were big, you got picked on.

You were a big unit.

I was a fat kid.

You were sizeable, just fat, strong as well.

I was just fat, yeah.

But I can show you photos.

I was also a combination which is probably rare

which is fat but aggressive.

And your senior rugby league career started early doors, right?

Teenage years, 14, 15?

14.

I saw those earlier stories.

I've always been a kid that's probably been thinking wise,

like a little bit older, and then also too, like as I said,

I went to high school year early, so I was 12

and I was good at rugby, so all of a sudden, bang,

my 10 minutes, 15.

You know, like three years, age gap, and then...

And when you're running in a team, you're running in a team.

You're going to a party, you're going to that party as well, right?

And they're looking after you because you're the youngest

in the group, I imagine.

And they'll also come and drink this, and we'll have this

and try this and do that, right?

Yeah.

And then also too, like, in my whole life, because I was big,

I always played up, so I played with my brother's teams

which is two years older.

So by the time I was 14, like, I'd been playing the games.

You know, like when I was 10, I was playing against 13-year-olds.

So when I was 13 now, I'm playing against six, 17-year-olds.

When I was 14, 15, that's when I started playing League.

I was like, yeah, well...

And are you holding your own?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That blows my mind to think of, like, 14-year-old, 15, 16-year-old

playing senior men's...

Yeah.

Like, we come from a football background.

Like, it's not that unusual for a 15, 16-year-old to play senior football,

but you know that they're youngsters.

In a collision sport like Rugby League, man, that must be...

Yeah.

You must learn some quick lessons in that environment as well.

Well, I always wanted to be an all-black.

Like, Foxton's...

Well, the Haudenosaunee was a massive, like, it's a rugby area.

And growing up, I always, like, I actually went to the Murray-Mexley Academy

for rugby.

I got a scholarship to go there.

Oh, Iran's, isn't it the one?

Oh, yeah, it was back in the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because in Palmy, you know, that big...

Yeah.

...burned building, and they hosted us there.

So I made the Haudenosaunee Secondary Schools team when I was 14.

So I was pretty good at rugby.

But what ended up happening, the story behind how I got into League is,

I think...

I can't remember exactly how many, but there was probably, you know,

six of us from the first 15 team at one or two college.

That went and just started training with the local League team

called the Levine Lions.

And Dave Lomax, who was a former NRL player and, you know, Lomax brother,

so a massive League family, he was the coach of that team.

And we, all these boys from this high school,

a couple of the older fellas played for the Levine Lions,

and they were like, oh, come over and have a bit of training.

We need some numbers.

I was like, sweet.

We never done some training.

I was like, fuck, this is way different than being a proper rugby.

You know, I get to run heaps and tackle.

And, you know, I had a pretty bad back and couldn't squat.

So I was like, oh, yep, for the scrammaging and that.

And I was like, we played a trial game.

And, yeah, I just loved it.

Principal and coach got caught one of it.

And we had a big, like, emergency meeting.

Like, imagine the first 15 of a small country town.

It was like big.

We used to have, like, quite a lot of people at our games,

our first 15 games at the college.

And it was big of them for the town.

And out of all of the boys, probably shows to my character

of being a bit defiant.

They said you can't play rugby league and being the first 15.

And choose one.

All the other boys went back to the first 15.

And I just said, oh, sweet.

I'm going to go do league.

So my first full year of rugby league,

I played for the Levin Lions, which was a team full of,

I was the youngest, obviously, 15.

We had a couple of old Super League players,

Sonny Fockardo, local legend, he played in the Super League.

Dave played for us, his brother Tony.

So I was at 15, I was training and playing with dudes

that played in the Super League, played in and around.

So it was, you know, it was in the deep end ship,

but it's confidence building.

And yeah, that's how I got my start for rugby league.

Basically, I don't think of David was the coach.

Dave and his wife, Toei, they kind of, you know,

supported me in my start of my rugby league,

opened a few doors.

I wasn't on the radar for, in the national scene, because...

No one comes down to live in the water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wasn't playing.

Yeah, I wasn't playing in any of these, you know,

these great comps.

And Dave, like, had to ask a favour, I think,

for one of his old friends at NZRL, said,

just ask a favour, he goes,

oh, please, just give him a trial.

Like, he's playing with us.

I think he's, you know, he's worth a trial.

So we came up here.

Yeah, I'd have right up here with someone,

or someone, one of the whanau took me up or something like this.

We had a few days at King's College.

It was all the best players, New Zealand under 16s

and under 18s players.

And we'd done the old-school trial,

and, yeah, made the team,

and ended up captaining that team,

and we toured to Aussie,

played three games over there, undefeated.

So, yeah, with that...

And then the next year,

started playing bar-de-card,

and, yeah, again, 16.

Quite a lot of the old,

well, my era kind of Warriors players,

we all cut our teeth in the bar-de-card.

Quite similar systems.

It's like, I think,

hopefully they can implement

a more of a national competition

for rugby league players,

because Ben Martellino is from Wellington.

We came through the bar-de-card system.

Me at the Central Falcons,

that are better boys,

what called bestallians,

and Simon Mannering, too, from down south.

He played in the Wellington Orcas,

so quite a lot of the old...

Like, my era,

the boys at the Warriors,

we went from Auckland, yeah,

and we all cut our teeth in the bar-de-card.

Being a kid that played in a men's rugby league team,

did you have a confidence or a swag about you

when you went back into your own age group?

I never played in my...

There wasn't a competition.

Like, in those NZ kind of squads,

when you go into those, and you're like,

do I play against 35-year-old builders every week?

Like, what's this guy going to do?

Builders.

35-year-old dudes with tattoos on their face.

Yeah.

Like, that's the reality of it, right?

So when you went into those environments,

you're like, fuck, well, I can handle myself here.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We used to have scraps like on-field scraps

when I played for Levin.

Heaps of the boys were, you know,

involved in gangs and all that,

and the other teams that we played in.

You know, it's a game,

and we always had hard games

and a few little scuffles here and now on-field,

but it's always sweet afterwards,

because it was back in the old day

where, you know, you get in the club rooms

and a couple of the aunties

and a few of the, you know, coaches' wives

would cook food for us,

and, you know, we'd always have a few drinks,

and...

I think there was only six or 17, so...

In that area, rugby leagues,

you've got to be, you know,

you've got to be keen as to play rugby league,

because you...

There's no money in it where...

If you're good at rugby in, like, one or two,

you might get, you know, 100 bucks

or a couple of 100 bucks a game

to play for a good club, like cardboard,

or whatever,

so if you want to play league, it's like...

And was that the mentality?

Like, confrontation on the field,

whistle goes, shake hands, meet in the club rooms,

everything's kind of forgotten?

That kind of old-school mentality

of what happens there, happens there,

and then we go away and go our separate ways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a good team.

We ended up winning the comp that year,

the Western Alliance,

I think it was called, so...

That was great fun, like, as a...

Imagine a 15-year-old kid,

you're at high school,

and...

Yeah, some of my teammates were like 40,

and, you know,

I was younger than some of their kids and shit.

But we used to get on a bus

and

we would head up to Taranaki,

because there was a couple of teams

in the Taranaki area, Maris Balblock

and Hawera,

yeah, so, you know, rough areas,

and I remember one time,

I think it was Maris Balblock,

half of our team got on the piss

on Friday night, the night before,

and from living to Hawera,

it was about three and a half hours,

and we always used to pick some of the boys up,

like, they would get rides to the State Highway,

you know, maybe from their girlfriend or whatever,

and they would just stand on the road.

Anyway, we

ended up going up there with, like,

12 players,

and the bus driver ended up having to jump on there.

LAUGHTER

Yeah, bro, so,

it was pretty fun, like, it was a good way

to, I guess,

get a bit of life experience,

but what you said, like,

you know, I was

exposed to, well,

I was one of the better players in the team,

even though I was 15, so

we were sponsored by a pub,

and after the games, well,

naturally you're going to go back to the sponsors' location

and have a few drinks, so...

And you're not going to be left out in the car park? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Without getting the public into any trouble,

well, yeah, you know, like...

We'll be right back

after this short break.

The Russell Packer story, as far as I can see,

is kind of divided

by this line, and there's the person

who we're talking about now,

and the stuff you're going through,

and there's the person on the other side

who's in front of us now, and you've got this perspective,

and there was a big

incident which

has created that perspective shift.

Are you able to go into

as much or as little detail as you want

about the lead-up to what happened in Sydney,

and then we can start talking about

what happened afterwards? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, that whole situation,

I put myself in a bad position,

but,

like, just

anyone that was a part of the case,

like, they portrayed it like

I King had someone from behind, and all that,

which wasn't the case, like, I got hit,

and I went too far, which is what happened.

And in my life, and if I've done anything,

I've always been like, yeah, I did it,

and, you know, I've tried to have

some justification, because

that's how it grew up, like, oh, well,

you know, they done this and that, and

it was the wrong thing,

and I played guilty for a reason,

because, you know, I didn't...

This is this powerful thing

about narratives and sharing stories.

It's like, we hear stories,

and we just tend to believe them.

And when they come from people

or places that

have credibility, then, again,

we're more likely to believe them,

and that's myself included, so

that was something.

Coming out of there, that was

quite a lot of people now still

come up and ask me, oh, you just,

you know, hit someone for no reason, why did you do that?

I was like, well, you know,

that's what it said, but that's

not what actually happened, and

anyway, I played guilty,

I fucked up, I did the wrong thing,

I put myself in a bad position, I put myself...

I put, more importantly,

I put my family in a bad position,

I put my kids without a father for a year.

Going to jail

in hindsight

was probably one of the best,

better things that happened to me at that period.

As I said in 2013,

I should have been in rehab, like I was just...

Yeah, I was struggling

with a lot of shit, demons, which now I can...

I'm 10 years older now, like,

2013 when, yeah, 2023,

I was just a kid

in my brain, and,

you know,

didn't expect to go to jail,

um,

thought I was gonna,

you know,

get, um,

get a lesser punishment, but, um,

yeah, I ended up getting sentenced to two years in jail,

um, from that.

Um, Pell didn't got down to one year,

so I spent one year in jail.

I've read something about your lawyer,

even surprised, like, when the two-year sentence

was handed down,

he didn't think that was on the cards.

Like, that must have

been an incredible shock.

Um, yeah,

yeah, I got rid of

that lawyer real quick, but it was just like,

the other thing too, man,

when you actually start

learning about the law, and

I started doing a law degree

at Auckland Law School too,

so I've done a little bit

stuff around statutory

interpretation and understanding

legislation and, you know, what the

intention of law is, so

I've had a different perspective as well,

but, um, yeah, look,

I was an example at a time, and

I just accept it, bro. It's, um,

it happened

at that time for a reason,

and when I look back on it now,

um, you just have to accept

the situation and, um,

use it to grow and move forward,

and probably,

like, um, you know, we talked

about ice bars and all that.

If you just resist all the time,

you don't really last long and

takes a lot of energy, and once you learn

how to let go and accept

the environment and accept things,

and, you know, do the

best with the things that are in your control, then

it's a lot better for you mentally, so, um,

yeah, that's what I came

to, but it was tough, bro. It was like,

fucking,

I just got

through jail, like, um,

quite a few of my family members have

been in and out of jail and whatnot,

so, um, cousins

and stuff,

and, um,

it's,

I wasn't,

I'm not really, I wouldn't say,

you know, I'm not

scared of things in that way,

like, oh, I wonder what it'll be, because I don't,

no point wasting my energy

thinking, oh, it's going to be like this,

or it's going to be like this, so I just

put one step

and one foot in front of the other,

and, um,

like, for the most part, bro,

jail was just really boring,

it just gave you a lot of time to reflect, like,

you're stuck.

The first month that I did in jail, bro, I was,

I was in, um, I was in,

like, socially isolated cell,

there, because I was a famous.

I was going to say, was it because of your profile?

Yeah, yeah, so the,

um, the jail

people, they were like, oh, this guy's going to get

stabbed and extorted and all this things,

and so they forced me to

stay in this, um, in this cell

for a month, yeah, for over a month,

so it was 23 hours a day

locked down, and, um,

yeah, good,

good, like,

it was time for a lot of,

um, reflection, and why the

fuck am I in this position?

My behaviour, my actions,

put me here, and...

Pardon my ignorance, but how quick

is it between a

guilty verdict and actually going

to jail? Is it, like,

complete ignorance? Is it, like, same

day, like, are you taken away and you go straight in, or is there a...

Yeah, yeah, well, that day...

Detention period, or, I don't know...

Well, that day was, so I played guilty,

and normally people come back for their sentencing,

so the pleas entered or whatever,

and then the court,

you know, judge goes to lunch

and then come back in the afternoon for sentencing,

so, you know, it was just,

um,

yeah, sitting around with my lawyer,

and none of them mentioned

jail, and, oh, yes, it was all looking

good for whatever they thought the recommended

sentence was, and then

heard two years jail, and,

um, I'm pretty,

I guess, like, perceptual,

but, um,

there was, like, two massive,

like, prison guards

behind me, and then the judge yelled

at me to stand up in his court,

and then I looked around, and I was like,

ah, yeah,

like, I could anticipate what was coming,

and obviously

they probably put some

security there, not knowing if I'd freak out

or whatever, and, um, yeah,

it was,

that was just a situation, but as I said,

I played guilty,

you know, I fucked up, I did the wrong thing,

um, in a bad position,

albeit it's

never been portrayed as,

as how it actually

occurred, but that's,

I guess it's not important 10 years,

um, in the future, but,

you know, you talk about things,

it's like, you struggle generally

with things that you think aren't fair, like,

I don't why not, yeah,

I did these things, and I know

they were wrong, and that's why I played guilty,

but what you're saying about

me there isn't true, which

is what I struggle with mentally, because it's

just, you know,

it was bad for my family, and

on top of me being in jail, because

it was like,

why you, you know, my

missus had to answer, why you, in a

relationship with someone that just runs up

behind anyone and just hits them for no particular

reason, so,

you know, that was just like,

just that, having those conversations

with people, that was hard, and even

having conversations with my kids about going to

jail bros being,

my daughter's 13, nearly.

Thank you so much for sharing

the stuff with us.

I'm interested in the mentality shift

when you're in there, so you get a sentence

that initially you think you're doing two years,

and it gets reduced to one, but in those initial stages

it's two.

Do you remember

how you changed mentally? Like, in the

initial stages, was it days, weeks, it was

anger and frustration, and then it became

sort of acceptance, and then it became

I'm gonna change?

You've done the grief loss steps,

yeah, denial, anger,

bargaining, depression,

and then acceptance. Was it

textbook for you, like that? Bro,

yeah, well straight to anger,

yeah, I wasn't in denial, I was

in jail, yeah, I wasn't looking

around thinking, is this real? I was like, fuck,

this is, this is not what I was

told, and obviously

that came with a lot of anger

based on a mismatch of

expectations, so,

but, yeah, bro,

I was getting to the acceptance

was a

long time, and

you know, like, jail was

what, it's a, it's society's

punishment when you get convicted

or you plead guilty of a crime, and that's

in general, mentor

and balance the crime

out or whatever, as the sentence recommended

to

you know, square the

ledger also, in

a simple way, in my view anyway,

but so I was

doing that, and then

on top of that

I knew that I wasn't probably going to be

able to play NRL again

or in the short term, which

the game was like, and my

mind, you know, was like, oh, well that's

unfair, like, I'm doing my time now,

you know, that says

a young kid looking at it, but

you know, I really

appreciate the support that the NRL gave me

after I got out

that St. George

Dragons

guess how saved my career

and my life in a way

by giving me a place to call home

giving me a place to re-establish

myself and reconnect with my family, so

I'll be forever indebted

to that club

you know

St. George of the Wild Dragons

the CEO, Peter Douse

at the time, the head coach at the time

who came

and seen me in jail, signed me

Paul McGregor, Mary McGregor

you know, I'll never

not have

gratitude in my life for him, how he helped

and treated

my family as well, him and his wife

Nick, you know, kind of

took us in there as like

looked after our kids and, you know, just

to have that kind of support

when you're really at the bottom

of

as low as you can kind of go

you know, when you go to jail

it's like, and then

the story around it is unknown

so everybody has their own thing

and it's like, okay cool

we're out now, what do I do

gonna try and play league again

got two kids and

yeah bro, it was

it was hard, but it was worth it and

as I mentioned about NRL

you know, they encouraged me

and even the RLPA

and the dragons

they had this big team and obviously

they were incentivised because they wanted me to play for their team

but then also

helping me go to those cognitive brain

therapy sessions and

giving me work opportunities

when I first got out and you know

giving me some hope and some optimism

for my future which

which is always needed when

when you're in a low patch it's

I read a book

that was recommended to me when I just got out of jail

A Man's Sit For Meaning

by Victor Frankel

my brother recommended me to read it

when I was in my early 20s and I never got

around to it

your brother makes a good

recommendation in my opinion but

I read that book and

Victor Frankel was a psychiatrist

before the war

and then he survived

he survived

those camps

and he read a book about it and how he did that

and I recommend that book for anyone

that's going through stuff

as

we're all

when we go through hard stuff

we don't know if we can get through it until we get through it

and that book was

a real

fascinating read for me

because

I connected a few of the dots

that were unconnected at that time

about

having goals

having

things to look forward to in the future

was there a person

or a moment

that galvanized your spirit when you were

in jail to think

I've got to pull myself out of

the depths where I am right now

yeah bro

there was

and I've shared this story a few times

my daughter

Madison

who's

13 soon

she was 3 at the time

her birthday is in August so it was like 8 months

into the sentence

I was at a farm jail

in the back of New South Wales

country a place called Obron

it was real cold it was like

1200 meters above that snow there and shit

and so

they were like if you want to escape

you'll freeze to death before you reach the next town

so it was quite lack security wise

it was very minimum security

Lara Madison

Mali came and she was

talk about

someone that's just back to you

to the death man

I'm very lucky and a lot of people

remind me of that and I definitely

agree with them but

she brought the kids out

and Madison was having a birthday party

and you know it was like

after the visit

Madison was

3

we were in our separate ways at the visit

and then she ran back to me

when I was going through the prison gate

and then it was like oh dad

birthday on Wednesday

can you come

and I was just like fuck

yeah

that was the real moment

where I was like fuck this shit

and just like

I've been a selfish car and I've put myself

and my family in this position

and now I've got to answer a 3 year old

kid, my daughter

who

I meant to be the person trying to give her

the best

you know

upbringing and trying to

give her a stable environment

to grow and learn and become the best

version of herself and

yeah

I actually felt like a piece of shit after that

like as you do

you go internal and then you're like

fuck

yeah

just had a lot

of thoughts

and I was like I've got to just sort

shit out and

try and get to the bottom of it and

I'm still trying like every day

is a different battle for people that deal

with anger issues

or substance abuse issues

or even addiction

or talk about ritual like wide folk streams

like why is he doing

ultramarathon

why doesn't he just do unmarathon

you know you kind of got that

pushing nature in your own

and stuff so

I just really yeah

got into a lot of reading

and read a lot of books like that one

like Man's Search for Meaning and

not that you can

it

it's how many people in the world are religious

and

the bible has changed their life

you know I'm not religious myself but

any book like in

the bible is one

easy example but it does have

the messages and the stories and it has the power

to help someone

change their life and

not just one book but

a whole list of things

yeah

and the toughest moment

and then you've made that very clear

decision you're going to change and you're going to be better

and then as release date

gets near

I'm assuming you're sort of counting down the days

are you a totally changed

man on that release day

and do you remember like the emotion

like the emotion of walking out of jail

must have been overwhelming yeah bro

it was very overwhelming

cause you seemed like

you're in a heightened state

all the time

some of the people that I was

they were just there like

that killed four people

you know done some pretty

like heavy crimes

and we're into mingling so it's like

you know actually

you're just a bit more heightened you know

someone

at the supermarket walks behind you

so that's kind of the transition

out of it

but I don't

you know

you know changing isn't like turning on

a light it doesn't just

yeah it takes time

anyone that

you say you're a changed man or

you're always changing or

I went to a couple of AA meetings while I was in jail

and that's why they always say that they're always

recovering cause you don't

get to an end point and then it's finished

you know cause new shit pops up

and hard things happen

in life and what do you fall back to

you fall back to the things that make

you feel comfortable which is drinking

you know

drugs

gambling whatever

whatever your vice is

yeah it's definitely

it's definitely not a destination

that I've arrived at it's something that

I'll try and be mindful of and you know

I still have some of my times

where it's like

yeah things happen

in life and you have struggles

and

you've just got to have

an awareness that

that's all good to be saying

like oh yeah I'm not feeling the best

or I'm not don't have the same energy

that I have today that I did

two months ago which is

having these conversations

is good life

I've met some awesome people down

in Papua, people that

do heaps of different things, former cops

we have a weekly

group down at Gather

Gather and Papua Moral Beach if anyone

wants good coffee but every

Thursday morning and I got invited

into it when I first went down

6.30, 6.30 a.m.

opened all

kind of policy and

it's awesome and we have some

some of the boys

have done very well in business and doing

very well and everyone's from

different walks of life, some former cops

and you know a wide variety

of stories and people

and we talk about some things

you know like post-traumatic stress

disorder which is affecting a lot of

cops and

firefighters and issues like that

which I guess it's

it's cool that it's

becoming more normalised now that

people can share those stories and not be trapped by their

emotions and

be able to be vulnerable to other people

totally and this is

so good, thank you so much for being so

vulnerable, this is tough

to go through but we've arrived at

what I think is the beginning

of the really cool part and this is what

I was looking forward to getting to and

I'm not sure how to tell the story, you would know better than

me but

linking up from getting out of jail

getting yourself back on the footy field

playing professional rugby again

becoming part of sort of captain leadership

groups up to your business success

now and your ability to share

this message and inspire others so

I don't know what part of the piece

you want to talk about but is it

how hard was it to get yourself

fit again to get back in NRL

was that always the goal

was always to get back on the field?

Yeah bro, yeah

I used to smoke cigarettes

even when I played at the Warriors

when I went to jail I smoked

quite a lot

played hit the cards and I didn't

mentally I didn't have any motivation

to train

like I trained and I put on heaps

of weight in there and I didn't do much

and then

when the goal, when there was light at the end of the tunnel

with about three months to go

one of my good mates from

from jail dunks

we were cell mates for like four or five months

and he was real fit

and surfed dude and so

yeah with about three months I just

kind of snapped and I was like oh fuck

we're gonna get out sooner

we'll just start trying to get into some shape

and getting back into that zone and

yeah

and coming out I

took me about

three months

took me about three months to

actually be allowed to play a game

but probably mentally

like in my head I was like oh yeah

I reckon I could

pump out 15 minutes of grade if I needed to

like

that's what I thought you know

I guess that's kind of what got me through jail

visualizing playing a game and

because how soon into that jail

journey did the club

interests start to come through

because my understanding is it wasn't just the dragons

there were a few clubs that were keen on

being part of your reintegration

into society yeah

yeah

there was a few obviously

like I was in jail but yeah

there was a couple

of what you said earlier like

I was 24 years old

I played for New Zealand

and I played over 100 in the rail games and I was

24 yeah so

as a front rower

your hot property right yeah

I wouldn't say hot property

come and fresh out of jail but it was like

your property

your property

you're probably

you got a heaps of potential

but you're a door up

you know

you need a little reno you need a bit of work but

yeah

that's

just the situation and to be frank

if I went to jail when I was 33

I definitely wouldn't have had any office

because it would have been it's about

that like I had the potential to come out

the other side

and be a better person but not only that

I had the potential to perform on the field

and to play and

you know do what I always love to do

and what I was really good at which was

to play rugby league so

yeah

yeah so I'm keen to pick up from the dragon

so you signed the two year contract like that must

have been a really

cool moment in this journey and the education

part of it too can you link that

link us up to that part of the journey

yeah so

getting back on my feet at the dragons

all of I got out of jail in

2015 and January

January the 5th 2015

I think I've played my first game of reserve grade

in May and then I played

reserve grade all the way so I had to meet

all these milestones to

I had to work to get back into the NRL

because it wasn't just the case of

oh he's back now here's a contract

go and play right you had to jump through a few hoops

and there's still a few areas I imagine

yeah and totally because

it goes back to the thing of building up trust again

like oh well you're fucked up before

so we don't trust that you won't do it again

which is

it's normal everybody does it

so

that was all good

built that up and yeah

Mary brought me into her team

and I just trained I ended up being

allowed to train with the first grade squad

and I was playing reserve

grade and I was having fun

and it was a really good

actually

eye-opening experience for me

because I debuted when I was 18

so I didn't really have that

I'm going to do anything that I can

to

I'm 24 but I'm going to

drive two hours a day to training

and then when I played reserve grade

that year I was like man these dudes

like the chances of them

playing is what

drives them to keep coming like

it made me really think

about education, career, business

most of them were teachers

they were really tradies

and everybody loves to talk about

former athletes

like oh you know

look at them they wasted all their money

or they didn't do anything meaningful

it's like

when you're 18 and you're playing

it's like your single track on that

but when you're

18 and you're not even

making reserve grade team you're like oh

maybe I'll go and do that

I'll just degree and become a teacher

and chip away and then train

and build up and so you've had

your own life and I think

yeah that was really formative

then

at the end of 2015

the NRL allowed me

to come back

the main reason why I wasn't

given

why I wasn't

I guess allowed to

be an official NRL player is because

I had a deportation case hanging over my head

so

I got out of jail in

2015

a lot

of

a law

for deportation changed

in Australia so

you'll probably read in the paper but quite a lot of

people that have been to jail for over

one year in Australia have since been

deported back to New Zealand

that were born in New Zealand and New Zealand citizens

and so I was

on that radar for

for immigration

in Australia so that

behind the scenes

you know that was

probably more

scarier than jail to be honest because it was like

yeah

it was a very very real chance that I was going to get deported

I had immigration

lawyers and my lawyers were kind of prepping me

to

yeah

to go to the detention centres

and stuff like that

yeah so

you know

Laura's been through a lot man and

yeah put my family through

through a lot of that a lot of uncertainty

and

so

to put that into perspective when I was allowed to play

again and stay it meant that I was staying in Australia

which was I had more

weight you know it was a lot more significant

and I'm allowed to play a game it's like

we were having conversations

in the background like oh

what are we going to do if I get deported

like where we live we'll go to Hamilton

and I could have been a

ambassador down there but

you know

you've got strong grounds

you've got strong grounds to become one

yeah and I don't

ever do pedigree playing cricket I just

I only played cricket once

I never got to bat and I never

got to bowl and I was like oh this

sucks but obviously I was shit

that's why I wasn't bad in all bowling

but

yeah bro it's so

we went through

a lot of

psychological

times where you just

didn't know the future and how certain

it was in terms of what you could do play

the deportation stuff

so

when I played my first game

it was awesome

Melbourne Storm

down there

and it was just like

I trained really hard

you know I was in good shape

and I just loved being back in there

being in that competitive environment

I think that's what I loved

I've always loved competing

you know I'm real competitive naturally

hard to

get to elite levels of sport if you just

don't have a high level

of competitiveness in you

whether that's loud or internal

whatever but

probably the thing that

I miss the most about league is

the competition challenging myself

against the best players and

I accepted that I was too old like my body

was broken down and

you know

I was like a pack of meat that had

expired but it hadn't been frozen bro so it was time to

you know go and

that's where it is but

mentally that's what I miss it's like

the ability to get

fit, push yourself

being pushed by all those around you

who are in your team

so you compete them with your own teammates to get better

and then you get the privilege to go

and

test yourself against another team

and then work together and yeah that's probably

the thing I miss about it

but

three awesome years in St George

and we lived in Wollongong

yeah beautiful people

like

a lot of teammates that I have

this is another thing too

just

in general

I don't know if you've ever come across the

rule of 150

I watched the TED talk

someone sent it to me but it's

an anthropologist called Robin Dunbar

who's

he's a British anthropologist so studies animal

behaviour and all this thing but

I'm up with this

model that people can't really

exceed human connection beyond

150 people

called Dunbar's theory

or all of them 50

but I came across that and

you know it goes in this like

5 people really close

and then 15 and you know

way more about your 5 closest friends than

you do about number 20 don't you

just go to that

because you spend more time with them

and that's kind of what a regular

team is like

you connect with some people more than

others like

you're professional by then you're late

so it wasn't like that brotherhood that I had

at the Warriors I had a different

outlook on life like I still loved it

it was like a team but then it was also

more like business like where

the Warriors it was like

I was just a kid bro it was

that wasn't like my family

we'll be right back after this short break

so

and by the time you got to the

Tigers you did 4 years at the Tigers

1821

you had all of this

learned experience right like by that

stage you're a veteran and you're

a part of the leadership group and you've got

the jail and the youngsters and you can help

the youngsters coming through was that a cool period

yeah bro

so Ireland

signed a few of us to go

to the West Tigers and into

2017 and

you know me and Benny

Martz ended up connecting back up again and

that was cool

so I signed there for 4 years been signed

there for 3 years and

you know it's a good reflection if you go

somewhere with expectations like

you talked earlier soon as like

I played 100 games when I was 22 so

I just had the expectation well

I've got here so I'm definitely

going to get 200 as

you know I want to go for 250 or 300

and we all went

to the Tigers with good expectations

and that was a real

good team in 2018 the year before

I think they won 4 or 5 games

lost

couple of their marquee players came out and recruited

and we won

12 games that year so they went from 5

games it was 7 win turnaround

in one year

and obviously that

year Ivan

you know

there was the going back to

kind of situation which happened

towards the end of the year

so I was a captain there

and then they got

Madge came in

and

we obviously

had

different philosophical views

I learnt a lot of Madge though

you know

I guess when you get two stubborn people

in the room they're not always going to agree

and he was the boss and I was in

and that's what happens in the team

like as a fan or whatever you see

it you go oh

that guy used to be good and now he's not

even playing

my last game of NRL

I played 10

minutes off the bench but I didn't go on

until the 55th

minute

you know so like

that was

my last game of NRL

so I had really fallen off the

like I was starting

I was always a starter because to be

a starting front row in the NRL

and I think

not to just say

you need this to do it but

you have to have a different mentality

like the physical attributes

go without saying but

to be a starter

it's a different mindset because

more pressure at the start of the game

like first kickoff carry

first tackle

yeah first tackle

you want to be out there

you want to be

a part of it at the start

it's like rocking up to a party

three hours in

straight up like sometimes

when you sit on the bench that's what it feels like

oh you've missed all the fun

you've missed the crack up stories

and you weren't a part of it

for me anyway that's what it's like

especially for me

my personality was like

I always said to any coach

I want to start

whether or not I'm good enough to do it or not

whether I'm better than the other two props that you pick

then that's up to you but

I have the intention like

I want to be on the field first

that's just in my nature

take me into that

you're in the in goal area and

you're receiving

like pissing your pants a little bit later on

but I normally did that before

the first kickoff

actually while we're there now

talk us through that

and then I've got my follow up question as well

yeah look man this

it's crack up to say now but

like

I always

I always played with a lot of injuries so I played with

like medicine like anti-inflammatories

and all that and I always

played with me like I'm

man of routine but I would always spew up

before every game oh really

yeah and I always used to brush my teeth

and brush my mouth guard just before

I went on so like any of my old teammates

they're like oh this weird dude like brushing his teeth

just before you run out but I always

was whether it was a combination

of the medicine and then obviously

my nerves but I would always have a weak bladder

so like I would always

like just before the

would run out I'd be like oh fuck

and then that game

bro like

the

the ball was gonna get kicked off and like

I had done the old

drop down on the knee like previously

and then you know we at the side

but it was like

the ball was on the tee 40 seconds

before the kickoff so

if I like dropped on the knee right there

everyone would be like oh this dude's wings so I was

just like fuck I

heaps of shit was going through my head like

oh I should have quickly run off but then I missed

the start of the game

and yeah I just couldn't hold it in

did you take it out

or did you just go through the undershorts

yeah just like yeah just

just weed through my pants and

cause it's a solid stream

it's like hiding in broad daylight hey have I got away with this

has anyone seen this

like it's probably

it's paradoxical

like oh he's smart enough to

get into that university and get it

okay but he's stupid enough to piss his pants

on the field so

it's all part of the story bro

all part of the character but

yeah I think at the time

too bro like

I only played five games that year and I was injured

like as I said before in 2013

was that 13 that season was that the

yeah was that that season with the when you

pissed yourself on the on Sunday

yeah so I wasn't in the best middle

space what I said yeah contextualizing it as well

yeah yeah like in the context of it not to say

you know that's the reason like I just

need to do a person I did and

but to contextualize that

I

I hadn't played because I got a surgery on my

shoulder in like February

so and I was unfit bro and I was

um

I was definitely out of shape I wasn't training

hard I was isolated I wasn't

in the best mental frame and

um

Matt Elliott was the coach and

again you know

I guess he wasn't like a Ivan

to me like he did he didn't bring the best

out of me or I probably wasn't

the best version of myself under him

as well and

um

Sammy Jake got

injured and I was fucking

I was like nearly 130 kilos bro

I was like massive like in the

photo you know well he's a people see me

that well you're not as fat as what you were

when you're playing I'm like yeah

and um so

my discipline wasn't there and

um probably

goes back around on the story but

what I said earlier about always wanting to start

we had like three injuries and

there was no other experience from

always I was not fit but

Matt Elliott came to me and was like

oh we're gonna need you to play

and I was like yeah I'll play I said

but if I play

I start

so that was like kind of my attitude yeah

I was like yeah I believe I can do it

yeah I haven't played much I'm

definitely unfit but mentally I reckon

I can get through 20 minutes but I want to start

cause yeah and

and my my follow up was the mentality

of a front rower before that first

kickoff are you like

like it was in ball rush back at school

like picking the

the biggest guy that you can find and go fuck it

I'm aiming up and I'm coming straight at you

yeah yeah especially when

you're 130 Kigs yeah

yeah you can just pick anyone

I remember that year

cause obviously growing up as a kid like

Sonny Bill was

the man and he was at the roosters that

year that's the year the roosters won it

and I remember we played a game and I was

that big and I was like fuck

I'm just gonna run at him and see

just because

like I just want to feel

what the collision will be like and

yeah bro

winded down

I just played the ball but normally when you get

hit real hard in the midsection

you're just like you're winded

but you gotta try and get up

pretend like it didn't hurt so I played

the ball and then just walked off like

like

yeah but that's

I guess that's the kind of mentality and that's

what people are drawn to aren't they

when they watch Bunty run off the back fence

or players go hard

it's like there's a risk that

they're gonna get smashed well people love it

they love the was it

Jerome hit Webki

Jerome Ropati hit Webki and Webki

gets knocked out in a war like

those kind of

highlight collisions are what people just

absolutely love and I'm fascinated by

yeah that mentality of like this could

fucking hurt a lot but fucking I'm just

gonna go for it like look at Dan Hooker

like he's

he's my favourite UFC fighter I've watched

all of his fights and he's just like a mongrel

he just goes hundies like he's

fought dudes that are like 30 kilos

heavier than him you know look

when he came by the dudes

gets kicked in the head sounds

like he's been hit with a bat broken

case bone and just

broken arm as well broken wrist

broken hand and just doesn't

mental like how else can you

explain that he didn't want to lose that fight

he's just like I'm gonna go all the

way give my best shot

and you know yeah that

that's probably the mentality

that you need to have and

just whether some people say oh he's

crazy or you know why are you gonna run

directly straight at someone like Sunny

when there's a hole there

like is that your ego

or pride

and the competitiveness too you just

you wanna see curious

you said before

you miss like the mental

side of the competitiveness

of playing I think that's perhaps a good

seg into business because you've got

new challenges now and there's new

things which are challenging your mind

in very different ways and I was

sort of reading up you've got a development

of a 19 lot subdivision where's

that Foxton Beach

and you've got the front row fencing

with Ben Medellino yeah

so now you're a businessman so now you've got

these projects and you're supervising

and there's a whole new skill set which you

have taught yourself we talked about the study

you've done but how are you finding that

side of life I've jumped out of the fencing business

but Ben's still running oh yeah

just

took some hits on the development so

you know

these things happen in business it's like

a 19 lot subdivision

it's probably like running off the back fence

I wouldn't advise to do it but you know

just do it anyway

and yeah that has been fun

it's been challenging doing it

as a joint venture

with

awesome guy Regan's

his name he

he owned their journey block

where I purchased and

we ended up meeting for coffee in

2019

and connected again

probably just meeting the right person

and our energies matched and he initially

didn't you know want to do

the subdivision to get up because

he didn't have the yeah

he didn't want to do it at that time and then

ended up jumping on so

four years in man we've

learned a lot like

we've never developed anything and

most people will start with

like get a little section

and chop it into two but

that's when all that

most people would let go of the toe rope

there's no planet as well

so if anyone in Wellington or Palmerston wants to buy some sections

you'll hit us up but

yeah that's

from the business too

and I'll touch on this

like with the content or

reading books or

getting knowledge or information from

anywhere that doesn't mean fuck

all unless you use it unless you

like experiment unless you

take some risk unless you

fail and learn

yeah like

fail quickly

learn some shit and the hard way

which business school

is kind of like how

to run a company

unless so how to start a company

like starting a podcast

like what episode are you guys into

136

yeah so like now you got

136 runs on the board like

trying to get your first single like in the

cricket analogy that's the toughest thing

getting off the ground

getting one run on the board

getting two you know hitting

a four here one of the

episodes might be a six like oh me

you know I listen to as he's one

and then I'm like fuck that's good content

like and then you know

so I guess any endeavor

any any business

any entrepreneurial

endeavor any idea project is like

starts with the idea and then

you normally have to just

scrap and figure out how to

I had you guys hit podcast before

like I didn't know what one was really

before Steven kind of sent me one and said listen

to this listen to this part this is

what we're going to do and then we went

and then yeah we went from there yeah

I'm really curious about your thirst

for knowledge was it honed during your

time inside or did you always

have a real interest in

wanting to learn and wanting to know more

about the world yeah bro yeah

so it's always been with you yeah from

from from like

from a young kid

guess I would be that like

annoying kids

oh why do you do that what's that for

why do you put that there

why do you put that table

there instead of there like yeah

I guess why is always like

something that's in my head

because I'm just like

it's serious like I'm

actually I'm just generally curious about

heaps of different shit and

why we do things and

you know why did they build a bridge there

instead of over there or why is the

car park design like that instead of

design differently

it's amazing how many successful people

have had on the podcast and the common

denominator is their thirst to

keep improving and learning and growing

and it's so impressive

there are a few things I don't want to

keep you too long because Laura's probably waiting

but she's waited

up longer

there are a few things I do

want to touch on an important

thing in the dad life

we're sort of touched on some of the

the harder moments of parenthood

you've got a son

who's autistic yeah which

produces its own challenges

but what has that

taught you about yourself

oh man just to be

I guess

more empathetic and more

understanding and not so quick

the judgement of other people's

behaviour you know like

the old classic one

and for kids that

are on the spectrum or people that are on the spectrum

was like oh that kid's naughty

tell them to shut up they're screaming

and my son had a lot of

sensory issues like

hearing and

I was challenging when we travelled

a lot when he was a boy

he didn't speak he was non-verbal for a while

so we learnt like some small sign languages

that means more

and

sign languages they taught us all like

fitness and

oh maybe my boy's not going to speak so

we just got on with it but yeah

that posed a lot of challenges

especially around travel because that's

like a high stress for anyone you know

you go to the airport and it's like oh shit

he's a

he's a people moving and so my son

would you know

kick chairs and

what people would categorise as like

behaving badly

kind of kid and people would say stuff

and control your child and

you know so

what it really taught me was

we don't really understand what's going on

in the mind you know of

and we're trying to understand and then

more so for other people we don't

we don't know what's going on in

their head too and why they're acting that way

and just have a little bit more compassion and not

just Russian and you know hey

be quiet it's like

you don't know if they're having some kind of episode

or probably it's taught me

understanding and not

not just having one idea

having you know

more possibilities like oh they're

just naughty or that's just one

option but there's

quite a lot of other possibilities as well

we were talking before the ep about perspective changes

like I imagine that is just the ultimate

perspective changer of

everything yeah man like

my

my boy used to like

smash his head on concrete and

do a lot of the

stimming behaviour like

look at lights and you know

move his head and

flapping it's called in

to like try and calm himself

down and stuff so like

imagine you see me walking around like

shaking my hands and

moving my head and

it's all good when like you're a baby

but like as you get older he doesn't do it anymore

we went through a lot of therapies

and a lot of things and stuff like that

but yeah just

it's new information so

I guess that same

just curiosity about things

like cool

you know

he's got this

he's got this problem

or he's got this

challenge in his life and

Lara and I have always just

committed ourselves as much as we could

to try and understand it and then facilitate it

it's just I don't really like boxing people

and saying oh he's always going to be

like this or it's like

saying a kid's always going to be naughty

or they'll always be

you know whatever

and so yeah we're just

definitely shifted both of our perspectives

and even more so

all of our family

and then it's kind of like

when you buy a car bro it's like you start noticing

all the other cars that look like your one

and with

issues

on the spectrum

I was an ambassador

for an organisation in Australia called

Aspects Autism Spectrum Australia

which done research

and I don't know the exact

numbers now

but I think

when I was doing some stuff of them

one in 60 people

are affected by autism

so you know you meet 60 people

based on probability

one of them's going to be somewhere

on the spectrum and you know

whether that's high functioning like

Elon Musk has said that he

suffers from or he has Asperger's

syndrome which is

autism on the high functioning

aspects and then

you have

it's so asperg

like any

disability

it's

yeah

it poses

different challenges

for everyone even if they have the same

you know same issues

cause everyone's different

and the other one

just a few words on this

Lara told us it's something you keep quiet about

the volunteering you do

in the community the Taku Wairua

and the Water Boy

you moved back to New Zealand

why do you feel it's so important to give back

what's going on

she must have been listening to my conversation

earlier

I mentioned it before

I don't know if you want me to go over

it again but

yeah

all of the things

that I've been involved in

obviously like I'm not

I don't have a public social media page

or you know

all that stuff

I like to think

that I do things because

I want to and I care

and I always think

this is one thing I learnt from jail

and

no matter what happens

in your life you always have a choice

Wayne Bennett

the

master coach

he was the coach of

the nights when I went to play at the nights

and I got in trouble in the jail

and he told me no matter your story

like oh they hit me

or they did this you know

story of justification

you always have a choice you can choose to say no

you can choose to say yes you can choose to walk away

you can choose to do whatever you choose to do

and

that's something that

it's kind of like

something I remind myself is like

if I go to a coffee group

I'm going to choose to go there

I'm going to choose to listen

if I'm not ready to go there

then I'll choose to say no

and I think that's what happens a lot in life

is that we fall victim

to a bit of social pressure like

hey brah I've invited you to my party

you didn't show up so

people would rather just go up

and not really want to be there

ah fuck I've got to go to my mate's party

even though I don't really want to

I'll drop in for five minutes

say hello and then back to her

like to me it's

even though it's social

kind of conformity in a way

it's like if I'm going to go

then I want to be

present in the moment

and give my attention to that space

otherwise just choose to say no

but if you choose to say yes then

you choose

yeah you're not going there

because your mate might get upset

or you know and

it's probably like I didn't really understand

at a time when Wayne said it to me

but very deep and

philosophical kind of

messaging which is like

summed up in a short little phrase

like you always have a choice but

when you reflect on it

it's true like I

often reflect on social situations

and like

you know

would have been easier

just to say no

I hope you do share your story more

because it's such a powerful

narrative of the struggles

and the rock bottom and what you've been through

to be where you are now

so many good messages to pass on

for others that are in those situations

Shay do you've got a couple of

bits before we wrap up

don't need your handbasin

what a status really

and it was because

you mentioned it

you messaged me directly about it

which was Lara is from Hamilton

yeah Malpho

oh Glenview Malpho

and you mentioned a few good nights at the Outback

which everybody has had

how much time do you spend in Hamilton

and could you lend your

your considerable

status

to the cause

I'd rather be

people said that I'm from Hamilton

rather than Huntley so I'll definitely be here

beautiful things

the other one which Lara sent to us

sorry actually I'll

put a caveat on that before I say yes and agree

what's the requirements

you just don't shit on Hamilton

so like I can't mention that

they don't have a beach

you can mention that

it gets cold but then also hot

I mean you've got a choice

you've got a choice to advocate

you choose to advocate and then we're all good

I love Hamilton

well you're there this morning

my kids are there now

they were with Grandma now

and

Grandma took them out to the base

to watch Spider-Man movie

I'm a dad up here so

Lara's fun

we're all living in the Waikato

in the King Country so

we spent a lot of time in Tikawari

in Hamilton

one of the reasons why we went to Popmars

because Lara's grandparents used to have a holiday home

over there and we spent a bit of time there

a few people

threw a dart at the map and boom

landed

I'm so glad you said yes

thank you for coming and making the time

people are going to get a lot from this

the vulnerability and sharing the message is so important

I honestly think

we could go for another two hours

we're still out there

so maybe there's room for a part two

but I'll throw to Shea who does the outros

thank you for your vulnerability today

I think it would be easy

to shrink away

and to not want to talk about

the difficult parts and they're not easy to talk about

for sure and particularly when you've got two people

prodding away and trying to pull

some of the pieces apart because

it's a traumatic experience

that you went through and

what I think is really impressive is the lessons

that you learned from it

and then you continue to take forward

particularly your thirst for knowledge

I've learnt a whole bunch of stuff

and you've also given me enough threads

to take some stuff away and to do some research on my own

which I hope people listening to this episode

will also do for themselves

because you are a fountain of knowledge

and you talked about the paradox before

of the guy who pisses his pants

before a game

it's only once

but has got the NBA as well

and I think

for the uninitiated

they will hold on to that paradox about

he's the buffet rugby league player

without taking the time to listen to the story

and listen to the messages that you drop

and it was encapsulated in a quote

and these are your words from I think 2017

I think it's the best way to summarise this episode

and

you said

the story I have so far is of a young kid

growing up in a country town who was good at rugby league

and made a lot of mistakes along the way

I paid the price to society

for them and I've worked hard to try and improve

my life and to be a better person

for my kids and my partner

whether people want to take motivation from it

and see it as a feel good story, I don't know

hopefully it can impact someone

that if they've done the wrong thing

they can accept the responsibility for it

and know that there will be an opportunity

down the path that will pop up and give the chance

to do the right things

I guess I'm living proof of that

and I want to summarise

the last

two hours that we've spent with you

better than your own words

so thank you very much for sharing your story

and I'm glad Stephen's got a golf partner

over the Kaimais now

yeah for sure if you ever want to come

back out to TP

for sure it's a beautiful club

just to conclude thanks heaps

for having me on

I've popped

my podcast Cherry on here

it's been an amazing experience

and I guess the messages

that anyone will take

I'm a firm believer like you have a choice

so you can't force people to change

it is what it is

you choose to do it and then you get help

so if my message resonates

with anyone and that's probably what I've kind of

mentioned there

I'm not going to force anyone

or impose my will

and say hey do this because

at work for me that's just not how

we all have the decision

to do different

and you know as I said earlier

you don't arrive at a destination

it's a daily thing

it's a daily battle like mental health

and men's awareness around that

it's something that's dear to me

initiatives in the community

like what Thomas and his team

are doing with the water boy

in Takawairoa reaching communities

changing people's life

being a champion in their life

it's like something

a big event as a 11 year old

that can have a huge impact

creating

teachers, people that are

going to pass their lessons

on from their childhood and

yeah that's kind of

why I'm sharing

my story here, just thought it was appropriate

time and if anyone takes

anything out of it then all the better

for them and life's not

easy and you've got to

have fun, look for people that

can help you through it, so thanks

thanks for having me on, really appreciate it

yeah it's been good, you're good man Russell

cheers Russell, yeah thanks boys

catch you next week

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.