042 - Leading from the heart with Ardie Savea

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For those unfamiliar with New Zealand - we are a small country in the arse end of the world, as we tend to call it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We have some sheep. Probably not as many as you might think.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s very green. Quite beautiful, really.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We can claim to Middle Earth, but that’s really a minority of the population.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We currently love shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world (much to this author’s frustration - Hi Cindy).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And we love the All Blacks.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While there certainly is a wide range of humans in this country, the cliche is that</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">most</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">boys grow up idolising and dreaming of being an All Black.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hi - I’m Mike, I’m one of those dudes. I played rugby intensely and competitively most of life, travelled the world with it, met some wonderful mates, had some remarkable times, played some epic and ‘story of a lifetime’ games.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But I never made it to those heights.</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’ve told some of my story plenty of times, some of that occasionally touches on a particular broken leg and a bunch of stories about not having ‘it’ anymore and subsequently hiding away and not pushing myself</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, yeah - the All Black dream dropped away.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yet, being a fan did not.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And the older I get, the more mature I get, the more I see the</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">men</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">in