Darren Shand on how All Blacks leaders handle competition for spots: model the behaviour yourself. Sam Whitelock told players "you don't join us, we join you"—meaning earn your place by doing things with elegance, not ego.
How do you get three people who are in the same position who are vying for that one opportunity to play on Saturday? How do you get to the point where you can say, hey, guys, we're gonna, like, tone down the personal ego, maybe even remove it, and you're gonna be doing everything to make sure the best player gets selected, even if it's not you.
Yeah. I think your leaders have to shape and drive that. They've got to demonstrate that they can do that. So if you're one of the three and you're the leader, well, that's your responsibility. That's the all black way. You know, it's interesting. We've talked a little bit about one of our players, Sam Whitelock, and when things were about to finish and I was told probably not going to be needed, we talked about what should that look like? And he immediately said to me, you've got to do it the all black way. You know, you've got to be elegant. And I was like, okay, that's it. You know, it's like, you know, you don't join us, we join you. And that becomes, I don't know, it becomes imprinted on you. That's the way it has to be done.
