The Agenda Podcast, the home of Sporting Nonsense and clap Trap, brought to you my next more to culture.
Right, it's our great pleasure to welcome into the Agenda a podcast, Sam Whitelock, Captain Caveman, how are you good?
Good?
Not so, Captain gave Man anymore. I'm not little bit disappointed you've come and you're clean shaven. You know you're retired. You've lost the look.
I'm trying. I'm trying to hide it. See, I'd love to say that that's what I was just trying to do. I'm probably just trying to get rid of the grays.
Okay.
It just started from a little bit of my beer and it's just kind of making its way down, so.
Down the chest and down into the Yeah, okay, I'll just.
Get rid of them and pretend that I'm younger than thirty.
We must be pretty hard for you to hide, because you're you're a big man. But you have released a book View from the Second.
Row, not this one.
No, that's the a sec book. You can peruce through that. I said you before. It's more picture book that one than a proper book. But before we get into it, now, did you watch the game yesterday, the Italy game, Sam Kine obviously playing his last game for the All Blacks. Well, what would have been going through I mean you obviously experienced that recently. What would have been going through Sam's head as he walked off and in there.
I know for myself and Sam would be feeling exactly the same as when he came off.
That was it.
It was done, There's no more All Black stuff, And if anything, it's a weird feeling. And I know for me, like I finished at a World Cup, so there was a whole lot of different emotion. But the last time sitting in the change room, the last time captain's run the whole week, it kind of builds up on you. And you know, Sam's been a professional for a long time, so he would have his own processes in place to do everything to nail his performance on the game, which
I thought he actually played pretty well. So when it happens and you go it's done, that's when it actually hits you. And it'll take him a way while to get used to the idea. And it's the same for myself. I'm still getting used to calling myself a retired rugby player. Now A few people are trying to pull me back in. I've had a couple offers of playing down south on the West Coast, I had a couple of charity games.
How could you resist that? How could you resist going to the coast?
Yeah, it is actually quite challenging saying no to a few people and a few things. But we wanted to finish playing really good rugby. I didn't want to be the guy that was hanging on. I didn't want someone to say, you know, to their son and the crowd or their daughter and say, hey, that guy out there, he used to be a good player. He's just clicking the ticket now. And so that's probably one of the reasons that pulled up and finished when I.
Did so last night. We watched the game yesterday morning. Actually were commentating myself, James and mcconey and I and we're big Chiefs fans, big Chiefs Mona fans. So you know there was a lump in James mcconey's throat when Sam Kane was coming off. But I need to ask you a question. When you get issued your kit, your all Blacks kit, do you ever get given gloves like warm winter gloves?
Yes, Sevu Reese, I saw it straight away.
What is going on here? He's got to play. He almost ruined the moment for Sam Kane that's ever going to be known as Sevu Reese with playing socks on his hands.
Oh.
The best thing is he's probably taking them off his feet and he could be saying, oh, my hands are cold, but he would have taken them off his feet and then gone, ah, my feet are cold now. So Sevu would have been doing it for Ai. To keeper's hands will obviously Fiji in heritage, but might not be the sharpest too when it comes to keeping warm and the cold. He's just not used to it.
We had to stop and rewind it and watch it again. It was one of the one of the great moments going back to retirement. How are you? What are you up to now? What are you doing stuff? Because you've been a professional athlete for as far as I can remember watching rugby just about Sam Whitelock's always been there. What do you obviously you switch off? What do you do? What are you doing with your Yeah?
So played my first game of touch rugby when I was about three three and a half four and thirty six now, so I finished my last game for the barbars. We played against Fiji and Twickenham end of May and since then we've actually been able to do some amazing things as a family. So we traveled the UK Europe for ten weeks and it was awesome. It was everything that we wanted and needed as a family. But since been back in New Zealand, we've moved to the Hawk's
Bay and now we're farming. So my hands are a lot harder than they used to be throwing around a rugby ball and enjoying the challenges that come with moving to a new place, doing something completely different, even though I got some family history and grew up on a farm, so yeah, doing something completely different but enjoying it so.
Far nice and was that always the goal going back into farming yep at the end, So playing career.
All my uncles and aunties are on the land or have been on the land at some stage farming. Got a number of cousins doing the same thing. My brother older brothers on the family farm as well, so there's quite a bit of farming chat that's thrown in between the footy and the kids. And yeah, it's been cool. So just looking forward to what the next challenge is at the moment. It's kind of I tried to explain it to someone, It's like I'm playing club rugby, but
I'm trying to do it at an international level. So I'm pretty green around a few things on the farm and I have two stuff members. Sometimes they're looking at me, going what are we doing now, and I'm like, I don't know. We're just kind of feeling our way through it. But I've got some good people there supporting, and that's been awesome, awesome.
It's great because I have talked to a few recently retired cricketers and one particular cricketer who you know, he'd been in the setup since he was eighteen nineteen years old, and when he finished playing, he said he didn't really know what to do because no one slipped a piece of paper under his door to tell him where he should be, what he should be wearing, and where they're going. And he was like, I didn't know what he said.
He was lost for a walks. He's like, I know, of telling me what to do, that is that the same in the all black setup?
No, it's exactly right. So I've been told we're to be what to wear, what to do, what training we're doing, and all of a sudden for us being on the farm, Like I'm like, do I start work at six? Do I start at seven or start at ten? Yeah, And it's really nice having that flexibility and just kind of working through when I want to get out the door. Do I do a couple of hours first and come back and see the kids before they go to school,
or do I work a little bit later. And it's just working for Hannah and myself out what is the best bang for our buck and where do I fit into it because I used to be away all the time, where now she's kind of like, are you going away soon? I'm kind of getting sick of you a little bit here. So yeah, it's been cool and hopefully they're not too sick of me just yet.
So is that you you're not going to kind of in terms of rugby, You're not look looking at any kind of coaching roles or admin administration roles or anything like that. You're on the farm and that's it.
No. I'm doing a little bit of coaching in Japan at the moment, so I've got a couple of trips up there every season for the next couple of years. I'm helping out Panasonic, where Robbie Deans is been coaching for the last ten twelve years, as a team I played for. So it's been really nice stepping back into them and just kind of, you know, I don't really have a pacific role or an area I'm looking at. I'm just kind of finding my own feed in that coaching space.
A vibe guy going along as yeah a little bit.
I do have my mouthguard and my toilet bag as I travel. But Robbie keeps saying, look, don't bring that, don't wear rugby boots because you'll get tempted to show someone something and you'll tweak a hammy or a calf or do your backs.
Or the red mist of the scene when some puts a shot on you.
And yeah, yeah, it's trying to get the body to do what it's meant to do. I'm still in pretty good shape, hopefully, but just getting that balance riders the key thing. And Robbie is a mentor, is an awesome person.
To Japan's a great place as well, a great place to spend a few months. You mentioned before your brother is also your older brothers on the family farm you grew up with three brothers. I only grew up with one brother and that was enough for me in terms of you must have played some mean games of running straight in the backyard.
Yeah, we still have our teams now. So it was always George the oldest, Luke the youngest. So there's only five years between all four of us. So as soon as we went, George and Luke fist Adam and I being the middle, it actually evened out pretty pretty quick. So like if Adam and I gaged up on, George would probably have the upper hand and then Luke was thrown in the mix. So then yeah, it kind of
just escalated from there. And so many times it was I'd get bored annoy Luke, Luke would get up to set, Adam would jump in and to defend Luke, George would jump and Dad would come home and sort us all out.
So that sounds so hectic for your parents. You got five, You've got four boys under five, so in that space of holy Man, that must have been one hell of a household.
Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, I explained about it in the book a little bit around. I think the wording I use is we were a bit rough around the edges, but we used to lock babysitters out of the house and we just will take that little bit of leeway. She'd be like, go put a jusey on, So we'll go put ten jusies on, and then she'd like, go take it off, and go take all of them off, and we we probably just were needed a bit of smoothing off.
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, but all be pretty successful footy players in their own right as well, so that must have been part of it in terms of, you know, you would have been so physical from such an early age that you would have come across on the rugby field and they were like, who these lunatic white locks who have already looked like they've probably got broken noses and coulie flowered ears and they haven't even hit intermediate school.
Yeah, we're all like, like, you call me keep and came in can be quite period times. So I think
my older brothers were shaving quite earlier at school. And I remember I was just learning to shave and might have been about fourteen fifteen, and I just tried to have a shave, got to school and one of the teachers like, you need to go have a shave, and I was like I just had one today, But I'm sure there's a bit of gs to involved there, but that's kind of what what we were, you know, growing up, and enjoyed our time at school because we're all at high school together as well, so it was all in
one and all in and we had some amazing fun and even running into people now that haven't seen for a while at school. A couple of those stories come up, and it's quite nice some of them didn't make it to the book.
There's one particular thing in the book that I enjoyed, and that's your you've got it. You're incredibly unlucky when it comes to credit card roulette? Is that that sounds like a horrible run of credit card reallytt And I mean most boys trips or whatever do this, And I'm glad that it's actually played in the All Black camp as well.
Yeah, even now I'm starting to sweat because I'm sure you're going to go right, get your credit card out, we're going to play. So I think I lost it was seven in a row. A white crocket actually put it in his book and he threw me under the bus because I'd kind of kept most of it away from hand and my wife, but he put it all the details in his book and he absolutely got me in some massive trouble. But when it got really bad, as I actually lost the credit card roulette, which was
my seventh time on the top of the Eiffel Tower. Oh, and you know, I was still pretty young at that stage, and I'm like, okay, my card's going to bounce. Lucky Rido is there and he chucked down some cash their head in his pocket and that managed to scrape me through with my overdraft limit and whatever it else.
That's potentially the most expensive restaurant in Paris. Oh.
The worst thing was Luke Romano was in track pants and jendles dressed up because that's just what he was wearing. It was one of those things of shall we try to get in here? And the guy down the bottom goes, hey, look, this is really expensive. There's probably not going to be a spot for you, and you're not dressed, and I think he saw Rido or whoever it was, and his oh, yeah,
you guys come up. And Luke and I were starving afterwards because we just ate a little bit of bread there and the meal came out and it was tiny, and yeah, definitely hurt the pride more than anything.
So do you so, I mean, I'm sure you played credit card really the same with everyone else. Do you just put it into a small bowl and you get the weight to just put your hand in, And I mean, is your credit card bigger than everyone else's? Is it a different weight?
Now? That was the worst thing. That was exactly the same as a couple of other guys. So they draw it out, So two ways of playing it, the first one out or the last one. The last one obviously.
Builds the tea dispense and the tension.
And I think Krocky just grabbed everyone's cards and with his tear well broken fingers. Sorry, Crocky's not here to defend himself. He's kind of like shuffled them, looked at them half not looked with him, and he's just held up all four of them to the weight staff. And I'm pretty sure he might have set me up for it. So I think that's why he enjoys telling that story so much. But he lost the next time, which was
so good. So yeah, I really enjoyed putting a little short one into his ribs and enjoying that meal.
Do you miss that camaraderie, because I mean that must be a big part of being a part of any team really, but even the all blacks set up, do you miss You're any going to miss that?
Yeah? Yeah, I think that's only normal and natural. It's kind of like being on school camp. But you're in school camp for one hundred and fifty days of the year and some of your best mates of the air and you grow up together. So the guys that I started with, you know, the are the ones that you're probably closest with because you go through all those ups and downs, the highs, the lows, and not only yourself but also your family's grow up together, so your wives,
your kids. So pretty cool to see my kids all, especially my son and Fred playing for the Mighty Pups.
Yep.
There was I think about a thousand first games on the sideline and about five hundred test matches when you had Ruben Reed, Kieran's son, frankis boy, he met Todd's boy, Cody Taylor's as he DAGs.
The hell of a sideline. It was.
It was amazing. It's actually quite embarrassing. We rock up to under six rapp a touch and the appearents wanted photos with us on the sideline, but we're trying to hood up on yeah, sunglasses, trying to hide. But it's cool to see all our wives take the lead and a lot of that and just nail what they needed to and allow us to be like everyone else appearents on the sideline and support not only your kids but the opposition as well.
Yeah, awesome. I was going to mention something else. There was a bit of if you've managed to go through your career pretty controversy free, I mean, you like mainly a little bit, but there was one particular time where we were in was in South Africa, were you Yeah, And it's one of those casic ones because trust me, this has happened to us on numerous occasions when something's taken the wrong way on social media and it goes to the wrong people when all of a sudden, Yeah
you know that, I'm talking about the hunting the hunter, Yeah, how is that? How was that in terms of learning a lesson pretty quickly around social media? I think that was kind of because you're a hunter anyway. Yeah, yeah, so.
I know where our food comes from. I grew up on a farm, so we understood if you wanted to egg to go to the Chokowski the eggs if you're having steak, you know, you understand that the stairs grown and it ends up in the freezer, et cetera. So I thought you're going to ask you about my pig Mary there for a second. Yeah, we won't go there. It's a little bit, a little.
Bit okay, right, it's a bit emotional.
But with the hunting stuff, the frustrating thing about it is we were over there with the crusaders and they had taken some photos who the professional hunting guys that were worth and they had sent it to some mates and a lady sat on it until the All Blacks team was named, which was probably three or four months later. And so in her defense, she timed it pretty well. She tried to have a maximum impact and she did that.
Things were said that we didn't actually do. They said that we just shot everything and left all the meat and stuff was donated back to local village, so nothing was wasted, and things like that. So a little bit of the i'll have a comment here, or take it the wrong way and can be blind up in.
The change the way that you behaved after that, or you did everything.
No, not really, Like I knew that we hadn't done anything wrong. You know, everyone's allowed their opinion of whether they want to be vegetarian or not, what they eat and where they where it's produced and things like that. So like I studied a lot of conservation and college at university, and it's some one thing a lot of people don't know about me. And it's one way the local communities they are actually themselves out of potential poverty
is through hunting and targeting the right species. Because the South African government actually comes in and culls a whole lot of things. So yeah, there's all those things in behind me. It's hard to explain to someone on social media without you know, getting boring and drinks out. So like I said, I wasn't too worried because I knew we hadn't done anything wrong.
Yeah, fair enough, Okay, before we before we go, I do this with all our guests. It's called twenty two and two, So it's twenty two rapid fire questions in two minutes. It's just yes or no. It's a quick answer you can you can move on and pass. I think the last person we did this was with it Liam Lawson. Yeah, he was a couple of questions in here. He tripped off on so it's nice and quick.
I hope there's no mess or spelling bee content, No, no.
Sam white Lock. This is your twenty two and two. Coffee or tea? Sea sex or drugs? Sex or fast fast? Would you rather wake up ned next to Dan Carter or Richie mccaugh neither tire, Indian uh eat out or dinonnond, Freddy Mercury or Elton John Oh, Freddy wet or dry? We cats or dogs? Dogs, Trevis kelsor Taylor Swift.
I've actually got my Taylor. We went to Wembley. My daughters love it, so I'm wearing them. I can't wait for them to break off so I don't have to with them.
You're the dead of the year. Did you take your daughters to to No?
I didn't. I took two good mates and my wife.
So oh okay? Almost Andrew Hoare, Anton Oliver and Scott Barrett. Who's the player you'd least like to shower next.
To all of them? Probably?
What rugby? What rugby legend? If you could? Would you bring back from the dead Jonah? Absolutely? If if the ceremony though to bring back Jonah is altered and you talking like Stephen mckiva for the rest of your life, which you still do it? Good man, This is easy one. If you ever fired a gun, never killed anything bigger than an insect. Yes, who's the most famous person you've met?
Oh? Probably one of the royals or one of the basketball guys.
Did you go to a basketball game?
A couple of basketball games. That was pretty cool. As you met the food fighters that was awesome. Girl, Redo and I were there. We were pretty much fan fan boys and we're running late. I had traffic grad to run about ten k's after training, got blisters and shoes I wasn't used to running in, but it was well worth it. Got there dripping with sweat, so I met the food fighters stinking sweetie and blisters everywhere.
It's funny when you because I met carry o'keef old scale the commentator, and I all of a sudden found myself totally fanboying out. I didn't know what to say and I was like yeah, I was like, hey, Like I just totally bottled it. He must have thought I was a compla freak. Anyway, if you had a reoccurring dream that a snowman killed himself with a hair dry Would you be concerned?
I think I would be.
If you were offered a knighthood, would you accept it?
I don't even know what that probably is?
A knighthood, Sir, Sir Sam Whitelock.
I wouldn't make anyone call me that.
But yeah, what age do people say they've had a fall instead of falling over? What's the tipping point there?
Eighty two?
Have you ever screamed? Google me, motherfucker.
I haven't a lady that has said that before, so I have said it to her a bit of ingest.
Yes, okay, here's one for you. Move to think about it, and could be on the farm if you were going to get a statue made of yourself, So you can think about this. What pose would it be? And where would you put the statue? I'll give you. I'll give you an example why you think about it. Tim Soudy said that he would put he would be nude on a stallion that was rare up and he had put it on the front lawn of Daniel Vitorre's house. That's the kind of it. It's a lot about Tim Southy.
Yeah, No, I probably never would have a set you made.
Of me your credit card on White Crocketts.
Now you should have seen me that question earlier.
You maybe you like holding his credit card on his front lawn.
Maybe at the dining room table. So every time he takes any mouthful, he knows who paid for that meal.
So it's you. That's quite that's quite. Innove a statue that's inside on the dining room table.
Just almost like the centerpiece, you know, so like every time he eats, no matter what meal, is just always looking at him, and they just want to have that look of a thousand foot steer, you know, like just slip through his soul.
No, I say the book is out now. View from the second row. Sam Whitelock, absolute pleasure to have you, have you in here in the studio today. I know you've got the media car wash you've been doing for a couple of days. I know you're probably gagging back to get on the farm and Hawk's Bay. But thank you very much for your time and best of luck with the book. I'm sure it's going to go well. Good stocking stuffer for any rugby fans out there, But
good luck with your retirement. Good luck on the farm and hopefully we'll see you around.
Thank you thanks for having me in. I've always wanted to come in, but nice to finally get here just as I've finished my playing career.
Perfect perfect timing.
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