Andy Ellis offers some advice for our current crop of young players

We asked one of our more famous rugby old boys to pass on some of  his accumulated wisdom to our current crop of Burnside High School players. 

"Hey,  Andy Ellis here. Some of my fondest rugby memories are of playing for my high school Burnside High. I love the fact that you can be at school with your mates all week and then go into battle with them in the weekend. It was always a great way to bond with guys from different age groups - often year 11, 12 and 13 all kicking around together. Advice for a young rugby player while playing at school is to just enjoy it. Love every moment, making great friends, working hard at school work, playing touch footy at lunch time, playing in the weekends, hanging out after school. If you do this, the rest follows. Also there is no substitute to hard work and commitment. Often sacrifices need to be made - training on your skill set when no one else is around. Hooker doing lineout throwing, 9 passing, 10 goal-kicking, in the weights room, fitness. All these things you must drive yourself. Setting clear short and long term goals is also important. Three key things you want to achieve this season and then three clear goals you want to achieve in five years. Writing these down means you can’t escape them. Put them somewhere where you can see them.I really believe the harder you work the luckier you get. For me this really happened. I was lucky to have great coaches at Burnside HS and was able to work hard and grow my game. I didn’t make a lot of rep teams when I was growing up and had some disappointments, but after school I kept working hard, kept loving the game, wrote some key goals down and my opportunity came when the right coach saw me play in the right game. The rest is history."

Andy played a total of 135 games for the Crusaders and 28 tests for the All Blacks, debuting against England in 2006. He has also captained the British Barbarians in the last two years. He currently plays for the Kobe Steelers in Japan.