Aaron Smith is expected to be one of the first names on the sheet for the world cup squad. Photo / Getty
Your All Blacks team will be here to help next week.
It’s a nice gesture that our Rugby World Cup squad will be named in Napier on Monday.
But it’s the detail around that gesture that shows why the All Blacks are Aotearoa’s team.
The All Blacks would have liked everyone in Hawke’s Bay to pack Pettigrew Green Arena on Monday night, for the world cup announcement. Only, logistically, that wasn’t possible.
Instead, attendees have been hand-picked.
From flood victims, to first-responders. Council workers to teachers. Those who have given so much to Hawke’s Bay - as it dealt with and continues to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle - have been specially chosen to fill the arena and meet and greet the men who’ll take the hopes and dreams of a nation to France in September.
But it doesn’t end there.
The All Blacks will do a working bee at Tangoio Marae on Tuesday, before their open training session at McLean Park at 9am on Wednesday. That’s when people are invited to come in their thousands to pass on well wishes to a team who say it is “a real privilege and an honour’' to serve and recognise the flood-affected folk of Hawke’s Bay.
“Under [coach] Ian Foster’s leadership of the All Blacks, he’s been keen every year to go to a community that has experienced some suffering,’’ All Blacks leadership and performance manager Gilbert Enoka said.
“Obviously with the cyclone happening in Napier, we looked to source something we could do that would benefit the community. We spoke to the people from Tangoio Marae and we understood that they were the first to respond in the cyclone and the last to receive help, so it became a very easy decision for us to send an army of black to provide support and help to a community that needs it.’’
The team will be on the tools at Tangoio, removing silt, restoring carvings, digging, cooking and doing whatever it is that the marae needs.
It will be their way of showing the country and the region that all of us are part of their world cup journey.
“We want to give back to the people of Aotearoa, because we represent them and this is an opportunity to get right out into the community and get in touch with people who have been affected by something really, really challenging,’’ said Enoka.
“We feel it’s a real privilege and an honour to be able to do that.’’
Paunovic moved to Havelock North with her family from Croatia seven years ago.