Hard-man displays his charitable side

Colin Meads on the IHC Pinetree Farm in Te Kuiti he helped establish with residents Andrew Sirl (left) and Hemi Winikerei. Picture / Amos Chapple

Sports stars need to donate their time to charity rather than cash, says rugby great Colin "Pinetree" Meads.

"In the professional era, they don't want to be involved unless they're gonna be paid," says Meads, a staunch supporter of the IHC for 30 years since he hung up his boots in 1975.

"A lot of the modern players are very wealthy boys and they'd rather give, say, $50, and say 'that's my donation for the year'.

"It's good, but it's not the real answer. The answer is ... to become involved in a more non-monetary, meaningful way."

In the midst of IHC Appeal week, Meads, 69, is sitting in the airy living room of Pinetree Farm, the Te Kuiti home for intellectually disabled adults that his post-All Blacks speaking engagements bought in 1988.

On the couch are two of the 4.5ha farm's five residents, Andrew Sirl, 35, and Hemi Winikerei, 24. To the friendly pair, whose communication skills are limited, Meads is the man with the tufty brows and dodgy knees who demonstrates farming tasks and takes them to his nearby 89ha sheep stud to chop firewood.

To the IHC, Meads is far more than a rugby legend: in his 20 years driving the organisation's Calf Scheme, the sale of more than 700,000 donated calves has raised over $14 million.

The self-effacing Meads reckons he does less than he used to for IHC (he is a former King Country branch president and former chairman of the national fundraising committee).

He got involved not because there was a disability in his family, a motivator for many, but because he was asked by "an attractive woman - well, a persuasive woman!"

From his involvement he gets "satisfaction, I suppose - I don't know. I've had everything good in life and [there comes a time] to give something to others". Pleasure comes from seeing the intellectually disabled achieve.

Meads admits he was once a school kid who taunted slower classmates. "Anyone who was a slow learner at school always got rubbished. I've thought about it and I suppose I've become an advocate for those who struggled."

From them he has learned "tolerance. I learned how to handle people - to talk to them - to put yourself at their level." Meads measures his words just as he must measure his pace these days, but during the conversation, often refers to himself in the third person.

Asked if he realises he's making himself an abstraction, he roars with laughter. "Well, he is!" he says. "You don't like to talk about yourself."

When I suggest that his generation is so modest, the eyebrows gather in a frown. "The problem with the modern generation is they're not modest enough. I don't mean that critically, it's just the times."

At the Mystery Creek Fieldays this June, Meads will auction a day with Colin Meads to benefit IHC, and hopes for grossly immodest bids. "The price won't be high enough, whatever it is," he growls.

* IHC's national appeal week runs until Tuesday February 21.