Most of us are armchair experts when it comes to rugby, but Opiki farmer Clive Akers really has got the low-down on the finer detail of the sport.
When Mr Akers is not rounding up sheep or beef on his Horowhenua farm, he is pulling together statistics on our nation's favourite game.
He is the chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Museum, co-editor of the Rugby Almanac, and is in Rotorua this weekend to talk about his experience researching Balls, Bullets and Boots: from Rugby Field to Battlefield. The exhibition currently on at the Rotorua Museum tells the story of ordinary rugby players and one female coach and how their lives were impacted by WWI.
"The rugby museum wanted to commemorate the war and we decided to mount an exhibition to show how the war affected ordinary players of the game," he said. "When we chose our 16 subjects we wanted to be as diverse as possible to illustrate that it wasn't just about the men, and that's why we also chose a female coach."
