You could say the kids from Brightwater School, Nelson, "milked" the opportunity to meet Richie McCaw this week.
That's because they built a life-size model of McCaw – known as "Richie Milk-Caw" – entirely out of 600 milk cartons from Fonterra's Milk for Schools programme.
The school were attempting to win the right for McCaw to helicopter in a special milk delivery as part of the high-flying promotion celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme.
They missed out in the first instance but the anniversary and the world's most famous milkman proved so popular, Fonterra extended the competition – allowing a fifth school to join four others to be visited by the hugely popular McCaw. The difference this time was that this was a "people's choice" vote, with the school garnering the most votes over social media winning the extra visit.
Which is where "Richie Milk-Caw" came in.
Brightwater school principal Gerald Baldwin says he does not think he has ever seen a project so galvanise an entire school.
"Richie Milk-Caw was built entirely out of Fonterra milk cartons with a picture of his head on top – but he has working arms, legs and head and the entire school identified with him...to the extent that I think a lot of the juniors actually believed he really was Richie McCaw.
"He went round each and every classroom and classes did different sorts of learning with him. We have photographs of Richie reading a book, playing touch rugby and he even ended up in the swimming pool once but was no worse for the experience."
One class had everyone dress up as Riche McCaw's wife, Gemma, and Richie Milk-Caw's everyday resting place was in a "buddy chair" outside Baldwin's office, where kids would congregate, eating their lunch "and talking to him as if he was real".
"All 300 kids, from five to 11 years old, were involved; they all had a sense of ownership and had talked to their parents about it. So I think so many people locally had heard about Richie Milk-Caw and had seen how their kids were wrapped up in it, that the parents and others found it easy to vote for the school and to attract other people to vote," says Baldwin.
When the post went up on Facebook to vote for the school, it reached 13,574 people. In the end, Brightwater School headed off schools from Auckland, Canterbury and Manawatu: "It really shows the power of social media," says Baldwin. "After all, you could only vote once each."
The real Richie McCaw has made helicopter delivery visits to four schools previously as part of the competition – including Okaihau Primary School, Northland, Kimi Ora Community School in Hawkes Bay, Eltham Primary School in Taranaki and Fairfield School in Dunedin.
"We want Kiwi kids to grow up healthy and strong. That's why we launched Fonterra Milk for Schools, because we believe it will make a lasting difference to the wellbeing of New Zealand's children," says Chris Ward, Fonterra's general manager of community programmes.
"Fonterra Milk for Schools delivers about 20 million servings every year - enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool. Fill 38 more pools – and you have close to the volume of milk delivered by Fonterra to schools since 2002," says Ward.
"It's a huge undertaking and getting bigger every year. Our farmers are passionate about the programme and making sure kids get the nutritional boost they need to perform at their best and get more out of the school day."