Liam Squire's eyes light up and a smile spreads across his face when he thinks about whether it is the physical nature of test football that excites him most.
He knows it is and he presumably knows too that it's his abrasive nature and love of contact that has largely been responsible for getting him this far.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has seen plenty of remarkable athletes in his time. He's seen all sorts of magnificent specimens aspire to be a test loose forward and so few actually make it.
The reason most don't quite make the cut is that they don't have the mentality to impose themselves. Test football has evolved over the years but not so much as that it has lost the essence of itself - it remains a game of impacts and collisions and only the hardest men can thrive.
Squire is proving himself to be an intriguing mix of athleticism and confrontation. He's shown impressive acceleration when he's come off the bench in recent tests and a clarity about what he's there to do.
