11 Years Running All Blacks Rugby: Protests, Earthquakes, and 6 World Cups

Steve Tew was chief executive of New Zealand Rugby from 2008 to 2019, and ran the Crusaders and the Canterbury Rugby Union from 1996 to 2001. He is now Director of High Performance at High Performance Sport New Zealand.

This week, he joins the podcast to talk about a career that started with a box of files inherited from a volunteer and ended up running the organisation behind the All Blacks — and about the decisions in between that he still thinks about.

That includes protesting the 1981 Springbok tour while his own family sat on the other side of it, taking Rugby World Cup matches away from Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake, backing a coach the media wanted gone, and the review that put New Zealand Rugby's own culture under outside scrutiny.

WHAT'S COVERED

• How he ended up in sporting governance

• The 1981 Springbok tour

• Why New Zealand Rugby apologised to players it never selected

• The February 2011 earthquake, and telling a city it had lost its World Cup matches

• How the Crusaders went from last to first in three seasons

• Appointing Wayne Smith, and backing him when the results hadn't arrived

• The Respect and Responsibility Review

• What he looks for when he's assessing people for leadership

• The performance conversation he's never started too early