PHOTO: DAVID GRAY/REUTERS – ADOBESTOCK.COM
UP THE L AST
Creating a
legacy Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club dual general manager and course superintendent (and rugby union diehard) Leo Barber draws inspiration from one of the world’s most successful sporting institutions to discuss leadership, decision-making, self-mastery and legacy.
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ike many young kids growing up in New Zealand, I was born with an aspiration to one day pull on the black jersey of our national rugby team, the All Blacks, and represent my country. The sport of rugby in New Zealand is more akin to a religion, much like AFL and NRL to those of you on the western side of the Ditch, and it’s almost with an inbuilt predisposition that Kiwis enter this world ready to worship. I played the game all through my youth and into my early adult years and upon hanging up the boots with the realisation that the ultimate status of becoming an All Black was unfulfilled (like most I hadn’t even come close), my love for the game, as with many fellow New Zealanders, has never waned. For a small country of just five million situated in relative isolation at the bottom of the world, New Zealand has always prided itself in punching well above its weight on the global scene in all manner of disciplines, but it has been the All Blacks that have dominated the world of rugby for well over a century and, in
