Sir Graham Henry has the best win record in All Blacks history - but there was a moment in the early stages when he almost walked away from it all.

In 2001, as the highest-paid rugby coach in the world, he lost a Lions series he expected to win. He hit a wall, resigned, and moved back to New Zealand. Six months later he took a job as a provincial assistant coach.

He went from making $1 million a year to $25,000 a year.

What he worked out in between is what he used to lead the All Blacks to win the 2011 World Cup: it isn't about you.

I talk to him about ambition that survives public failure, the night in Johannesburg that triggered the biggest culture change in All Blacks history, why players take criticism from teammates they'd never take from management — and the question he's still turning over at eighty, about whether he should have been kinder to the men he won with.

WHAT'S COVERED

· The defeat that ended one career and started another

· Why exercise was the first thing he reached for, and what it did

· Going from head coach to assistant, and what surprised him about it

· The difference between culture as a values statement and culture as a set of behaviours

· Humble and hungry — and why the players wrote it, not the coach

· Mentoring pairs: how a new All Black became world class in 18 months

· What he learned coaching the Black Ferns that he wishes he'd known earlier

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends .

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read. You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience. It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For two years, the same question repeated in Sam Dakin's head a thousand times a day. He had no idea what was happening to him.

Turns out, Sam — who was training for the Olympics at the time — was suffering from OCD. Not the light-switch, hand-washing version most people picture, but the intrusive-thought kind that loops in your head all day and won't let go.

It wasn’t until he found a Reddit thread talking about the phenomenon that he finally started to understand what was going on. The relief was extraordinary.

He’s spent the years since talking about it openly, because almost nobody does.

Sam is a double Olympian and Commonwealth Games team sprint bronze medallist who retired after Glasgow this year — while he was still fast, and while he still loved the bike. We get into what nerves are actually for, why a gold medal is worth nothing without the four years behind it, what it takes to do the job nobody assigned you, and how to walk away from something before you start to hate it.

WHAT'S COVERED

— What an intrusive thought actually is, and how it differs from the OCD everyone thinks they know

— Why the relief came from being diagnosed, not from being cured

— Why nerves only ever turn up when something matters

— The difference between athletes who deliver on the day and the ones who don't

— “Depth of medal”: why the podium was never the thing being chased

— Changing how athletes are paid in New Zealand

— Doing the work nobody asked you to do

— Retiring before the love ran out

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A thousand miles down the Yukon River, from Canada into Alaska and up to the Arctic Circle. It’s the definition of remote — more people have been to the top of Everest than have been past Dawson City. No support boat, no resupply, no road, and no rescue worth the name.

Get it wrong out there and you're days from help, not hours.

The Yukon 1000 is the longest paddling race in the world, and Jon Frith is the man who decides who is allowed to start it.

More than 1,500 teams apply. Just 30 make the start line. They paddle 18 hours a day, sleep for three and once they're out past Dawson City, they're on their own.

Jon spent 32 years in the British Army. Competed in the Yukon 1000 because he’s passionate about pushing himself. Now he runs the whole thing.

In this conversation he tells me about his extraordinary life before he found the event. Why the Yukon 1000 has no prize money. What happened the first time he saw the river. And why, while thousands of miles away, he can’t stop thinking about what might just be around the next bend.

Find out more about the race (and get your application in? You know you want to) at yukon1000.org.

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at hungerandheart.com.

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

William Trubridge is one of the greatest freedivers of all time. He’s set 18 world records. Won six world championship titles. In 2016 he became the first person to reach 102 metres on a single breath with no fins and no rope.

In 2019 he crossed Cook Strait entirely underwater, in a series of 934 breath holds over nine hours and fifteen minutes, to draw attention to New Zealand's critically endangered Hector's and Māui dolphins.

When you’re 100 metres underwater, panic burns the oxygen you need to get home. So he’s spent decades building a system for not panicking — and it turns out the system works in a queue, in traffic, and in the conversation you're dreading.

WHAT'S COVERED

- Sailing the Pacific as a toddler — a boat was home until he was ten

- The poem he wrote on an Auckland dance floor a year before he'd heard of freediving

- Two failed world record attempts — and the word that made all the difference for the third

- Risk vs stakes — and why refusing every dangerous thing is itself massively risky

- What actually happened at 127 metres, and why his lungs stayed dry

- The mental immune system

- Why the muscles you breathe with decide how you feel

- Nine hours underwater across Cook Strait

FIND WILLIAM Website: https://www.williamtrubridge.com/ Instagram: @‌willtrubridge — https://www.instagram.com/willtrubridge/

The Rebellion — his work teaching the mental immune system: https://www.rebellionimpactgroup.com/

The Mental Immune System programme: https://mentalimmunesystem.com/

MORE FROM WILLIAM

Oxygen: A Memoir — https://www.williamtrubridge.com/post/oxygen-a-memoir-by-william-trubridge

Breathe (2011) — the documentary following his attempt to become the first person to reach 300 feet on a single breath, no fins: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103163/

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 17, Gráinne Moss swam the English Channel — the first Irish woman ever to do it. At 56, she became the 45th person on Earth to complete the Oceans Seven, the seven hardest channel swims in the world.

This conversation is about the 39 years in between.

We talk about the two failed attempts at the same stretch of water between Ireland and Scotland — one she was elated by, one that broke her.

About being stung head to foot by jellyfish and somehow swimming on for seven more hours.

About looking back at the White Cliffs of Dover three hours into the Channel — and her utter despair at realising she'd barely moved.

About finishing her first channel crossing at 17 with nobody there to meet her.

And about carrying everything she’s learned from ultramarathon swimming — the grit, the resilience, the purpose — into one of the hardest jobs in the New Zealand public service.

WHAT'S COVERED:

- The three hours that nearly ended her English Channel swim

- Being obliterated by a shoal of jellyfish — and why she got out of the water happy

- How you keep going when you can't see any progress at all

- What a good coach actually does

- Night swimming, box jellyfish and the Channel of Bones

- Leading Oranga Tamariki — where she put her focus, and why she says you have to know your own reasons before you take a job like that

ABOUT GRÁINNE

Gráinne Moss (née Gunn) grew up in Bangor, County Down, and started swimming in an unheated saltwater pool fed by the sea. She swam the English Channel in 1987 in 11 hours 52 minutes, aged 17, becoming the first Irish woman to do it. She moved to New Zealand in 1998 and swam the Cook Strait in 2001, and completed the Oceans Seven in June 2026 with the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan — the longest span between first and final swim in the challenge's history. She is Chief Executive and Secretary for Regulation at the Ministry for Regulation, and was Chief Executive of Oranga Tamariki from 2016 to 2021.

Visit Gráinne's blog https://grainnemoss.com/ for detailed accounts of her swims and follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/swimirishkiwi/.

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Sorenson won two world championships by the age of seventeen. But at twenty, despite playing the best tournament of his life, his team lost the final. That heartbreak led to an insight: it doesn’t matter how spectacular you are if you can’t make the people around you better as well.

Mark is one of only two New Zealanders to win world softball titles as both a player and a coach — four golds with the Black Sox, including the only three-peat in the history of the men's game, then World Coach of the Year after taking them back to gold in 2017.

This conversation is almost none of that. It's about what happened in between: the years he tried to lift his team by policing them, and the shift that finally made them follow.

We talk:

- The difference between having the title and having people follow you

- Why Mark told his own daughter she would never win a trophy while he was coaching

- How to hold high standards without humiliating anyone

- Being liked versus respected

- The honesty gap between team spirit and high performance culture

- Why rules without reason carry less weight

- When delegating a hard conversation is the strongest thing a leader can do

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A huge thanks to Celebrity Speakers for supporting this episode. If you want to book Mark Sorenson for a keynote and leave your audience hungry for more, visit celebrityspeakers.co.nz

Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike ‘Crono’ Cron spent 15 years with the All Blacks — more than 200 tests, two World Cups, and a reputation as the best scrum coach in the game.

In this conversation he breaks down how he actually does it:

Why he shows a photograph of cyclists shoving cigarettes in each other's mouths to every team he works with. How he used the Royal New Zealand Ballet to transform the All Blacks lineout. The three “big rocks” of coaching: systems, skills, and decisions.

We also get into why "what did you hear" is a safer question than "what did I say". Why a team that goes slack the moment you turn your back is a sales problem, not a character problem. And the line he uses when he knows his comment is going to hurt — it’s a master class on feedback.

For more about Crono: https://www.mikecroncoaching.co.nz/

Mike’s book: ‘Coach’ https://www.harpercollins.co.nz/9781775542650/coach/

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.