Brendon McCullum Embraces Rugby Roots

Brendon McCullum’s former rugby coach and mentor at Kings High School, Darryl Paterson, reveals the ‘incredible self-belief’ the England cricket coach showed as a six-hitting, hard-partying youngster, Ali Martin reports for The Guardian.

From a working-class family in Dunedin, the son of Otago cricketer Stuart McCullum, he was clearly a rugby player of some promise. An ebullient captain of the first XV at King’s, McCullum was even selected ahead of Dan Carter at fly-half for the South Island Secondary Schools side aged 18, Martin writes.

“He would take risks because he was so confident,” Paterson says. “Most days they came off, some days they didn’t, but that was fine. And you can see that now with the way he has this England cricket team playing.”

“As captain of our rugby team, he had the whole changing room looking up to him because he would just repeatedly tell them how good they were.”

Original article by Ali Martin, The Guardian, February 15, 2023.