I was up at Kerikeri during Easter, playing tennis in a national seniors tournament, so didn't get to see or hear too much news - apart from watching a couple of Super Rugby games on television with some rather boisterous septuagenarian team mates.
About the only time I turned the radio on, I was somewhat startled to hear the name Peter Rowe mentioned, along with the Barbarians rugby team.
I missed the beginning of the item so my initial thought was that Pete had been selected to play at Twickenham in an end-of-year test there, but I have subsequently found out he will be playing against the Lions in the opening match of the tour in June.
What a great honour for a great player, and especially, team captain.
That got me thinking about the role of a captain before, during, and after a game of rugby.
Personally, I don't recall too many times when I got to make the decisions on the field in my playing days - that role usually went to the best player in the team.
That is not necessarily a good thing, especially at schoolboy level.
As I played with a number of Canterbury and Otago representative players and one All Black, I was well down the pecking order on that criteria.
But the choice of captain is an important one for the team.
An effective captain has a lot of decisions to make during the game and in the case of senior and representative teams, a speech or two to make afterwards as well.
Captains would do well to practice speech making as well as their rugby skills, as anyone who has endured some of these speeches will attest.
There is very little about the team captain mentioned in the Law book.
About the only reference I can find refers to one captain tossing the coin while the other captain calls to see who wins the toss.
The winner of the toss decides whether to kick off or choose the end to defend.
Many captains say they want to receive the kick off but this is not an option - the winner either kicks off or decides which end to defend.
If one of the front row forwards is sinbinned or sent off, the captain has to choose which other player will leave the field so a replacement front-rower can come on in order for scrums to be continued safely.
Unlike in the distant past, when captains were rarely allowed to speak to the referee, skippers these days are usually encouraged by referees to take an active part in managing their players, so that the official is not over-taxed by dealing with the control of the game entirely on his own.
The rugby field can be a lonely place to be for a referee, if a match is threatening to go belly-up as some players lose control of their on-field actions.
Generally, each captain is asked to take responsibility for managing his team on the field and the referee will speak to the captain if he feels a player, or players, are consistently infringing.
Better the captain sort a problem out early, before the referee has to take more drastic action later and escalate the situation.
There is nothing in the Law book that says captains have a right to speak to the referee but most referees are willing to explain their decisions in reply to a polite enquiry from the team leader.
It is part of the triangle of communication which can help steer a tense game through to a fair conclusion.
I say "polite" enquiry because how a captain addresses a referee can have a bearing on the outcome of a game.
Persistent, belligerent questioning of every decision a referee makes is unlikely to lead to a captain getting the benefit of any "50-50" calls during the game.
I well remember being wired up with a NZRU referee assessor to write the match statistics at the 2011 Heartland final between Wanganui and East Coast at Cooks Gardens.
The visiting captain, Rua Tipoki, who played for numerous NPC and Super Rugby teams, kept up a constant commentary on every decision the referee made, as well as moaning about every decision that went against his team.
His leadership, and that of the vice-captain, was so poor that both ended up in the sin-bin, while their leaderless team floundered under the pressure exerted by the local team, captained by Steelie Koro and including Peter Rowe.
In my senior playing days in Central Otago, our team, which contained 1962 All Black No8 Don Clarke and five of the Clarke and Colling brothers who played for Otago, was captained by Dick Haig - a prop who never even made the local Central team let alone Otago.
But he was a wise choice as captain as he always remained calm in a crisis, addressed the referee as "Sir" and enjoyed good relations with numerous referees as our team surged from title to title.
He later became a highly ranked provincial referee himself.
So, as we drove past Toll Stadium in Whangarei the other day while travelling back from a warm and sunny Kerikeri, I reflected on the fact one of Wanganui's best and fairest captains would be running out on to the stadium's field to tackle the visiting Lions in just a few weeks time.
Stay fit Pete, you deserve the honour the selectors have bestowed on you.