This week former All Black Ron Cribb enters Celebrity Treasure Island as the third and final intruder and will be fighting hard to benefit multiple charities.
Cribb will be championing Stand for Children, a charity with which he has close ties. Both 46-year-old Cribb and brother Gary benefited from thecharity's services as they were growing up.
Cribb is also aiming to win money from challenges and hopefully take out the title - and the $100,000 prize money - for the late, great fellow former All Black Inga Tuigamala's charity. Cribb was set to co-star with Tuigamala on the show before his mate's death earlier this year.
The pair worked and played together on Three's Match Fit so, in a tribute gesture, 50 per cent of money won on CTI will go to Tuigamala's charity ODICE, (Obesity & Diabetes Intervention Champion Evangelist) and Alliance Health Plus.
"Over the past year I became really close with Inga and I signed up for this show with my mate. Losing him was obviously heart-breaking," Cribb tells Spy.
"Representing his charity is an opportunity to honour my mate and his family by tackling the challenges on his behalf, and just a small way to keep his spirit in the game and on the journey with me."
At the show's launch recently, Cribb attended with Stand for Children's Pene Frost, who was excited about Cribb not only raising money for the charity but thrilled about the profile he will bring to what they do and who they help.
"Stand for Children takes in some of New Zealand's most vulnerable children," says Cribb.
Such vulnerability, he says, comes from trauma, abuse or neglect with the charity providing a safe environment for kids – schooling them, showing them what it's like to be loved and cared for, and teaching them that their life does have a purpose.
"I was one of them as a kid and so was my brother, so this was a big opportunity to be representing them."
Spy hears Cribb is a strong player in the game and is bound to make both Tuigamala's charity and his own proud.
