Doug Laing: Breathless end to a career in rugby

A star in the making or just recycled goods ... reporter Doug Laing is tested in the gym in The Great Magpies Job Swap. At right is team trainer Grant Dearns. Photo / Paul Taylor

The rugby side of The Great Magpies Job Swap appealed to reporter Doug Laing, once an All Black — in his dreams. Yesterday he got the chance to at least get a foot in the door, by putting on the black-and-white jersey of Hawke’s Bay.

By last night I hadn't received the phone call, or the email.

It was thus a safe bet that I won't be on the bench for the Hawke's Bay Magpies' Ranfurly Shield defence against Bay of Plenty at McLean Park, Napier, tomorrow.

But I had prepared for the let-down. I had assumed I would not challenge for the shirt of wing Ryan Tongia, who in TGMJS Part 1 last month spent half a day checking out the jobs of reporter, photographer and advertising sales representative at Hawke's Bay Today.

When Magpies personal development manager and former Magpies and overseas professional player Aayden Clarke asked myself and others who had hosted Magpies on their jobs five weeks ago to grab a jersey I selected No21 - one for the "reserves", as we used to call them. It also resonated - something to do with the age about which I last dreamed of potential greatness in this game of union (a word we can all now use again instead of amalgamation).

As it happened, I didn't get the chance to show off my real skills to "Pottsy" - aah, Magpies coach Craig Philpott - but our small gathering was given a testing day, learning, quite revealingly, that there is much - Much! - more to the life of a professional rugby player in Hawke's Bay than just the 80-minutes of combat on the field every few days.

So revealing that, talking about salary caps and contracting players, Hawke's Bay Rugby Union CEO Mike Bishop looked in my direction suggesting I don't go writing anything down. What could I do? After all, he was my boss, for a few hours, sort of.

From Aayden Clarke talking about players preparing for life outside rugby - "You're only an injury away," it has been said - to sponsorship manager Dan Somerville (who loves dealing with the 180 sponsors), to a session with seasoned team trainer Grant Dearns (now serving a fourth Magpies coach) to Mr Philpott's outline of the boys' week, we probably learned more than any Magpie has ever learned in one day.

It was hard work, and that was before we got to the gym and tried out the climbing apparatus, and something called a Wattbike. They are just two symbols of the way players train, and are prepared and monitored, from extensive fitness regimes, precise match performance analysis using GPS tracking, to what's going on in their minds and lives, to what shouldn't be going on in the pee bottle.

It is more than a 40-hour week, with, normally, one day off. Probably not the job for me, as my short stint on the Wattbike soon established.

Dan Somerville's job sounded pretty cool, and in some ways so did the roles of Mike Bishop and Aayden Clarke, who says some job offers for players have emerged from the unique swap. I look at the week's schedule and tell Pottsy his job's safe.

I wouldn't want it - there's no day off, and, without apparent concern, he says he hasn't had one since March.