Marcus Agnew
Steve "Shag" Hansen is usually pretty quick to remind any of the Super Rugby franchises about the expected standards of a professional rugby player, and how players do so well when they come into the fabled All Black "environment".
It will now be interesting to see how he handles the Aaron Smith saga.
We often hear what an amazing culture and environment they have in the All Blacks, and the coaching and management group have kudos lauded upon them for their ability to develop great people and great performances out of some athletes that otherwise flounder at a Super Rugby level.
But do Shag and the All Blacks management really deserve all the credit?
What we don't often hear is that the great All Black environment partly takes care of itself.
There is a kind of natural selection, and the All Black environment will always tend to be better than other teams - better because the top performers in any field will typically have better discipline and work ethic, so are less likely to go off the rails.
Furthermore once they reach the top of their field, they are surrounded by greater numbers of high quality people.
Also, the stakes are high in the All Black environment - the fame and fortune is there, and the pathway to even greater career offerings abroad is a massive carrot. Therefore the boys are less likely to step out of line due to the high rewards that come with the black jersey, and if you do slip up, it's a long way to fall - just ask Zac.
Another massive advantage the All Blacks have is the unparalleled level of internal competition that exists for positions in the team. Not only does this avoid complacency and therefore result in consistently high standards on the field, but also high standards off the field - again, assisting the All Black management to maintain good behaviour within the group.
So yes the great culture they have has a lot to do with the All Black management group, but it is definitely also a by-product of simply being the team at the top of the tree in New Zealand rugby's pathway.
The pathway itself is an impressive one, and progresses through the NZ junior rep teams, provincial unions, the Super Rugby teams, and on to the All Blacks.
But of all those teams, big Shag holds the biggest stick, he decides who makes the top team and who doesn't, and so in terms of maintaining standards around the group, he has a massive advantage over all the other coaches in our rugby system.
But here we are now with the Aaron Smith debacle, and just briefly Shag will be in the less comfortable position of having to talk about the poor behaviour of one of his own stock, from his great All Black environment.
Especially uncomfortable given the nature of the transgression - probably not something Shag wants to get too philosophically involved in, discussing why Aaron would perform such an act, blatantly in his All Black uniform, apparently on a fairly busy Sunday afternoon at an airport with fans and kids wandering around everywhere.
Shag did put out a quote yesterday, really getting on the front foot - he said "Aaron is bitterly disappointed in his behaviour and feels he has let the team down but just as importantly he feels bitterly disappointed in letting his family and his partner down" ... wow letting his partner down is as important as letting his team down!
I guess that is how to professionally manage the media situation, get out with a quick statement, one which invokes memories of his great "flush the dunny and move on" quote that he so eloquently delivered a few years back.
Incidentally this transgression has come from a player that would be among the most comfortable and assured of his position in the team, and so didn't have that natural fear of coach Shag.
So it will be interesting to see how Shag and the management handle this one, I imagine after all their talk about what a great environment they have, that they will take this act of arrogance as a bit of a personal insult.
They say it takes a long time to build your reputation, but you can blow it in an instant.
Incidents like this show we still have a long way to progress, in terms of developing a sense of responsibility in some young athletes.
Usually Shag can run a tight ship due to the big stick that comes with being the All Black coach, but instilling deeper and more reliable values is a harder challenge, and one that starts with quality youth programmes.
Programmes that develop value-based behaviours not just motivated by fear or reward, but driven by fun, and doing the right thing.
Marcus Agnew is the Sports Performance Development Manager at AUT Millennium Hawke's Bay and is also a lecturer in sports science at EIT.