Impishly gifted. All Black coaches and others always had to be on high alert when Andrew Mehrtens was present.
He had been a childhood menace, once pulling a chair out from underneath his father which left him needing surgery to repair a shoulder injury.
He changed his pin number to 1215 after the excruciating extra-time World Cup final loss in 1995 and then biffed the code after the blowout four years later.
Mehrtens rarely let rugby dominate his life, it was a priority and so was life around it. He could socialize and his sporting gifts extended to tennis, squash and golf.
When the All Blacks played the Springboks at golf on the '96 tour, the NZ media were invited. Mehrtens and I competed against the Springbok duo of Pieter de Villiers and Ollie Le Roux. Mehrtens was not well and despite feeling nauseous, hit the ball with all the fluency of his better goalkicking days while keeping us entertained with a stack of anecdotes.