Nestled up the Porirua Valley on the north east arterial route out of Wellington, a city at the southern tip of New Zealand's north Island is the brand new state of the art rugby university, the International Rugby Academy. 

Founded by former AllBlack number 8 Murray Mexted in 2001, and initially based in Palmerston North, it is a high performance educational training and development academy for players and coaches and on the show today is its managing director, Wayne Taylor.

Hailing from a province further  up that route, the Wairarapa Bush, Wayne shares his journey from hockey, discussing his early experiences and how he ended up transitioning to the sport of rugby and being influenced by his time in the New Zealand Army where he built a skill set and a high performance mindset ideally suited for the sport of rugby.

Once an age group player for the Manawatu province, Wayne is now an extensively travelled, experienced Coach having been involved with several super rugby franchises and been immersed in different cultures and team environments in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Japan. 

Passionate about IRANZ and his role within the organization Wayne explains the importance of living with a learners mindset, which, when influenced by the right people and nurtured within the right environment can become a high performance mindset that when combined with the values that team sport can instill in young athletes is a transformative experience both on and off the field.

By using questions to probe and challenge and by putting communication and the nuanced use of positive language and coaching techniques first, Wayne describes the development of a unique style that is the lived culture for anyone coming to the IRANZ campus to attend any one of it's numerous full immersion courses.

Its obvious that Wayne cares, but also that in a high performance environment the expectations are high. 

In this episode we learn about how he won this hard earned experience and was able to develop and share a unique philosophy and perspective to live by.

For more information about IRANZ you can go to

https://www.iranz.co.nz/

For up-coming IRANZ courses in the USA you can sign up here

https://online.fliphtml5.com/xrpeo/zgjr/

For sign up on the NARA platform go here

https://www.nararugby.com/

and to contact Wayne Taylor you can connect with him on LinkedIn at 

Wayne Taylor, Managing Director IRANZ

or through the IRANZ website