The Nugget: David Caldwell

Everyone knows the saying, “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Less known is that mad keen sports lover David Caldwell probably wrote it.

He’s general manager of All Blacks Tours, the official travel partner of NZ Rugby.

Great footy, great company and everything taken care of sounds pretty awesome. And it clearly is. 25,000 people have booked with All Blacks Tours over the last seven years.

To lead tours, David says you’ve got to be equal parts Camp Mother, cat herder, and whip cracker. And always be prepared. Like when the weather changed from a balmy 25 degrees to a brass-monkey’s -2 on game day against the USA in Chicago, surprising the mostly shorts’ wearing Kiwis. “Group hugs saved the day.”

Any rules for a successful tour? Be a good bugger, don’t end up in jail and you’ll make some lifelong friends. Sounds fair, although two clients who finished the tour not with the people they started with, arguably took the last concept and ran with it.

David’s always loved sport and, it seems, getting injured.

He played semi-professional footy in America; and represented NZ in indoor cricket at three World Cups. The toll? Four knee operations, three broken noses and a broken collar bone.

David reckons the pain was nothing compared to losing to Australia in the final though. Three times. Salt was further rubbed into the wound when he got bowled by his best Aussie mate (not an oxymoron) in consecutive balls. “You don’t know pressure until you’ve faced a hat-trick ball when you were also the first two wickets!”

From the game to the after-match, David loves our gear, including these just-arrived sneakers (The Daltrey $230 or 2 for $333), Selvedge jeans ($120), tailored-fit shirt (The Heron $120 or 3 for $300), and brown leather belt ($60 or 3 accessories for $150).

Outside of sport for work and sport for play, he loves spending time with his three sons…playing sport. The oldest is a professional skydiver, recently helping David complete his first jump. Was he scared? Maybe a little when he saw his lad already out on the wing egging him on. Mind you his son knew that if there was any funny business, he’d be sent to his room and grounded for a month.

The man who lives for sport was also a good one when it came to our questions. David answered them faster than anyone we’ve ever featured.

Funny that.