I was fortunate enough to be recruited last year as the manager of the Australian Sevens team for tours to Hong Kong, London, Edinburgh and Adelaide. With 20-some years of rugby and touring experience under my belt I thought I was pretty well equipped to handle the job, but it was still a steep learning curve.

(By the way my apologies to all the old hands on the circuit who had to put up with me – Duke, Sticks, Billy, Rosco, Pete…..you know who you are).

Anyway, one of the biggest days on the calendar was the day after a tournament had ended. Sevens tournaments are exhausting stuff, because unlike a fifteens game, you might play your first game at 10am and your last at 7pm, which means 9 hours of varying levels of activity, plus another two hours on each end of the day to get up, eat, and get to and from the stadium to the hotel.

You do this for two fourteen hour days on Saturday and Sunday, and then get up at the crack of dawn on the Monday to head to your next destination.

Lucky for me, I had a bloke alongside me the whole way who knew exactly what was going on – the captain and Sevens legend Shawn Mackay. On Mondays, where everyone was tired and grumpy, Macca made it his business to keep the vibe up.

The term for pulling energy away from the team was “sapping”. Being called a “sapper” was the biggest insult you could receive on tour, since what it meant was that you were bringing everyone around you down. Travel days were tough though – and most of us did a bit of sapping on those days, as we were just tired and wanted to get to where we were going.

But not Macca.

He never sapped, he just cruised around with a big grin on his dial. Patting blokes on the back, lifting everyone up, and pouring out the positives.

One of my favourite memories is Macca at Glasgow airport, grinning and holding court as the reigning champion at “Guess Who?”. (For the uninitiated, “Guess Who” is a children’s face-guessing and memory game which was a popular way of passing time at the departure gate).

The biggest lesson I ever learnt about people management was from Macca at the airport in Hong Kong en route to Adelaide.

There were a couple of mild hangovers about, lots of bumps and bruises and plenty of general match fatigue. As manager it was my job to collect the passports, do the ticketing, see to the oversize baggage, make sure that everyone’s bags made it on the plane and also deal with the excess baggage charges.

I was a bit irritable, and wasn’t afraid to let a few people know it, until Macca cruised up and said (with his big smile on his face) “Loges, just chill out bruz. It’s your job to keep the vibe positive”. And he was dead right. I was embarrassed for being such a sapper.

The best thing I could do of course, was not focus on my own problems, but work on keeping the vibe positive for everyone else, just like Macca was doing.

From then on I concentrated on trying to out-positive Macca. Of course, it was an impossible task, but it really worked. The power of positive thinking was Macca’s stock in trade, and he knew what he was talking about.

Unfortunately, the big Mac’s reservoir of positive thinking will be sorely tested after he was hit early on Tuesday morning by an speeding armoured security van in Durban whilst on tour with the Brumbies. Although his injuries are known, the effects of them won’t be truly understood for several days.

It’s a rotten blow for a guy who has been not only relentlessly positive about his approach to rugby, but just as relentless in his chase for a Super 14 start.

At Sevens level, Macca was renowned for two things, aside from his positive approach. One was his commitment to games. He has a huge engine beating in that chest, and there were several times in Sevens tournaments where he would come off hurting so much that he simply had to lie down until the pain went away. Of course, he’d be back on his feet and repeating the effort two hours later.

He had huge respect in the Sevens community, because players from other countries knew that Macca wouldn’t quit. Ever.

The other thing you could guarantee was that if Macca had any sort of a niggle, he’d stop at nothing to get it right. The team might be signing autographs and chatting up chicks around the fences post tournament, but Macca would wave them goodbye with a cheery smile and head off to his room to watch a movie cuddled up to a big old bag of ice.

He had a Michaelangelo chassis with not an ounce of fat on it – testament to his training regime and dietary discipline.

He knew that his dreams weren’t going to be fulfilled by compromising his approach to rugby. Indeed, Andrew Fagan, the Brumbies CEO, told me this morning that Macca had pretty much forced his way into the match day 22 on the back of his relentlessly upbeat approach to training.

So I was surprised to hear that his accident took place at 4am, because it was unlike Macca to be out at that hour anyway, and if he was, it was even less likely that he would have had anything much to drink.

But then I did some sums and some thinking, and realized that not every tour incident is bad behavior. Some of them are just downright, rotten misfortune. This was just an accident of timing.

For an evening match, you run out at 7.30pm. The game doesn’t finish until nearly 9.30, and immediately afterward you have a coordinated recovery session with ice etc followed by shower, dress and on the bus, by which time it is probably 10.30 at least.

Thirty minutes to the hotel and another thirty to have a team meeting and get changed. By the time those who are not doing injury rehab go out, they are dead sober and it is already midnight and they haven’t even been anywhere yet.

Remember here, we’re talking here about young men, who have spent the last two weeks with every minute accounted for. They have a full day off the next day with no training. The Brumbies had organized a secured hotel bus to pick them up from the club en masse at a predetermined series of times. And after two weeks of training/meetings/eating/rehab, everyone needs to let their hair down, or go they’ll go crazy cooped up in a hotel for yet another night. A few hours in contact with the punters at a club is not too much to ask.

No-one reports any skylarking or fooling around. Not the Brumbies, nor the police, nor the club staff who were first on the scene at the accident.

Shawn was simply, and horribly, struck by a speeding armoured security response vehicle whilst crossing the road. The car, which was en route to a security alarm, initially left the scene before returning some ten minutes later.

As I said, it’s rotten luck for a guy who has driven himself so hard to get to where he is today. Andy Friend recruited Macca after watching him run himself into the ground in Edinburgh at the Sevens last year. Macca repaid the faith by training the house down at the Brumbies and forcing his way into the squad.

He’ll need every ounce of that same determination to fight back from his horrific injuries, but if anyone can do it, it will be Macca.

He’s everyone’s mate, and probably the most relentless and upbeat guy I have known. I have no doubt that when he wakes up in a few days time, he’ll smile up from that hospital bed and say “I’ll be OK. You just gotta be positive”.

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