It looks every part the fun filled friendship but there's a serious side to Caleb Clarke and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck's Blues bromance.
Clarke is heading into the 2022 season with no regrets, telling 1News he is determined to put a stressful 2021 behind him.
“If I reflect on last year, I had so many things on,” Clarke said.
“It just felt like my attention was divided.”
After a breakout 2020 which included an All Blacks debut, everyone wanted a piece of the powerhouse wing.
Last year, he was lured away from the Blues and All Blacks to the sevens programme and aimed for Olympic gold but in a surprise move was left out of the squad. He was left to watch the All Blacks Sevens’ campaign from a Tokyo hotel as a travelling reserve.
That commitment saw him miss the Blues’ trans-Tasman championship win before the All Blacks travelled to Europe without him as well.
Clarke compared the series of events to “having a bad hand after bad hand”.
“Even Sean [Wainui] passing away just made things more tough as well,” he said.
The emotional rollercoaster of elite sport is a lot to deal with at just 22, with Clarke now aware that although it feels good when riding those incredible highs, no one is really prepared to come down.
Someone who's been there plenty of times is Tuivasa-Sheck, who Clarke said has taken him under his wing and helped him make changes.
“I put too much expectation on myself and I listened to too many people where I should've just been listening to my small circle and just enjoying the game.”
The pair trained continuously throughout the off-season, resulting in Clarke shedding around five kilos to sit at 104kg, lighter than when he was with the sevens team.
“I got to train with Roger once that picnic rule came out [during lockdown] and they were some hard sessions,” he recalled.
“I cried in one of them - I never cry in a session. He was just laughing at me to be fair.”
Now that he’s in a better place physically and mentally, Clarke is ready to find some new highs when the season starts in around three weeks.
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