It says a lot that when Roderick Solo was trying to crack the All Blacks sevens, his parents listened in on one of his phone calls to coach Clark Laidlaw.
“He could’ve given me the heads up, I could’ve said anything,” Laidlaw tells 1News, laughing.
“It was out of my comfort zone to call him,” Solo admits.
That was a little over a year ago.
Solo, now 21-years-old, had called Laidlaw out of the blue, asking what he could do to try and crack the team.
Laidlaw invited him to camp in Tauranga for two weeks, to see what he had.
“I remember one day before training I said I wanted him to express himself and enjoy himself more,” says Laidlaw.
“The next day in training he was like a different player… He scored two tries out of nothing.
“We sort of knew he could do it, but once you see him do it against us you know he can do it against anyone else.
“We offered him a contract the day after.”
Fast forward a year and Solo is a sevens sensation, taking the game by storm in Hamilton last month, and then again in Sydney.
What hasn’t changed is his motivation – remember the parents listening in on that call?
“My why is being able to play for my parents,” Solo tells 1News ahead of the team’s departure for their next World Series stop in Los Angeles.
“They’ve sacrificed a lot… Leaving their home, their parents to come and find a future for their kids.”
The family moved from Samoa to Wellington when Solo was four.
There he grew up with athletics and rugby, playing for Scots College and Oriental Rongotai Rugby Club – the same as All Blacks star Ardie Savea, who he played with.
“I was still like starstruck, like a kid coming from school,” Solo says.
“What I learnt is that even if you’ve reached the highest of your playing career, you can always come back where you started your rugby as well.”
Having been on New Zealand Rugby’s radar from the age of 15, there have long been hints of what Solo could become.
But there have been hard times too, injuries hampering his early years, including an ACL injury soon out of college.
That meant he missed national development camps, ultimately resulting in the fateful call to Laidlaw.
You could say the rest is history, but you get the feeling there’s much more to come from Solo in the future.
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