Something to build on

"What a day, bro! Twelve hours ... traveling, coaching, traveling, coaching, but it was worth it," sighed Dean Herewini as he settled into a large, cushioned hotel chair and took his first sip of red wine on Thursday evening.

The burly Kiwi and two fellow rugby coaches, Singaporean Ismail Kadir and former New Zealand sevens player Chad Tuoro, had just returned from a journey that took them to two very different schools a fair way from their "home base" of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island.

"The skill level and the enthusiasm at the first school (Pengiran Omar II) was quite high as they have been going at it (rugby) for about four years now. The numbers that turned up was great and it made our jobs a lot easier," said Herewini, a former coach of the Malaysian national team.