34 Facts About Anton Oliver

Anton David Oliver was born on 9 September 1975 and is a retired New Zealand rugby union player.

Anton Oliver earned 59 caps for his country and for a period was All Blacks captain.

Anton Oliver represented NZ Secondary schools and 19s in 1993 – captaining both teams.

Anton Oliver then went to Dunedin in 1994 to study at the University of Otago and ended up spending his next 14 years there.

Anton Oliver made his debut for the Otago first team in 1994 and played for Otago for 13 years.

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Anton Oliver played for the Highlanders rugby team and held the record for the most games for the Highlanders at 127.

Anton Oliver completed degrees in Commerce and Physical Education while being a full professional rugby player.

Anton's father Frank Oliver was an All Blacks captain, making them the first and only father-son All Black captains in history.

Anton Oliver first made the All Blacks as a reserve for a Bledisloe cup test match in 1995 aged 19.

Anton Oliver played his first game for the All Blacks the following year against Eastern Province in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Anton Oliver created the first father and son captain combination for the All Blacks when he was appointed as All Blacks captain in 2001.

Father Frank Anton Oliver captained the All Blacks in 1978 and was one of the hardmen of New Zealand rugby.

Anton Oliver then ruptured his Achilles tendon at the end of the Super 12 season in 2002, which forced him to miss the entire All Black season.

Anton Oliver then made the All Blacks the following year, Reuben Thorne was now the captain.

In May 2007, Anton Oliver signed a two-year contract to play with French rugby club Toulon after the completion of the Rugby World Cup.

Anton Oliver joined up with legends of the world rugby game, including Springbok Victor Matfield, former Wallaby Captain George Gregan, former All Black Andrew Mehrtens and former All Black captain Tana Umaga.

Anton Oliver helped Toulon win the Pro D2 title and earn automatic promotion to the following season's Top 14.

Anton Oliver then decided to leave Toulon after only one year and announced his retirement from professional rugby, heading to the University of Oxford to study for a postgraduate degree.

At the University of Oxford, Anton Oliver read for an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at Worcester College.

Anton Oliver's dissertation involved him travelling to the Ringgolds Islands, an outlying archipelago of Fiji, for a month of research on the relationship between poverty and conservation.

Anton Oliver played a major role in the 2008 Varsity Match against Cambridge, the first victory for Oxford in four years.

Anton Oliver then spent the next three years living and working in London.

Anton Oliver's dissertation focused on leadership in business, specifically sense making and sense giving: how leaders make sense of an uncertain, chaotic economic environment and then how leaders communicate and 'make sense' of this information to different stake holders.

Anton Oliver is known as a modern NZ renaissance man because of his rare interest and involvement in sport, academia, the arts, and various environmental, social and political issues.

Anton Oliver is a well known supporter of the arts and has friends with several prominent NZ poets, writers and painters.

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Anton Oliver posed nude for a Simon Richardson realist painting that challenged cultural and sporting stereotypes, although he had not intended for it to become public knowledge that he was the artist's model.

In 2013 Anton Oliver toured NZ with the NZ Symphony Orchestra narrating Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf'.

In tandem with the tour Anton Oliver went to several schools advocating to students the role of the arts in their lives – specifically the role the arts can have in finding one's authentic self and as a medium for a greater emotional engagement with oneself.

Anton Oliver was a member of Save Central and an outspoken critic against Meridian Energy's Project Hayes, a planned new 630MW windfarm.

Anton Oliver has written on environmental issues for the literary journal Landfall.

Anton Oliver was Marlborough Boys' College's sportsman of the decade, has been inducted into the University of Otago's Hall of Fame.

Anton Oliver has written an autobiography called 'Inside' and presented three television non-fiction documentaries.

Anton Oliver is patron and ambassador for several environmental and child health charities, including patron to the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust and patron to Generation Zero, a youth-led organisation focused on minimising climate change.

Anton Oliver is an Ambassador for Cure Kids, a charity that funds research into finding cures for life-threatening illnesses that affect children, and an Ambassador for the Shackleton Foundation, which supports budding leaders and social entrepreneurs with inspirational projects that have the power to make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged and socially marginalised young people.