Two-time Rugby World Cup winner Jerome Kaino has announced he will retire at the end of the northern hemisphere rugby season.
Now playing for Toulouse, who he led to a winner's medal in the 2019 French Top 14 competition, Kaino won World Cup medals in 2011 and 2015 and ended his All Blacks career ranked as one of the finest blindside flankers to have graced the side.
His hard-running, hard-tackling won him a deserved reputation and his has been one position the All Blacks have struggled to fill since his departure, something that is probably the greatest acknowledgement of what he meant to the side.
Kaino is coming back from an injury and has not featured often for the side this season.
Kaino told French media that while his playing contract is up at the end of the season he would like to stay with Stade Toulousain to develop his coaching.
He said he had discussed coaching with the club's manager Ugo Mola and president Didier Lacroix.
"I would be very happy to work with them. Because the club has been amazing for me and my family, and I love my life in France. So if I can stay a few years learning French, I would like to stay," he said.
"I would like to work with Stade Toulousain, for the future of this game. For the players who are just starting out, the new generation, to pass on to them my passion and knowledge and everything I've learned," he said.
And that is plenty after earning 81 New Zealand Test caps during a long career which began when taken on a northern tour as something of an apprentice but then failing to build on that before starting to make his way again from the 2008 season.
He quickly developed as a key member of one of the more effective New Zealand loose forward combinations in partnership with Richie McCaw and Kieran Read.