James Haskell: A rugby playing introvert?

Tomorrow, the draw for the 2019 Rugby World Cup will be held in Kyoto, Japan. With the Olympics being held in Tokyo the year after, the Rugby World Cup might be lost in the build up to the sporting extravaganza in 2020 but it is still a big event in it's own right and New Zealand should win for the third straight time.

One of the interesting characters of world rugby is the Englishman, James Haskell. I've seen him interviewed a number of times and he comes across very well in my opinion. He obviously loves to talk and he seems to speak very fast but he talks a lot of sense.

In this section of his interview he describes himself as a loner. He likes to do things on his own. He likes to drive on his own, sit on his own. He says that he is not loud and he reckons that he is a terrible room mate because he is always on his computer, or reading or doing things like that. (I don't know why he says that, that makes him a terrible room mate. Surely a room mate is someone who is quiet, keeps to themselves, pays the rent on time and goes about their daily business or is that just an introvert's wet dream?)

The one thing I got out of watching this section of his interview is that appearances can be deceiving.

James Haskell may come across as a talkative rugby playing (as is said in the interview) 'meathead,' but that doesn't appear to be true. He likes to have time to himself. He likes to do things by himself. Maybe this talkative even likeable character only comes out on certain occasions. He might just be the archetypical 'Situational Extrovert' that we have discussed, a number of times on this blog.

Don't judge a book by it's cover, I know is a bit of a cliche but in this circumstance, it is particularly apt.