Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Darren Burgess

Jennelle McMaster: Hi. Welcome back to season four of Change Happens. I'm Jennelle McMaster and this is a podcast exploring leadership through key moments of change. And in speaking with leaders over the course of this podcast, it's clear that they almost always have somewhere in there a story arc that required a call to adventure or a call to action, a crossing of some sort of threshold or the encountering of some messy bits, and finally, some sort of insight and enlightenment. So, in this season of Change Happens, I am focusing more closely on my guests’ critical moments and I'm seeking to understand how they cross the threshold and discovered what it was that they learned along the way. So with that, I could not be more delighted to be kicking this season off with Darren Burgess. Actually, it's Dr. Darren Burgess, a name that will be immediately recognizable to most people with an interest in sports or high performance. His is a name that is well and truly synonymous with elite high performance. Working with the likes of Luis Suarez and Alexis Sanchez. With more than 20 years’ experience as a performance coach in one of the country's, if not the world's, leading sports innovators.

Jennelle McMaster: Darren has worked in both Australia and the UK in top-flight sporting organizations, including director of high performance at Arsenal Football Club, head of Sports Science of Football Federation Australia, which included the period that the socceroos made it to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and head of Fitness and Conditioning at Liverpool Football Club. In his two years as high-performance manager with Melbourne FC, Darren helped his team, the Melbourne Demons, win the AFL Grand Final in September 2021, ending the league's longest winning drought of over five decades. He currently heads up the performance team for the Adelaide Crows. With decades of performance insight and experience and a PhD to his name, Darren has had multiple papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has spoken at many, many industry conferences. And just when you thought that he couldn't possibly hit any higher or more dizzying heights of success, he also lays claim to the title of my best mate. So, yep, they have it. Full disclosure, Darren and I have been besties for around 30 years. So it's both an honor and a little bit weird. Not going to lie to be interviewing Darren today. BoJo.

Jennelle McMaster: Welcome.

Darren Burgess: Welcome. Nellie, how are you? Thanks.

Jennelle McMaster: Did you organize that tooting, in the background?

Darren Burgess: Most unbelievable timing.

Jennelle McMaster: Now, do you think it would be fair for me to summarize one of the characteristics of our friendship as being one where you always gloss over the big things that happen in your life forever reticent to give me any kind of details, and where I am relentless in trying to get more details out of you?

Darren Burgess: Yeah, it's fair to say that you love to explore the minutiae of any sort of scenario and I'm kind of keen just to gloss over it. That would be a fair comment.

Jennelle McMaster: Okay? So gloss over it we shan’t. Consider this a public intervention where I'm going to now try to on the record here, try to my best to get you to open up around your story, which I know that there is some bias here, but I think yours is a life that's been an incredible one. You've lived many lives in your time and I'm really keen to unpack at least one part of that. Now when I asked you ahead of this recording what would be that critical time in your life that we'd want to focus the conversation on? You “uhmed” you didn't even get to an “ah”. You “uhmed” for what felt like a nanosecond and then you said Liverpool FC. What was it about that experience with Liverpool that made you immediately go to that as that seminal moment of change for you?

Darren Burgess: It was a combination of things I've that I'd written 94 letters to English professional football clubs from the First Division to the Fourth Division when I was when I just graduated from uni. And it was letters back then there was no sort of emails or anything like that, so I got three back all saying no. But I appreciated the time it took for them to write back. And I guess it was to get a job in the Premier League, which was the biggest show in town for a football loving person. So in my industry of which was a really sort of new industry, so there wasn't many jobs around. So to sort of forge my way to a Premier League club and not just a Premier League club, to Liverpool, which was and is one of the top ten clubs in the planet, I guess in all sports. So it was probably that moment, not to mention the stuff that I learned on the job while I was there, which has carried me and I'm definitely a changed and better practitioner and person having lived that experience.

Jennelle McMaster: And I'm really keen to unpack some of those lessons that you learned. When you say that you wrote to 94 football clubs, I can imagine this young kid bright ideas about what the future could hold for him. I know that you have referred to yourself as something of an underdog in the past and sort of seen yourself as the boy who couldn't on the field and wanted to get out there and do something big, but you got to have some tenacity and some chutzpah to keep pushing at it the way that you did. So where did that come from? Where did that sort of conviction that you could and that perseverance come from?

Darren Burgess: I was never blessed with the greatest physical sort of attributes. I wanted to play sport for a living if I could. And when I realized, sadly that I couldn't do that because I was a chubby kid and I wasn't always first picked. I had this desire to prove people wrong, and I did okay on the sporting field, but that probably extended to the fact that once I graduated, or you certainly didn't at that stage, look up in the paper and find a job for a sports scientist or a fitness coach or a performance manager. My sister's a teacher. My two other brothers are in finance, so there's jobs everywhere for them. And I didn't get a full-time job till I was probably 28, 29. And so there was a lot of knockbacks, and, no, you can't, and, no, we don't have a position. And so, I was doing part-time jobs everywhere, and I was just really determined to make a career out of it. So never did I think that that career would lead me to anfield, but certainly was just really determined to see how far I could go with it, because I just had a passion for that industry, I guess.

Jennelle McMaster: So with that as a backdrop. So 94 letters you know dreaming up a job that really didn't exist in the way that we might see other professions. How did it feel when you got that call up for Liverpool? What was happening in your life? What was your - tell me about the emotions when you got that call.

Darren Burgess: Yeah, I was working for the socceroos, so I was busily preparing for the 2010 World Cup, and tt was a lot involved in that, traveling back and forth from South Africa to look at hotels and training venues and making sure it was up to standard and playing in friendly matches. So myself and two other Aussies and the doctor involved, Peter Brookner, he'd been, I guess, contracted by Liverpool to have a look at where their injuries were or why they had so many injuries, and he certainly recommended that they bring in somebody in my area. So I was doing the World Cup job. I had a wife at the time who was pregnant, so there was a whole lot to consider around that space. There was a couple of AFL clubs that were interested, but when you get the call from the CEO of Liverpool to say, we want you to interview for this role, anything else just took a backseat. Certainly any other the football clubs or anything like that that was going on just took a backseat, because I remember clearly, Peter, the doctor saying to me, I know you've always wanted to work in the Premier League, but could you work for Liverpool?

Darren Burgess: Because I was a Manchester United fan and said something like, everyone has their price, doc, and I thought he was taking the mickey. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. I remember getting off the phone because the negotiations took a little while because it was a big step, obviously, personally and professionally. And I remember when the contract came and I had the Liverpool emblem on, I thought, this is pretty cool. This is pretty cool.

Jennelle McMaster: There's your typical understated summary of things. Pretty cool. So, despite the fact that this was a lifelong dream for you, you've talked about having a pregnant wife at the time and being a Manchester fan. Was there any part of you that did hesitate about saying yes? Were there things that you were worried about that, notwithstanding an aspiration here, did give you pause?

Darren Burgess: The main thing, Nellie, is, could I do it? That was the main thing. And there was those massive amounts of self-doubts when I took the job about a month later. So in South Africa, just before I was about to fly out, the coach, Rafa Benitez, got sacked or resigned, depending on who you listen to, and took 18 staff with him. So the whole department was gutted. There was one assistant coach left and literally we turned up on day one and there was no one there. There was me and an assistant coach to take the superstars through a training session. And this is Liverpool. It's not, with all due respect, a third division club. So going back to your question, I had some doubts about whether I could do it and then I had just enormous doubts once Rafa got sacked. And yeah, there was no one there. So we arrived on a Friday, and after being pitchside for Australia versus Serbia on a Wednesday, and we're interviewing people on the Saturday and Sunday to start on Monday. So it was an incredible whirlwind.

Jennelle McMaster: I was about to ask you the question of what was it like to walk through those doors on your first day? Or better yet, what did it feel like to step on Tanfield Stadium? But listening to you, I'm thinking maybe those things got drowned out. The excitement of those kind of moments got drowned out by the reality of what you were faced with? Or did you still have those feelings existing side by side? The excitement of what it was versus the terror of now, an empty staff listing?

Darren Burgess: I'll probably give you two examples of that, which might sound a bit trivial, but I remember them. The very first session that we had, because the World Cup was still going on, a lot of the superstars weren't there, but there were still a few. A lot of the Liverpool superstars were still performing in the World Cup, so they weren't there on day one of preseason training. But because there was no one else around, I had to take all of the preseason, all of that first session. I'm sorry. And I had to demonstrate a drill that I wanted them to do an exercise. And that involved me sprinting at my top speed to one of their players playing a ball to me, and I'm demonstrating to these Liverpool players and the whole time I'm going, what am I doing? My first touch is awful and these guys are just going to laugh at me. I'm an Aussie from who was a hack soccer player trying to demonstrate a drill. And fortunately, it's the greatest first touch I've ever had in my life and dropped at my feet and I played it back. And then I just looked at him.

Darren Burgess: So that's how you do it, really casually. But inside I was just thinking, what the hell? That was an amazing touch. How good was that? So that was the first moment and then the second moment. It was about two weeks into pre-season and we were still training at Melwood, the training ground, and one of the physios said, Bergo, I'm heading out to Anfield today just to check a few things because we've changed the change room. Do you want to come out and just familiarize yourself? And I just went, Holy crap. I just sort of went, okay, yeah, I'll come out and have a look and it'd be good for me to get used to it. But inside I was thinking, it's Anfield because of what I described earlier. He just went into process mode. Process mode, process mode. I need to hire staff, I need to do this.

Darren Burgess: We had a preseason tour in Switzerland that I had to organize and all these sorts of things. And then when he said, I'm just going out to Anfield to organize a few things. Do you want to come? It just smacked me. Yeah, no problem. But it was a really big moment. I remember walking in, dressing was going, My God, and seeing the sign there which football lovers who might listen to this will know that this is Anfield sign. And I didn't touch it then because I didn't want to let the physio know that I was excited to touch the this is Anfield sign. But, yeah, it was pretty cool.

Jennelle McMaster: That's amazing. So putting aside the kind of almost the giggly excitement of being in this in Anfield and Liverpool and sort of stepping back on that professional level, what was, did you move into the role with a clear intention of what it was that you wanted to drive at Liverpool? What were there certain changes that you were seeking to institute and implement while you were there.

Darren Burgess: The year before they had come, I think maybe 7th, which is sort of unacceptable for Liverpool. And the common belief at the time was that they had suffered too many injuries. And the CEO at the time had said, we need to sort out this injury crisis that he described. And so he bought in the Aussie doctor, who then implemented the changes that he did. And so my remit was keep the star players on the park. And that involved working with the local physios who were really good. So it wasn't an issue there, but it was more just a training philosophy that was attempting to build resilience into the players so that they could cope with the demands of the Premier League understanding. I never worked in the Premier League, so I had to sort of learn on the job and learn pretty quickly. But that was the main thing when you work at places like Liverpool and perhaps Arsenal and Manchester City and United is two things really keep the players injury free. And by that we meant sort of soft tissue injuries, hams, muscle pools and things like that, and also enable the players, make the players resilient enough to play Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday at the fastest, hardest league in the world.

Darren Burgess: So those were the two things.

Jennelle McMaster: Did your definition of resilience change in working to that brief? Was it just fitness or was there a broader definition of resilience? Did you learn things about what resilience, what constituted resilience as you worked with these players?

Darren Burgess: Yeah, I really did. I had no appreciation of the fact that, for starters, in the two and a half years or whatever, I was there, there was three days over 25 degrees the whole time. So these players turn up every single day and they train every single day. And the common perception of soccer players in Australia in amongst the rugby codes is they're a little bit soft and they roll around the ground when they get touched and all that sort of stuff. But I can assure you that the Aussies that make it over there and the international players are tougher in a multitude of ways than getting tackled, rugby style, on a rugby field. Every single day it's raining or snowing and windy, and every single day they train, they play, like I said to you before, three times a week, and they train every single day. So you mentioned Luis Suarez in the intro. In the 18 months I was fortunate enough to work with Luis, had three days off. That's it. In 18 months, where he wasn't traveling or flying to Uruguay or playing. And a lot of people say, well, if I was getting paid that amount of money, I would have three days off.

Darren Burgess: It's just not true. In my experience, dealing with athletes and people in general, you are what you are, and money sort of amplifies, magnifies or shrinks that. And the resilience that people like Luis Suarez and Steven Gerard from my time at Liverpool is extraordinary. Not only are they judged three times a week by millions around the world and 60,000 people live at the ground, but they do have to have the physical resilience to turn up three times a week because every single team that comes to Anfield wants to win and wants to beat Liverpool when you play home or away. So, yeah, their resilience both on and off the field was extraordinary and something that I didn't appreciate till I lived it.

Jennelle McMaster: As you talk about your experience and forgive me, but I can't help but have style visuals happening in my mind. This guy coming in, and at least you're in the right code and you're in there. But how were you, an Aussie lad, able to influence the likes of a Kenny Dalglish, football royalty? What was your way of getting the kind of cut through that you needed or making a difference? Or having a voice out there as the Aussie that's never worked with Premier League to go in and cross over there and play that role well.

Darren Burgess: To give you an example of the challenge, when the English players first came back from the World Cup in 2010, Stephen Gerard, who is probably Liverpool's greatest player, along with Kenny or Sir Kenny Dalglish. And I presented to some of these superstars about how I was going to extend their career and these are the things that we're going to do as a department to help you guys win the league. Bit of a rah rah talk. There was only five or six players in the room. It was about half an hour and Stephen Gerard stood up. It's the first time I met him and he said, Are you finished? And I said yes. And he said, we'll see, and walked off and I just went, wow, challenge accepted.

Jennelle McMaster: Was it embarrassing?

Darren Burgess: I just thought, what did I just do? That was just 30 minutes wasted. Like, just do it through actions, not through words. Like, this guy's seen it all. So from then on, I just made sure I was first in, last out, and not just in terms of time spent at the training ground, because that can be a little bit of a false sense of work ethic. But I just made sure that every time the players were required to do something, that I was there, even though it might not have necessarily been my job. So whether it was a young player, 17/18, or Steven Gerard or Fernando Torres, that it was me who was doing it when players were injured, it was me who was there on days off to take them days after games when we lost. And you have five or six international players who did not want to be there the day after a game training. And it was just me and them training. It was just me who took them off and the coaches weren't there. And I could have delegated that to one of the other fitness staff, but I just made sure that I turned up every single time and that every conversation I had was about getting the best for those players once they knew.

Darren Burgess: And about five months in, I remember doing a light warm-up lap, which is a typical sort of thing that you might do before training. And Stevie said to me, I said, well see, you're one of us, and then just sort of jogged off. And I just thought that's about as best validation as I've probably had in my career. So, yeah, it was more about just turning up and just showing up and just making sure there are legitimate questions in my field, as there probably are in any field, about whether people are there just to sit on. The sideline at Anfield and not necessarily doing the job to the best of your ability, but acting in a way that helps the players, keeping them happy rather than protecting your own job rather than challenging them when it was time to challenge them. I sort of took the other approach of making sure that they knew that I was there for them, but that I would also challenge them.

Jennelle McMaster: And then, I guess, conversely, is there a moment that you remember a game match where you kind of go, oh, my God, that is my work, or it's come through here. That kind of pinch yourself moment of everything that we've been working towards here right now in this moment, I can see it. Is there something that stands out in your mind?

Darren Burgess: I guess there's two Janelle. Not to say that there was that many and I'm spoiled for choice or anything, but there are two contrasting ones. One was Carling Cup final. We were playing Cardiff, who we should have beaten, by the way, but Liverpool hadn't won a trophy in a long time, and the game went to extra time and then penalties. And I was pretty active in that extra time period with motivation and supplementation and things like that. And I felt that our guys handled that situation better than most, and that was due to some of the stuff that we'd done beforehand. Just to prepare for penalties and to prepare for that. We sort of instigated, and it's pretty common now, but this is back in 2012, preparing the players for the high pressure penalty situation by making them walk from halfway all the way down to take the penalty shootout, try and simulate that pressure, simulate penalties in training. And like I said, anybody who's involved in sport now would say, well, yeah, that makes sense, but it just wasn't done at the time. It was something there was no Twitter or anything like that where you can see video of teams training to do that.

Darren Burgess: This was something that we'd not heard done, but we instigated, and our guys handled that situation better than better than most. The other situation was a less fortunate one, but Liverpool had been taken over by new owners when I was there, who are still there, Fenway Sports Group. And they own the Boston Red Sox as well. And so they were really heavily data driven. And I bought in a data mining company from Australia into Liverpool at a reasonable expense and a great sort of personal risk. And they developed an injury prediction algorithm through a stats tool called a neural network, which is really reasonably common in military and finance. And there are many positives and negatives about a neural network, but essentially it acts more or less like a human brain, and that as you feed it more information, it learns about training loads, and it can by no means predict injuries. I have to say that because people within my industry who might be listening to this podcast saying will be saying quite rarely that you can't predict injuries, but what I can do is produce warning signs. Watch out for this, look out for that.

Darren Burgess: There's an increased risk for this player. Anyway, we instigated, and I put a lot of work into it. We're playing West Ham away, and the coaches at the time, who I won't name but decided to play Steven Gerard in a game in which by both common sense and our neural network, had said that he shouldn't play. But we were desperate for a win. So he played. After about 60 minutes, he scored, and one of the assistant coaches sort of looked over and gave me this glance like, See? I told you. This is why we picked him up, losing the game. But afterwards it was discovered that Steve had a fairly serious adductor injury and missed a couple of months of football. And after that, the coach came in and said, how did you know? I want to know all about it. So fair play to the coaching staff. They just said, what were the signs that you saw that made you sort of warn us? So that was really good sort of validation, I guess, for a whole range of us who put a lot of time into that process.

Jennelle McMaster: Okay, so now I have a Moneyball visual happening in my mind.

Darren Burgess: Not sure about the Ted comparison.

Jennelle McMaster: I think you got to own it, but you've always been really data driven as long as I've known you, and certainly way before that became quite mainstream. How have you been able to use tech and data? I guess that's a great example. Have there been other ways that you've been able to really use tech and data to influence and shape behavioral change?

Darren Burgess: Yeah, I guess the first point is, and you know me well enough, I'm reluctant to sort of say this, but it was 2012, so it was a long time ago, and a lot of the practices that are now more commonplace, they certainly weren't back then. So to answer your question, my PhD was on things like prediction and predicting career success in the AFL, given a certain set of information. So I just became really familiar and interested with various statistical modeling techniques early on. No doubt I relied on the numbers too much and left aside the personal input into it, or I guess the brain's input into some of that modeling. So I probably made some errors by looking at the GPS traces too much and didn't take into account some of the tactical nuances of the game or the personal scenarios of each of the players that I worked with. So what I think I've been able to do reasonably well is marry those two up. So I've been able to sort of say, okay, the data is telling us this, but the player is telling me that I'll lean towards the player, whereas previously I would have leaned towards the numbers.

Darren Burgess: So it's definitely a science and art scenario.

Jennelle McMaster: So you said there were a lot of learnings from you for you over that time and experience with the club. What would be some of the key learnings that you reflect on, that you've taken forward with you to your subsequent roles and in life?

Darren Burgess: In my field there's a lot of sort of common beliefs around. You have to train this way in order to get this result. You have to have this nutrition in order to maximize performance. You have to recover this way over there. I was exposed to maybe 20 different nationalities within the 25-person squad and they all had different upbringing and they all had a different training philosophy. So to go over to Brazil, which when I was there, we had a play who did his knee, to go over there and see how they rehabbed an ACL and work with the Brazilian national team people, they just did things completely different to how we'd been taught at university or through English, Australian common performance practices. And there was no difference in their return to play or return to train time frames. To get close to some of the Spanish players and see the fact that they have their pregame meal at midnight the night before, because that's when Spanish people eat. And it just blew my mind. I thought, no, this is wrong.

Jennelle McMaster: That would have blown your mind.

Darren Burgess: Absolutely like you have your pre-game the night before the game meal at 07:00 because the carbohydrates won't have time to digest in time and all those sort of things. To work with players who traveled from Uruguay to England the night before and then play the next day and still dominate when common literature tells you that for every time zone change, you need to go a day beforehand to be completely accustomed to the new time zone, let alone climate, and you just don't have time to do that. So it showed me the impact of the mental on the physical more than anything else, the number of players out of contract who are under pressure to perform, who got injured, versus those who are comfortable in their contract. So it really did teach me the more holistic aspects of performance rather than just the numbers and the data.

Jennelle McMaster: On the, I guess, the topic of resilience, there are some titles, I reckon, that have enormous pressure built into them or job titles. So comedian must have enormous pressure to always have to be funny, or a psychic must feel enormous pressure to always know stuff, what's going to happen. And you've got high performance in your title. And I think about headlines. I've seen one in the Evening Standard UK newspaper which said Arsenal have hired the best in the world. Fitness guru Darren Burgess can help shape gunners into winners. Talk to me about your resilience. Do you feel the pressure to personally, not just driving in others, but your own high performance being the absolute best in the game at all times? Have you ever felt like you've hit the wall? How do you face into the weight of the expectation that goes with what your title holds?

Darren Burgess: And there's been a few of those over the past five or six years. So that's where I feel the most pressure, when I'm unable to give my all, I guess, to the players, both from a performance point of view and also as perhaps a mentor to the staff as well. So that's when I feel like I'm under pressure. Tomorrow night, there'll be decisions around players who to take off the field, who to leave on. And I've been lucky enough to be in every coach's meeting for 25 years. I tried to work it out maybe a year ago, but I've probably been involved in, I think it's over 1100 games, at least a national level.

Darren Burgess: So with that, even through Osmosis, you're going to learn to handle pressure, okay, and be a bit more comfortable than others in that environment. So I really see it as my job, when the heat is on, to just calm everybody down and see if there's a process that we can go through that we've discussed during the week to come out the other side of the pressure. So how do I handle it. I've put myself through a transcendental meditation course about ten years ago and that's really helped. I'm not always as disciplined as I'd like to be, but certainly trying to read a lot around awareness and self-resilience and just everything from parenting to other people in my position or in similar positions. CEOs of big organizations and things like that, how they have handled it and just try and learn from as many different sources as I possibly can. I think that's answered your question, I hope.

Jennelle McMaster: Yeah, I reckon it has. And I do, I know that you do put a lot of work into taking care of yourself and always self-improvement and focus and meditation and priorities at home, so I can attest to that. I know there's been 94 letters that have been written.

Darren Burgess: It's a good question and having traveled a bit for work, the priority at the moment is to get the kids through high school in this sort of situation that they're in. So after that, though, I'd maybe like a crack at the NFL, perhaps, but I'm in no hurry, honestly. To win a flag with a Premiership with the crows and help build a team from scratch. That would be the number one priority for the moment, but, yeah, in no real hurry for anything else in the near future, that's for sure.

Jennelle McMaster: Well, you've had a pretty good job of manifesting the dream jobs for yourself, so look out, NFL. Now, I'm going to wrap up, Darren, but at the risk of making this sound like we're scripting your epitaph, when people say, Darren Burgess, what would you like them to remember about you?

Darren Burgess: I think humility would be top of the agenda. I think the ability to be humble in all circumstances is just massive. I think very giving and generous. I take the role of elder statesmen in the industry, from a professional point of view, really seriously and mentor a lot of people in that role. So generosity and then, I think, loyal. I'd like people to think that I was very loyal to them personally. So, yeah, I think those three, having not given that question any thought until 30 seconds ago, those three would probably be pretty good.

Jennelle McMaster: Very good. And look, I can say that, and I'm sure our listeners would agree that your humility certainly has come through. Certainly, given your illustrious career, the fact that you would describe yourself as the hack Aussie soccer player with a lucky first touch would probably underscore the humility that is very much part of you. And there'll be a lot of takeaways from people listening to this, some people who are much bigger football fans and sports followers than I am. But certainly for me, the idea that you keep the star players on the park is something that I think is highly relatable for us in the business world, thinking about our talent in our organizations and how we keep them on the metaphorical park building resilience into players. And that may well include, as you've pointed out, preparing people for how to handle setback and loss, or understanding the impact of the mental on the physical or the willingness to not avoid discomfort, to lean into that discomfort, are all the ways that we keep our star players on the park. I think that one of the other takeaways I have observations of you is your power of actions over words.

Jennelle McMaster: I love that we'll see comment which basically says you can say the things that you say, but your leadership is through your actions. And I think you've exemplified the power of turning up, the power of showing up, the decision to not sit on the sideline but be on the pitch. I think the takeaway around using data more holistically, the ability and willingness to get confident with data, understand it, but then put it to the side and listen to the human. I think that's where we see the real magic happen, the secret source between the data and the humanity. And I think finally being open to different ways, to different cultures and different approaches. And my takeaway from that is it's A-OK for me to have a snack at midnight. If the Spaniards can do it, so too can I. And I shall have no more criticism from you, Darren Burgess, about my consumption habits. So I wanted to thank you for your time today. As always, I love talking to you and thanks for the generosity of your insights today.

Darren Burgess: My absolute pleasure, Nellie. Look forward to catching up in person soon.