Life seems to go on for Eric Rush.
He is appearing in his 12th Hong Kong Sevens this weekend. He will be captaining New Zealand once again. And he will be carrying the hopes of the team on his shoulders again.
But beneath the veneer of normality, Rush is a changed man.
The New Zealand sevens captain is currently serving a community service sentence of 200 hours for his role in the death of a 23-year-old man during a car accident last August.
The memory of that tragedy back home - the car he was driving failed to take a corner and smashed into another car - is still firmly etched in Rush's mind.
The driver of the other car, Brendon Malcolm, died instantly, while his wife Claire and another passenger Bryce Casey were seriously injured.
'I can't change what happened. Life has to go on and I must carry on,' said Rush. 'It is not easy to sweep it under the carpet.' Rush, who led New Zealand to September's Commonwealth Games seven-a-side gold medal three weeks after the tragedy, appeared in an Auckland court last month to face one charge of careless driving causing death, two charges of careless driving causing injury and one charge of dangerous driving.
