He's making the observation that NZO's current stable of producers (Tui and Kupe) were discovered when Eric Mathew's was Exploration Manager and that nothing has been found, despite a lot of hype and cash burning, since Eric moved on to AWE. The last discovery (Pateke - almost 10 years ago now) was th elast discovery, made just before Eric's departure. The point may be factual (not sure if Eric was around in '86 for the Kupe discovery though) but perhaps not valid as someone else has previously pointed out that Eric did not take any luck with him to AWE.