Grace & Ruby

Ruby: Rugby has always been a part of my life. I started playing when I was a little kid, playing with the boys, and I’ve kept it up ever since, really. My dad was a rugby player – he even had a stint in the New Zealand Under-18 team back in the day – and he was always involved with Marist RFC here in Invercargill, so I just tagged along with him in the beginning. And then I never looked back. I love just getting out there and having a go, and I definitely love the physical aspect of it – I was also a pretty keen BMX rider so I guess that all adds up.

I don’t have brothers or sisters, and my parents have always been my biggest supporters. I think Dad’s been to every game I’ve ever played, and he’s always giving me tips and advice. He makes sure to tell me the things that I did well, but there’s always a few work-ons as well.

I played for Marist when I was in primary school. During high school I played for Verdon College, and then I played a couple of seasons for Prebbleton while I was away at Lincoln University. This is my first year back down in Invercargill, playing as a senior. It’s been pretty awesome to be back, although we were all a bit gutted when we heard that we couldn’t get a team together and would be combining with Midlands RFC. Then we had our first training and we all came together pretty quickly – and now it’s great.

All the Midlands girls are lovely and it’s actually been a good fit for me. I grew up on a farm just outside of Bluff, and Midlands is more of a country club than Marist. So in that sense it’s been quite easy for me to build new connections and find people in the same boat as me. Grace is awesome. She’s always bright and bubbly and getting into everything. She’s our hooker – she controls the scrums and gets stuck in. The name Tū Kotahi Wahine means “standing as one” and for me that’s about having each other’s backs out there, no matter which club we originally played for. I think that’s really important, especially in women’s rugby – we need to come together, get out there and give it a go.

Grace: When I first heard that Midlands and Marist would be combining, I wasn’t too sure what to think. I started playing for Midlands when I was sixteen, which was pretty cool because it was also the first year that the club had a women’s team in the competition. Marist actually became a bit of a nemesis for us – we met them in the finals a couple of times and they came away with the win both times, so they became the team to beat.

It turned out we were both struggling for players at the start of the season, and somebody raised the idea of combining. I realised it was a great idea if it meant we could get a solid team together. And I’ve absolutely loved it – it’s probably been one of the best years of rugby I’ve ever played. We actually only came together the week before our first competition game, so we were thrown in the deep end a wee bit, but we all just clicked quite instantly. We’d only had two trainings together and we came away with the win.

I grew up in Southland. I’ve been in the area my whole life – went to Mossburn Primary School and high school in Lumsden. I think we all started out playing ripper rugby when we were about five, but once we got into the first or second year of tackle rugby most girls seemed to transition across to netball. I did give netball a go one year, as well as playing rugby, but I got pulled up quite a lot for running with the ball or making contact so it made sense to stick to rugby.

Ruby seemed really familiar when I first met her and eventually I clicked that I must have played rugby against her at school. She is a very strong player – she can run the ball bloody hard. She’s one of the quieter ones in our team but you definitely notice if she’s not there – it’s like we’re missing a piece of the puzzle. There’s such a good energy in the team – we’re always laughing, having a great time, but we can really knuckle down and get the work done as well. Before the game we’ve always got some music playing in the changing room, and we’re all getting each other pumped up and doing each other’s hair and the rest of it. My go-to hairstyle is double Dutch braids, and I’m lucky because I cannot plait my own hair but one of the other girls does it for me most weekends. That’s one of my wee rituals.