Kids rapt with Canes visit

Hurricanes player Victor Vito shares a laugh with 6-year-old Tau Lama during the team's visit to Hawke's Bay Hospital. Photo/ Warren Buckland

It was a bit like pre-match therapy when three of the Hurricanes stars visited the children's ward at Hawke's Bay Hospital in the build-up to the big Super Rugby match in Napier.

Crossing the rivers to the hospital in Hastings yesterday, it was what All Blacks Julian Savea and Victor Vito and South Africa-born Reggie Goodes were told to do, as players take care of off-field obligations between matches and training. "But, to be fair," said Vito, "this is one of the more rewarding ones we do."

Clearly, the players were getting as much out of it as the kids, their goal of making them smile requited by seeing the youngsters smile in return.

The trick also worked with mums and dads and ward staff, and other staff and older patients who happened to bump into the yellow-and-black entourage as they made their way to and from the ward waving the flag, or flags as it were.

Charge nurse Michelle Robertson is sure the excitement of such visits helps the children, even if they don't know who the players are.

She conceded she had to swot-up to make sure she knew who was who, and having not planned to go to the game there were signs she was, too, getting swept-up in the moment, and might, after all, join at least 12,000 others for the match against the Highlanders at McLean Park.

It's sad, she says, that the children won't be able to be among them, something also appreciated by the players, who had numerous photos taken with the children in the day-room.

They had a particular soft spot for 6-year-old Tau Lama, whom they met in the day room, and whom they learnt has been in-and-out of hospital all his life, with a breathing condition that means he's usually there in the winter.

His mum, Sara, said he knew who the players were, especially the fellow Samoan footballers Savea and Vito, hence their detour into his own room on the way out.

"They didn't even ask if they could go in," laughed one of the staff.

"He likes watching them on TV [with dad and Hastings rugby club player Solomon]," said the boy's mum.

"He likes it when they throw their arms, like Yeah!" Putting her arm across her chest, she adds: "He likes it when they do the national anthem."