Long after the big hits, and the cheering for the runaway tries, fans gathered on the grass after a Super Rugby Aupiki game this month to meet the players, one of whom is Luka Connor.
A girl approached Connor wearing a bracelet and holding a matching one that she’d made for her.
She also held photos of the two of them, taken at a game a couple of weekends prior.
In the past, girls have given letters detailing how they’ve been inspired by the women players, both in the game and “in life”.
Parents share how their kids watched the Rugby World Cup last year and are now playing their first year of rippa rugby. The smiles are “huge”.
“I find it crazy how things have changed and people want to know us,” Connor says over the phone, from where she’s training in Tauranga for Chiefs Manawa. “It’s very special.”
Crazy, because a gender uprising hit New Zealand rugby when the Black Ferns’ won the women’s World Cup last year on home turf.
More females are picking up the sport; the professional Aupiki women’s tournament is in its second year; stereotypes are dissipating; and more than anything, equality is in the limelight.
And while there is only one confirmed Black Ferns home test to look forward to this year, NZ Rugby is said to be in positive conversations with World Rugby to host the inaugural WXV 1 Tournament later in the year.
Women’s rugby continues to be on the rise, with NZ Rugby predicting a 40 per cent increase in participation on the 2022 numbers, which would see more than 35,000 women and girls playing club and school rugby this season.
This month NZ Rugby launched the “Love Every Minute” awareness campaign to support the predicted growth and opportunities in women and girls’ participation this season, thanks to the World Cup success.
“I think most of the women are so excited that women’s rugby is finally being recognised,” Connor says, who was part of the winning World Cup squad.
“The amount of people who are turning up to our current Super club rugby club games is amazing - little boys and girls, lining up to get signatures and photos. That never happened before.
“It’s just unbelievable that people want to watch us play.”
That comment isn’t surprising given theŌpōtiki 26-year-old, who plays in the hooking position for Chief’s Manawa in Apupiki; Bay of Plenty Volcanix in the Farah Palmer Cup; and club rugby for Rangataua, spent her childhood being the only girl in rugby teams until she hit secondary school.
She started playing muck-up games after school at age 5, barefoot on the front lawn, with her three brothers Lincoln, Brogan, and Jack.
A couple of years later, she’d play solo against her friend’s boy cousins during school lunchtimes.
She competed in primary school rugby inter-school competitions and again, she was the only girl.
At intermediate, she tried to enter the Tai Mitchell Rugby Tournament, having watched her brothers do it, while she was the runner for the kicking tee. But, she was told, “no, girls can’t play with the boys”.
Was she disappointed?
Sure, she says, but she isn’t one to lie down in a fight.
Like most hearty Ōpōtiki stock, she is adept at all things in life that require patience, skill and a good tackle.
Her social media followers know her as someone who shears sheep; fishes; hunts deer and pigs. When it comes to rugby, the chase is no different. She doesn’t give up.
Finally, at Ōpōtiki College, there was a girls’ rugby team. Only problem was, no one wanted to play.
“I used to go around at lunchtimes, every year I was at Ōpōtiki College, and harass girls to play so that I would be able to play. It was very hard. I had to convince a few girls and buy them some pies at the canteen.”
The Ōpōtiki girls were good though. Connor made the Condor Sevens and captained the Bay of Plenty Under-18 team, leading them to the top title.
During her high school years, her friend Noi Elmiger introduced her to Rotorua’s Waikite rugby team when she was 16.
“I fell in love with the team, the girls, the women, so that’s still my club at heart.
“I was there for many years. We took out a few titles and then we ended up not having a team,” she says, explaining that she then joined Rangataua.
“Awesome people, again,” she says.
At the time of starting high school, she didn’t know who the Black Ferns were. Unlike the All Blacks, who held a core place in New Zealand’s identity, you never heard about them, she says.
That changed in Year 13 when she got to see the Black Ferns play in Whakatāne and from there she was hooked.
“I knew 1000 per cent I wanted to be a Black Fern, no matter how hard the journey was.
“Since 12, I’d wanted to make a New Zealand team but it wasn’t until about 17, I heard the name. It took me many years (after non-selection), but I stuck at my goal,” she says, having started her career in the loose forwards, moving to prop and then the hooking position.
She made her first-class debut in 2014 while still at school, and was offered a Black Ferns contract in 2019, aged 22, making her international call-up that same year, debuting for the Ferns off the bench against Canada in San Diego.
“Being a small-town girl from Ōpōtiki, I had never been anywhere past Australia. It was also a month tour and I hadn’t left home for much longer than a week, so it was a very big deal. I was also grateful that my mum (Karlene) and dad (Kerry) flew over for my debut. It was very, special.”
Modesty and humility shine through Connor’s storytelling. She uses the words “special” and “grateful” a lot.
“At school, you couldn’t even get a petrol voucher (prize), and now you can get paid to play rugby, which is amazing.”
The future is bright for women’s rugby, she says, optimistically.
“As long as we never lose that passion and more money comes into the picture, I think we’ll be all right.
“The support we’re getting, especially from families, is amazing.”
However, long-held discrimination against female players exists and is “a touchy subject”.
“I think in this day and age, we really don’t need to be comparing women and men. We’re all athletes, we all have the same goals, and we just want everyone to be successful.”
In a Sydney Morning Herald interview in 2016, Australian female rugby sevens star Ellia Green recalled players at university giving out bumper stickers with the tagline, “It only takes one ball to play rugby”.
Females, of course, can do anything. It’s something Connor’s dad taught her.
“My father brought me and my siblings up to learn how to hunt and gather, pretty much how he was brought up - how to live off the land. And being from Ōpōtiki, everyone does it. I absolutely loved my childhood and how I learned to provide for when I have a family.”
She goes home as much as she can. You can’t ride dirt bikes and hunt in a “concrete jungle”.
She has two of her own pig dogs, Girl and Rocky; and she has a pet sheep Oreo, who she’d video-call during the Rugby World Cup, via her mum. Oreo sleeps outside under her bedroom window when she’s back home.
She’ll always gravitate home, but she hasn’t ruled out going to Australia and playing league one day either.
“It’s a very exciting pathway for girls these days. I would definitely like to look at it possibly in the future. The opportunities are huge in Australia right now in the league.
But there are top-tier opportunities in New Zealand too.
“We have the likes of the (Aupiki) super rugby competition, which is a massive growth in women’s rugby and there’s that opportunity to play and get paid (for one of four regional teams) for five weeks. Then there are the Black Ferns, who are full-time, paid athletes.
“Hopefully, in the future, it’ll grow even more, but definitely now, if you want to be a full-time rugby player, the opportunities are there in New Zealand, it’s just probably a bit harder to get one of those contracts. But it’s definitely something our younger girls should be aiming for.
“It’s slowly growing and it’s going to keep growing.”
As far as school and club rugby goes, that’s growing too. In partnership with Sport New Zealand and NZ Rugby, provincial unions will continue to deliver girls’ rugby activator programmes focused on providing fun and informal rugby opportunities to sample the game.
The activator programmes are expected to increase by 75 per cent this season, from 85,000 engagements in 2022 to 150,000 in 2023.
And the Tai Mitchell Tournament that Connor could never compete in now has the Player of the Tournament trophy named after her.
“Now to see there’s girls’ teams, not mixed teams, girls’ teams playing, it’s unbelievable. After seeing my three brothers for almost 10 years playing in these tournaments, it was really special for me and my family to have a trophy named after me.”
Asked what rugby means to her, she says she loves the physicality - she is a strong scrummager and mauler; she loves carrying the ball; it’s a team sport, it’s fun; she loves the tactical side, and that you can express yourself.
The players are exceptionally fit and play with flair - in the game, and in their appearance.
“Just like anything, there are always other people’s opinions - stereotypes,” she says, of female tackle rugby players, with which the word “butch” has historically been associated.
“There are always going to be different opinions on looks. I think at the end of the day, what our team does very well, is be who you want to be. If you’re authentically yourself, you feel good, and enjoy what you’re doing, nothing else matters.”
These days, the players plait each other’s hair into signature hair braids, and others have false eyelashes.
Connor usually wears a brightly coloured hair scrunchie on top of her sandy-blonde ponytail: “So my parents can spot me in the group amongst the other blondes, from afar.”
Year by year, females will grow the sport, she says, adding that other than obvious physical differences, eventually there should be no differentiation.
“With this next generation, I think in a couple more years, the little boys and girls won’t know the gap between ‘that’s the All Blacks and that’s the Black Ferns’. It’s going to be ‘those are rugby players’.”