Whitney Hansen at work as a coach with Matatū in Super Rugby Aupiki. Photo / Photosport
Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom
In her favourite café with a Coke and raspberry, and fish and chips, Whitney Hansen is plotting a revolution – and taking all 267 Black Ferns with her.
When she stood before the current Black Ferns squad for the first time as their new head coach in January, Hansen set the tone for a fresh start, a clean slate, a revolution. And it would take more than they’d ever done before, she stressed.
But they wouldn’t be doing it alone. A schoolteacher in her other career, Hansen set an assignment for every living member of the Black Ferns alumni – from No. 1 Jacqui Apiata to No. 267 Laura Bayfield – emailing them a survey titled Ngā Mamaku o Aotearoa Legacy. It posed questions like: What did it mean to you to wear the jersey? What were the values then? What is the legacy?
Their answers, she told them, would help shape the future of the team.
The past players appreciated it. Three-time Rugby World Cup-winner Kendra Cocksedge says Hansen’s approach sparked a real sense of reconnection for her and other Ferns.
“It’s made us feel proud that the legacy built in the past still matters for the future,” she says. “She will do some incredible things on and off the field, you watch.”
Hansen, 39, says the response has been resounding, yet not surprising.
“There are a lot of special people in that space. It affirms how much care there is for this team and what a special place it truly is,” she says.
“They talk about treasuring their time in the black jersey, what a privilege it is to be a part of, and just how much that alumni have our backs.”
Did they also offer Hansen any pointers on restoring the team’s world rugby dominance and winning back the Rugby World Cup in 2029?
“Well, they’ve got my email now,” she chuckles. “And I did say any advice was welcome. I might get it after Pac4.”
Hansen jokes next month’s Pacific Four tournament has snuck up on her since taking over from Allan Bunting as head coach last December. But the role hasn’t.
An assistant coach to the Black Ferns in their triumphant World Cup campaign in 2022, Hansen wasn’t part of the team’s last management group. She clarifies she wasn’t ready to put herself forward for the head coach role three years ago. After two seasons as head coach of Matatū in Super Rugby Aupiki, she finally had the experience and confidence to take on the Black Ferns job.
She’s learned to manage bouts of imposter syndrome and has the ear of some New Zealand sporting greats if she needs advice – among them, former Silver Ferns coach and mentor Lyn Gunson, and former All Blacks coach and father, Sir Steve Hansen.
“I definitely know I have an ally in him, and I can talk to him about anything,” Hansen says of her dad, who coaches in Japan. “He actually got a vent from me last night.
“All my family – my mum and my sister – are amazingly supportive too.”
Hansen feels prepared for the public scrutiny and expectations that come with this higher-profile role.
“The noise is real,” she says. “But how much that impacts me is probably how much I let it.
“I’m pretty clear on who I am as a person, what I stand for, and how I’ll be measured as a coach. But my biggest measure will always be internal – how am I going in front of these athletes, this management group?”
On Monday, Hansen names her first Black Ferns side to defend their Pac4 title – “super excited” about the talent pool she’s chosen from and impressed by the younger generation coming through. Some have yet to play in Aupiki.
“Teams go through iterations, evolutions and sometimes revolutions. And this is one for the Black Ferns,” she says.
“Part of the revolution is going back to what it is we stand for – we’ve got a whole new generation of athletes coming on the journey. How we stretch them physically and mentally, how we develop them as people holistically, too, needs to be better on all fronts. And we’ll need to work harder than ever before because that’s the reality of where the game’s going.”
Hansen bade an emotional farewell to Matatū a fortnight ago; she’d been in their coaching team since Aupiki began in 2022.
“I’d put off thinking about it,” she admits. “I’m loving what I’m doing now, but it’s not easy to walk away from something so special that we’ve built.”
She repeats the team’s motto: Ko aū Matatū, ko Matatū ko aū – I am Matatū and Matatū is me.
“Once you’ve been part of that space, you’re part of the fabric forever. It will always have a big space in my heart, and I hope I have a place in theirs,” she says.
Her time with Matatū has been central to her growth as a coach over the past decade. While the side finished last in 2022, they won in 2023 and made last year’s final.
In 2017, the Canterbury prop, hooker and No 8 began coaching her university club side, where she played more than 100 games, encouraged by teammate Cocksedge.
She then led the Canterbury U18 girls, before taking a role with the inaugural Black Ferns Development XV in 2019. The following year, she became set-piece coach for the champion Canterbury side, and in 2021 was an intern with the Black Ferns leading into the World Cup.
That internship, a World Rugby initiative to increase female coaches at the top of the game, allowed Hansen to see the inner workings of the team – and led to her appointment as an assistant coach under Sir Wayne Smith.
“We all sit there with imposter syndrome sometimes and think, ‘Oh that couldn’t be me’. But when you go into those spaces and realise everyone there is great, yet they all have work-ons too, it’s not as far away as you think,” she says.
“I was really supported to be myself and learn – but also be on the grass working with the players. It gave me the confidence to go, ‘I could do this’. If you can see it, you can be it, right?”
Learning from high-performance coaches from other sports codes through HPSNZ programmes Te Hāpaitanga and Kia Manawanui has been “massively instrumental” in Hansen’s growth, and she credits former Silver Ferns coach Lyn Gunson as a standout influence on her career.
“She was phenomenal – opening up an entirely different world of thinking around what it means to be a coach,” she says.
Hansen is passionate about bringing other women with her. She’s only the second woman to coach the Black Ferns – following a staggering 32-year hiatus since Vicky Dombroski’s tenure.
“We absolutely have women coming through the coaching pathway, and we’re not far from a real breakthrough,” says Hansen. “I’ll be doing everything I can personally to send the elevator back down for them.”
Kelly Brazier, who retired as a player after her fourth World Cup last year, is now working with the team as a resource coach. Another outstanding Black Fern, Carla Hohepa, is on the cusp of greater things – she was assistant coach of last year’s Farah Palmer Cup winners, Waikato.
In the meantime, Hansen’s core coaching staff are male – and she speaks highly of them. Simon Kneebone, Hansen’s assistant at Matatū, was appointed this week to lead the Black Ferns’ set piece. He joins Riki Flutey (defence) and Tony Christie (attack), who remain from the last campaign.
“Tony has brought something really special to the team, and to allow him space to really drive that and be creative for us will be exciting,” Hansen says. “So although there are some differences and strengths I bring to the role, the success will not be mine alone. There are amazing people in the management team I’ve surrounded myself with.”
But she means to make her own mark on this Black Ferns team, now ranked No 3 in the world, and she sees her distinctive strength as bolstering the women’s pathway.
“It’s a unique lens I hold in that space. My main job is that our team at the top is successful, but my passion for the pathway and how we develop it for the longevity of success in the black jersey, is a point of difference,” she says. She’s keeping a close eye on the dynamic age group talent, making sure they’re supported.
And of course Hansen’s establishing a clear vision of what it means to be a Black Fern – with the help of the alumni’s feedback.
“The values we’re going to stand for, and the rugby we want to play, is a big part of that vision,” she says.
The theme of Hansen’s first training camp in January was connection. There was the fun stuff – music, singing, special place cards at dinner with questions so they could learn about each other’s characters. And there was also hard work – Hansen took the team to Raglan, where they ran and bear-crawled through the iron-rich sand.
“One of the girls told me, ‘I could hear you counting the burpees, up down, up down, but I couldn’t see you because my eyes were full of sand’,” Hansen laughs.
“We know we connect and bond when we do hard things together. We’re learning to gain trust in what we’re doing and who we’re doing it alongside. It will be at the fore of everything we do, whether it’s on the field or at the beach. We’ll keep doing that in secret little ways and in really transparent ways, too.
“What’s cool is seeing the athletes excited about being intentional, planned and driven. Two of our tight-head props ring each other every Sunday and do their planning together.”
The team to take on Canada, Australia and the USA in the Pac4 will be relatively young, Hansen says. Most haven’t played rugby since last year’s World Cup, but experienced players like Amy Rule, Alana Bremner, Georgia Ponsonby, Liana Mikaele-Tu’u and Maia Roos will return from their first season of Premiership Women’s Rugby in the UK.
Hansen’s focus for Pac4 isn’t necessarily on the final scores, but on process and performance.
“We want to be really clear on the rugby we want to play, on the athlete we want to build, and who we want to be known as individually and as a team,” she says. “Those three things and the talent we have coming out of New Zealand will set us up to be incredibly successful.
“We just have to understand it will be a journey; a bit of a process. And Pac4 is an opportunity to test some of those things and see how we’re stacking up against some of the best opposition in the world – none of which can be taken lightly.”
Hansen went back to school last year, doing some relief teaching, wanting to see if she could still capture the classroom.
“I’m not sure if I did in the maths lessons,” she says.
“But it affirmed the thing I love most about whatever I do is working with people and growing people. And to do that with the best of the best is a privilege.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.