Three major injuries threatened to end Black Fern lock Jackie Patea-Fereti’s rugby career. But now she’ll finally see her childhood dream come true – wearing a Hurricanes jersey in the inaugural Super Rugby Aupiki.
It has to be bad luck when, just as you reach over the try-line and ground the ball, an opposing player lands heavily on your shoulder, dislocating it.
But surely it must be an incredibly rare coincidence when that misfortune happens to you twice – almost exactly a year to the day, in a club rugby game against the same opposition.
Jackie Patea-Fereti still can’t believe her double twist of fate.
The Black Ferns forward and Wellington Pride captain had just overcome a spinal injury, and dealt with the grief of losing her dad - her greatest supporter - to play the best season of her career in 2018.
All was going well for Patea-Fereti - who lives in Petone with her husband, Fred, and now 12-year-old son, Bez - and she was primed to make her return to the Black Ferns side.
But in 2019 she was playing club rugby for her Petone side
when she crossed the try-line and an opponent came down hard on her shoulder. “I still got the try,” Patea-Fereti likes to point out.
The injury ruled her out of contention for the Black Ferns team heading to the Super Series in San Diego soon afterwards. But Patea-Fereti kept in touch with coach Glenn Moore, knowing they had an upcoming tour to Australia.
“I was gunning for that, rehabbing and training. I went away with my family on holiday to an island in Fiji and I was still training – lifting big rocks as weights. My shoulder was doing well,” she says. “I made it back into the Black Ferns for the Australian tour, which was awesome.”
But a year after she initially damaged her shoulder, lightning struck again. “I played the same team, and the same thing happened – I reached out and scored a try and one of their players jumped on my shoulder,” she says.
“A lot of things were going through my head: ‘I shouldn’t have scored that try. I shouldn’t have reached out. I shouldn’t play this team ever again’.”
And again, Patea-Fereti – nickname Jax - put herself through the rigours of preparing to return to the field, but after playing in the first Farah Palmer Cup game that season, the pain lingered.
This time, she’d need surgery. But that didn’t go to plan, either.
“Six months later, I was planning to play again and get ready for the 2021 World Cup,” says Patea-Fereti, named in the Black Ferns' 2020 squad. “But I got told I had a frozen shoulder, and that could put me out for two years. I cried: ‘No this can’t happen’.
“But after I had a cry and did a prayer, I went through the same process to get me back on track again.”
The versatile lock or loose forward led the Wellington Pride through last season’s Farah Palmer Cup without further injury, and the year-long postponement of the World Cup has kept Patea-Fereti’s dream alive.
Now the 35-year-old stalwart has another special moment in her rugby career to look forward to – playing for the Hurricanes in the first Super Rugby Aupiki competition in March.
“It’s quite surreal,” Patea-Fereti says.
Especially when, as a kid growing up in Wainuiomata, it was what she imagined herself doing one day.
“Back in those days, I didn’t have female rugby players to look up to, they just weren’t talked about,” she says. “I went to church with Tana Umaga and Neemia Tialata, and I went to school with Piri Weepu, so I looked up to those guys. Neemia used to get cheap tickets for the youth at church to go and watch them.
“I remember being like ‘How cool would it be to be a Hurricane? But I can’t because I’m a female’. So this opportunity is amazing, it’s such a huge blessing.”
The Hurricanes squad come together this weekend for a team building camp, and they begin training together next week.
Patea-Fereti, who's of Samoan heritage, will bring so much experience and wisdom to the Hurricanes. An 18-test Black Fern, she’s also the most capped player to have worn the black and gold jersey of the Wellington Pride.
Yet the first time she picked up the oval ball, she ran off the field vowing never to return.
She was a basketballer and netballer in Year 12 at Wainuiomata High School, when she was impressed watching the school’s first XV girls rugby team play.
“So I went to a training, and got absolutely smashed,” she says. “I was so sore. I didn’t go back again that year.”
But Patea-Fereti was lured back the following year and this time, stuck with it. “My basketball coach at the time said I was a nice player, I wasn’t rough or anything, but she saw the change when I started playing rugby and brought it to my basketball game,” she says.
She continued to play all three sports after leaving school, and in 2006, as a 19-year-old, made the Wellington Pride for the first time.
After she had son, Bezalel (his name comes from a craftsman in the Bible), she decided to focus solely on rugby, encouraged by her husband, Fred Fereti – who’s coached the Petone women in recent seasons.
“My husband said I had a real shot of making the Black Ferns if I trained hard and put the effort into it. Having my son was a motivation,” Patea-Fereti says. “My husband has been really supportive of me, feeding me positive scriptures from the Bible, reminding me of my faith.”
She remembers her first club game back: “I cried – it hurt.”
Patea-Fereti persevered and by 2012, she made the Black Ferns as a lock and went to the World Cup in France in 2014 (New Zealand didn’t progress past pool play – still a memory that haunts her).
She slipped out of the Black Ferns in 2015, but was called back in the following year. Then in 2017, she suffered a slipped disc that was sitting on a nerve, and was warned not to play for a year. “But I always try to work my way around things like this,” she says with a laugh.
“So I started praying and that year I ended up playing FPC.” And captaining the Pride.
Although she missed out on the World Cup that year, it meant Patea-Fereti could spend more time with her dad, who had prostate cancer. Thoughout her career, he'd been at almost every game she played. When he died, she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue playing rugby, but remembered he always told her to “take opportunities as best you can”.
So the Feretis converted their garage into a gym, and Patea-Fereti gave it her all in 2018, earning her recall to the Black Ferns. “People say it was the best year I had,” she says.
Then came her unfortunate run of shoulder injuries and surgery. But Patea-Fereti never thought of giving up the game she once ran from.
She led the Pride to third place in the 2021 Farah Palmer Cup, but knows she has more to give.
“When you have a serious injury, you have a bit of a fear that you’ll re-do it, and that held me back a bit in my running game. But I just wanted to get back on the field and play again,” she says.
To make another return to the Black Ferns for this year’s World Cup, played at home, would be a dream come true, Patea-Fereti says.
“My goal is to get back the mongrel I used to have, and play as well as I used to for the Super Rugby campaign. At the end of the FPC season, I started to see glimpses of it. And then if all goes well, I’m definitely gunning for the World Cup,” she says.
“It all comes down to confidence now.”
Super Rugby Aupiki has been a long time coming for Patea-Fereti. For many years she’s wanted to see another level for women’s rugby.
“It would be awesome to see it continue so young players have something else to aspire to. I hope it will attract more females to start playing rugby,” she says.
Her son, who’s grown up around women’s rugby (he’s been the Petone team’s videographer in the past), was “buzzing out” when he learned Patea-Fereti would be a Hurricane. Both mother and son are ecstatic, too, that New Zealand rugby player of the year, Sarah Hirini, will also play in the side.
“Bez plays rugby and always talks about wanting to make the Hurricanes and the All Blacks,” she says. “And I say ‘Study first! Get something behind you!’”
That’s another important part of Patea-Fereti’s life right now. While she’s working at the Department of Internal Affairs issuing passports, she’s studying as well – working towards a degree in business and management through the Open Polytechnic.
“I’ve always wanted to help out youth, the younger generation coming through,” she says. “I want to start a gym or a rugby academy for girls, especially in the Hutt Valley. There’s so much talent you don’t always see coming through.
“I want to show them what it’s like at that next level and the trainings they’re expected to do.”
The girls in the Hutt couldn’t have a better teacher in resilience and conviction.
