Eloise Blackwell may no longer be a Black Fern but she's still keeping the rugby flame alive successfully for her club and Auckland, Maryke Elgoran writes.
A common sentiment among Black Ferns is the desire to leave the black jersey in a better place than they found it.
When 46-game Black Fern veteran Eloise Blackwell (Ngātiwai, Ngāti Maru) missed out on selection for last year’s Rugby World Cup, she faced leaving that jersey sooner than she might have hoped.
But few would argue her No.4 jersey isn’t in a better place than when she first pulled it on back in 2011. In fact, that jersey is in the best position it’s ever been. And thanks in no small part to the contributions of players like Blackwell, who’ve fought to create change in the women’s game.
"I know that I'm a world class player, I know what my strengths are and I obviously was incredibly gutted to miss out on the World Cup," 32-year-old Blackwell says. "But I've learned some hard truths, and the one thing I held onto was my belief in my own ability."
While she could be forgiven for holding onto some heartache from that shock omission, Blackwell has instead continued to play the game she loves with as much fervour as before. In the opening game of this season's Farah Palmer Cup, the powerful lock marked her 75th game for the Auckland Storm, captaining her side against the Hawke’s Bay Tui (which the Storm lost 32-31 in an upset).
On Sunday, in her 76th match, she scored a last-gasp try for the Storm, with the conversion securing a hard-fought 19-17 win over Wellington in testing conditions.
Blackwell is now part of an elite club alongside just a handful of other female players to reach the 75 game milestone - especially remarkable considering women play far fewer games a season than their male counterparts.
"As a young 18-year-old, I probably didn't see myself being able to play this many games," the quiet achiever says. "You don't play for these accolades, but it's nice to be rewarded for the hard work I've put in to rugby."
It’s been 14 years since Blackwell debuted in the blue and white hoops and the occasion comes just a month after she led her club side, the Ponsonby Fillies, to a Coleman Shield title – her second club premiership win. It’s one of two recent special moments shared with her good friend, fellow former Black Fern and longtime teammate Aldora Itunu, who’s just returned to rugby after having son, Ezekiel.
The pair celebrated their milestones together, with Itunu reaching 50 games for the Storm in the season opener. It’s been a long time coming for Itunu, forced to sit on 49 after Covid cancelled the Storm’s 2021 FPC season.
Someone who’s been riding shotgun with both throughout their Black Ferns, Auckland Storm and Ponsonby Fillies journeys is fellow formidable forward Charmaine McMenamin, who says the two players are often the linchpins of culture within the team environment.
“One thing with Ella, she is very culture-driven. She’s someone who likes to make people feel welcome and help people connect,” McMenamin says. “She and Dora are really big in that sense. Sometimes people don’t remember the season on the field, they just remember how they felt and Ella really brings that to life.”
Off the field, Blackwell isn’t afraid to have a laugh and listen to music in the changing sheds, McMenamin says, but “when she crosses the line, she’s on”.
“She’s one of the world’s best. Her game IQ is very high. She can see situations unfolding before anybody else,” she says. “When you get to captaining like Ella has, it ends up being like player management, you’re managing people’s emotions and trying to swing momentum your way and she’s probably one of the best at doing that.”
There’s a certain bond that comes when you pack down a scrum together, but McMenamin says their friendship was mostly forged off-field as they both strived to crack it in black.
“I think we met in 2010 when I got my first crack in the Storm jersey. At that time, footy was about having fun and we had so much fun at Storm, I wanted to try and keep that going. I was aware that Ella was on the cusp of making the Black Ferns and I guess for me it was trying to get around likeminded people.”
Blackwell was first to wear the fern, making her debut in 2011 against the England Red Roses at Twickenham, before McMenamin joined her two years later in a test also against England.
Blackwell’s mum, Christina Spence, who lives on Great Barrier Island with the rest of the Blackwell whānau, reflects on the moment her daughter ran out for her first test in black.
“We opened up our local clubrooms and there were about 80 people who came to watch her play. It was pretty spectacular, a very proud moment for her whānau,” she says.
The island downed tools once again to watch Blackwell in the 2017 Rugby World Cup in Ireland, where the Black Ferns clinched their fifth world title.
“We’d moved out of our main house so Ella’s brother could raise his kids in the old family homestead, so we built a tiny house,” Spence says. “That Rugby World Cup was funny - our tiny house was jam-packed with friends and family watching.”
Among them were some of Blackwell’s earliest teammates who used to chase a ball around at the local sports club on Barrier when she was just three years old.
“She was super tall, had super long legs and arms and used to fall over all the time. But she had really big hands and has always been able to catch the ball and run with it,” her mum remembers.
It was then Blackwell decided she wanted to be an All Black, remembers Spence.
“Eloise was bullied at school. She had hair that wouldn’t grow and all the girls used to tease her and tell her she looked like a boy,” she says.
“She came home one day and didn’t want to go back. I said, ‘Right you make friends with all the boys, they’ll have your back’. So she did and I think it’s because she got to play sport with the boys that she got a bit of a name for herself locally – ‘Don’t mess with her, she’s as good as the boys’.”
Reflecting back on her daughter’s career, Spence believes it’s perhaps the hardships more than the triumphs that have been the making of her.
Blackwell left home on the Barrier at an early age to board with whānau and attend Mercury Bay Area School in Whitianga where she began to excel at sport. It was there she took up a rugby scholarship to a school on another island, this time on the other side of the world - Vancouver Island, Canada. After her initial scholarship ended, the school rang to ask if they could keep her for another year.
When she returned home she was picked up to play in a regional rugby tournament and was later selected for the Auckland Storm after impressing for Ponsonby at club level. She was struck down by a knee injury, but bounced back quickly, which Spence says is a credit to her resilience and resourcefulness – traits that reemerged in the thick of disappointment last year.
“In the hours after she found out she hadn’t made the World Cup squad, it was quite profound, she said to me, ‘Mum, this was never my jersey to keep, I was just the one filling it in the meantime’. She has a real mentality that she is just a kaitiaki [guardian] of the jersey,” Spence says.
Blackwell says she learned the importance of having a strong support network - made up of whānau and fellow players, especially those in the Auckland hub who also missed Black Ferns selection.
"The likes of Leish [Aleisha-Pearl Nelson], Tafito [Lafaele] and Petu [Patricia Maliepo], we were just so close because we were all going through the same thing," Blackwell says. "It was really crucial I still remembered my value, what my strength was and that I'm a great player. Then having the support network of those girls around me truly got me through."
Blackwell has been quite a kaitiaki. Since making her debut for the Black Ferns at 20, Blackwell has played 46 games in black, been to two Rugby World Cups and was named New Zealand captain in 2020. In 2018 she became one of the first women to receive a professional contract in the 15s version of the game after being part of the group to negotiate the terms of those same contracts.
But her time in various jerseys just scratches the surface of the impact she’s made on the game, says Spence, who believes her work as a secondary school teacher and coach at Epsom Girls Grammar is among her most significant achievements.
“I was at a game about a month ago and there was a young girl from Epsom playing lock – the same position as Ella. I was walking up and down the sideline, yelling out and there was a lady there who said hi and so I explained that I was Ella’s mum,” Spence says. “She said, ‘Oh she teaches my daughters, they’re in her rugby team at school and I’ve got a daughter who’s 14 and isn’t allowed to play club until she’s 16. All she wants to do is play with Miss Blackwell before Miss Blackwell retires’.”
Retirement isn't in her vocabulary right now. "As long as I'm enjoying my rugby, I want to keep playing. And at the moment I'm really enjoying my rugby. So we'll just play it by ear," Blackwell says. "I don't want to be that 40-year-old still playing, though."
Once she does hang up the boots, it’s not hard to guess where Blackwell will be, Spence says.
“We built her a little house on the beach at Barrier and I tell you what, that place is full of Black Ferns - every summer they all come over,” she says. “They train, they eat, they go diving, fishing, hunting. She’s brought people from all over the world to that place. That’s where she loves to be.”
