Awhina Tangen-Wainohu wanted to be a better mum, and also ended up our latest Black Fern. Suzanne McFadden talks to the dynamic prop, her old school coach and a Tall Fern who helped get her there.
If it wasn’t for Awhina Tangen-Wainohu’s little boy, Hipirini, she doubts she’d ever have become a Black Fern.
Hipirini turned two on Tuesday, while his mum was in Adelaide with the New Zealand rugby team preparing for tomorrow’s second test against the Wallaroos. It was a tough day for Tangen-Wainohu, struggling to keep her mind on the on-field training while missing her son.
And it's been a testing week, waking up at 5am to call home to talk to him.
Last Saturday, Hipirini had been on the field at Orangetheory Stadium, in his mother’s arms straight after she made her debut in the black jersey in the Black Ferns' 52-5 victory. In the Christchurch crowd were her whānau who’d travelled from around the country to watch her play.
It’s been a challenging journey for the 24-year-old powerhouse prop to get to a high point she’d never foreseen.
After an achilles injury, a largely sedentary pregnancy and an emergency caesarean, Tangen-Wainohu has spent the last 18 months gradually building up her strength and fitness again, primarily to be “a better mum”.
But with that came her first Black Ferns cap.
Almost a week on from that unforgettable achievement, Tangen-Wainohu’s still in disbelief.
“It’s still very new. I’m sure they do it to all the newbies, but some of the girls keep saying ‘Heya Black Fern’, and it’s still so weird to hear,” she says.
“I often say to my partner: ‘Imagine if I hadn’t had my boy, would I have been here?’ And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t be.
“Before I had my son, I was just a ‘Tuesday-Thursday afternoon training and play on Saturday’ kind of rugby player. I’d have a drink and eat at McDonalds and what not. So I wasn’t the ideal athlete.”
But she pays credit to former Tall Ferns basketballer, Matangiroa Flavell, and her fitness gym in Hamilton for helping to wheel her life around.
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Tom Blake looks out his office window at Karamu High School in Hastings towards the school whare, and the spot where he first met Awhi Tangen-Wainohu six years ago.
The teacher, and coach of the girls first XV, knew the Year 12 student who’d just moved to the school would make a top rugby player.
“I knew she was from Wairoa, like me, so I had a chat with her and asked if she played the game,” he says. She told him she didn’t. “I can’t remember the exact words, but I told her ‘With tree trunks like those, you’re built to play rugby’.”
Tangen-Wainohu, who hails from the small Hawkes Bay settlement of Nūhaka (her marae Kahungunu), laughs remembering her response. “I go ‘Yeah you’re not wrong, but that doesn’t take away from the fact I’m really scared of playing,” she says.
Blake invited her along to the team’s Tuesday training, half expecting her not to turn up. She did.
“Then I knew she was special, because she took it upon herself to say, ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go’,” he says. “Now we have a joke in the team – when we invite girls to try out, we ‘Awhi’ them along to training.”
The first game Tangen-Wainohu played was against her previous school, Wairoa College. “As soon as I got the ball in hand, I was just like I love this! You’re running and bunting people off,” she says.
She’s grateful to “Blakey” and the women in her first club side, Havelock North.
“The older women in my team would pick me up for evening trainings and drop me home afterwards, because my dad at the time wasn’t in the best headspace, nor could he afford it,” she says.
“Sometimes after school training, Blakey would take a vanload of us back to his house and give us a kai, and then take us to club trainings. I really want to acknowledge those people – if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be playing now.
“This week, I got so many messages from people from high school, primary school, old teachers and coaches who were like ‘Look where you are now’. It’s crazy.’”
One of them was Blake. “Excited, proud, ecstatic is an understatement,” he says.
“She had to find herself first and rugby was her avenue. Awhi never took a backward step from then on. Her attitude to learning the game was spot on, and she really enjoyed herself doing it.”
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By 2017, Tangen-Wainohu made the Hawke’s Bay Tui side in the Farah Palmer Cup. After a season, she moved to Hamilton to get better rugby opportunities and was immediately included in the Waikato FPC side.
She was happy in her rugby, not dreaming of a Black Ferns future. Then late in 2019, she partially ruptured an achilles.
“I was injured – and that’s how I ended up getting pregnant,” Tangen-Wainohu says, laughing.
“Then we went into lockdown for Covid. We couldn’t see our physios, or go to the pools, so I just sat on the couch, heavily pregnant, and did next to no recovery.”
Hipirini arrived by emergency caesarean and it took his mum a little while to get back on her feet. One of her team-mates was working at a new gym called The Movement NZ, and suggested Tangen-Wainohu sign up for an eight-week challenge. “I never looked back,” she says.
“It was not only the motivation to get fit for my boy and be a better mother, but they really helped me learn more about my body.
“It also connected me with Te Reo Māori - they speak fluent Te Reo there. There were a lot of Pacific Islanders and Māori, so I felt really comfortable.”
She joined the māmā class, which included a creche for Hipirini.
“They break down things for women who are hapū, and help you post-partum, coming back into fitness at your own pace,” Tangen-Wainohu says. “It wasn’t to get back to rugby – I wasn’t even thinking about rugby at the time. But just to get fit again, and I fell in love with it.”
Basketballer Matangiroa Flavell working out in her Te Rapa gym, The Movement NZ.
The Movement is run by former Tall Ferns shooting guard Matangiroa Flavell, who’s since become a good friend of Tangen-Wainohu. Having spent three years on a US college basketball scholarship and playing for New Zealand, she understands what the rugby player has been through to earn the silver fern.
“It was really emotional for me to see my friend, and a member of my gym, become a Black Fern,” says Flavell. “Having been at the very beginning of her journey, it was so special to see all her hard work paying off.
“We’re the same age and we’re similar in what we do in the gym – 100 percent going for it [Flavell also played for Whai in the new Tauihi league this season]. I’m just so proud of her.”
Just five months after Hipirini was born, Tangen-Wainohu’s club coach at Hamilton Old Boys asked if she wanted to play again. She decided to give it a try – but with an army of helpers.
“I’d be training in the afternoons and my boy would be on the sidelines with my dad,” she says. “Or I’d have to rush home because my boobs were so sore and I had to breastfeed my boy.
“Initially it was really hard because he was super clingy to me. So on Saturdays just before I put the strip on, I’d feed him and then go play. Then as soon as I got off the field, it was straight to him on the sidelines to feed him again.
“Here and there it’s been hard. But my support system – my dad, my sister and my partner back home – have played a huge role when I’m training or playing.”
In April 2021, a few weeks into her return to club rugby, Tangen-Wainohu was invited to join the Chiefs to play the Blues in the first-ever women’s Super Rugby clash, after another forward was injured.
“I didn’t know if I was good enough at that stage,” she says. “I went to a couple of trainings and they were happy as, and I got named in that first match.”
She made the Chiefs Manawa side, victorious in Super Rugby Aupiki this year, but found it difficult living in a bubble away from Hipirini.
Despite the challenges, Tangen-Wainohu has continued to build her reputation as a hard-hitting, try-scoring loosehead prop.
She crashed over the tryline twice in Waikato’s opening game this season, a come-from-behind 33-24 victory over Manawatū Cyclones. Earlier this month, she earned her Waikato blazer after playing her 18th game, propping up the scrum with fellow Black Fern Tanya Kalounivale against the Bay of Plenty Volcanix.
When she got the call up, included in the Black Ferns squad to play for the Laurie O’Reilly Cup, Tangen-Wainohu was too “super excited” to cry. She shed tears, though, when she was named on the bench for the first test in Christchurch.
She ran on alongside the other test rugby debutant, sevens star Tyler Nathan-Wong, soon after halftime. And as part of a whole new front row, helped New Zealand win a penalty from a scrum - just a minute into her Black Ferns career.
“The atmosphere was amazing,” she says of her 34 minutes on the field. “You play club rugby and you feel like you’re playing the whole day, but there, the time wasn’t long enough. The game was over so quick.”
Among her cheer squad in the stands were her partner and son, her dad, sister and brother, and her two youngest siblings who live in the South Island.
“When I first found out I was selected, they all booked to come down regardless of whether I was named to play or not. It was so cool,” she says.
Tangen-Wainohu makes way for another debutant in tomorrow’s second test, with 19-year-old Bay of Plenty prop Santo Taumata named on the bench. But Tangen-Wainohu still has her sights set on a place in the Black Ferns side to defend the Rugby World Cup at home in five weeks’ time.
“To play alongside the best women’s rugby players in the world is crazy and on our own whenua is even more crazy,” she says. “Having my baby and whānau in the stands would be amazing. I just have to keep working hard.”
* The Black Ferns take on the Wallaroos at Adelaide Oval on Saturday, at 2.45pm (NZT), live on Sky Sport 1.
