Tui highly motivated after year of ‘smashing’ mates
Ruby Tui has started hearing a whistle in her dreams. That’s how much the rugby sevens star has been missing the sport after more than a year without any international competition.
The world champion Black Ferns Sevens have been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps more so than any other New Zealand national sporting team.
The World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series, which sees them and 11 other nations take part in tournaments in eight different countries during the year, has been on a hiatus since the Sydney Sevens last February.
Tui said it had been tough watching the sport effectively grind to a halt on the international stage due to the travel restrictions in place to combat the virus.
The Black Ferns Sevens have been restricted to training at their base in Tauranga for the past 12 months.
‘‘I feel like a real Kiwi now because I’ve been in New Zealand longer than a month at a time. We’re always travelling all over the world,’’ Tui said.
‘‘There’s been a lot of ups and downs but I truly believe that everything has been crucial for what we’re about to step into. Every country has gone through it and it’s who deals with it the best that is going to come out on top.’’
Tui said she was determined to make sure the lack of international games would not derail the Black Ferns Sevens’ bid to win a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in July, after settling for silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
So determined in fact, she quipped that even if the tournament was pushed back another 12 months she would have the same level of motivation as she did now.
‘‘We’ve literally dedicated a decade of our lives for this year, and I’m at the stage now where personally, if the Olympics got postponed another year, I don’t care.
‘‘I will do whatever it takes to be in that team.
‘‘The Black Ferns Sevens are one of the most well resourced female sports teams in New Zealand and for me, we’ve got a responsibility. We’ve done 10 years of fighting for it, we’ve got it, now what are we going to do with it?
‘‘The Olympics, it’s not just an amazing opportunity and something I watched as a little kid, it’s actually my responsibility to do a bloody good because we’ve gone through so much, it means so much more from a bigger picture.’’
In the absence of international games, the Black Ferns Sevens have had to look closer to home to find meaningful competition.
The country’s best men’s and women’s players have descended on Wellington for a three-day festival of rugby sevens that will culminate with games – in front of crowds again – before and after the Super Rugby Aotearoa match between the Hurricanes and Crusaders at Sky Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Tui is hopeful the opening of a trans-Tasman bubble will allow the Black Ferns Sevens to travel to Australia to play international games against the defending Olympic champions prior to Tokyo.
But right now she said the Wellington camp felt like a ‘‘trial’’ with the ultra-competitive squad split into two evenly matched teams, with 24 players vying for 12 spots on the final roster.
They will also take the field against teams representing the 15-a-side Black Ferns and Moana Pasifika.
‘‘It’s massively, massively important to play in a realistic context like that,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve been smashing each other up for a good year. Don’t get me wrong, when we split each other down the middle and we’re going at each other, it’s as hard as any World Series competition, and our squad is lucky that we have that.’’
‘‘Every country has gone through it and it’s who deals with it the best that is going to come out on top.’’ Ruby Tui