Black Fern’s comeback
Black Fern Charmaine McMenamin is on the comeback trail from a rare spinal injury that she said briefly caused her to lose the feeling in her legs.
The 31-year-old from the tiny East Cape settlement of Rangitukia was the Black Ferns’ player of the year in 2019 and played a starring role in the 2017 Rugby World Cup win.
But she spent four months last year not knowing if she could ever play the game she loves again.
The Auckland Storm loose forward said she felt a pinch in the act of scoring a try for Ponsonby in Auckland’s premier club final against Manurewa last June.
‘‘Dopey me, I carried on playing,’’ she said.
‘‘It took a while to figure it out, but I had bone spurs. I saw loads of sports scientists and the top dude said it was very uncommon.
‘‘It felt like I lost power and was just tired, but then it happened again. People thought I just got winded, but it felt bad.
‘‘I still walked back to halfway and carried on playing.’’
She was later told there ‘‘was something seriously wrong’’ and was in limbo about her prospects of returning to play.
‘‘I pulled away from rugby because it was just too hard. I’m so passionate about it. I’d had a good run and never regretted my time in the jersey, but somebody else had told me I couldn’t play again, which was the hard thing,’’ she said.
Bone spurs, or osteophytes, are small, smooth bony growths that may develop near the edges of a vertebral body’s endplates, or the spine’s facet joints where cartilage has worn.
However, McMenamin has recovered after a spinal fusion last October and since played for her Ponsonby club.
‘‘They said I could play again and here I am,’’ she said. ‘‘They cleaned it out – now I’m fused from my T8 to T12 [in her thoracic vertebrae].’’
She could yet force her way into contention for this year’s World Cup squad after playing the last of her 25 tests in 2019, albeit while the Black Ferns went 27 months without test rugby because of Covid-19’s impact.
Today’s match for the country’s top women’s players – between the Rawata and Ngalingali teams in Pukekohe – is effectively a World Cup trial to give the likes of McMenamin, as well as former captains Les Elder and Eloise Blackwell, a chance to impress Wayne Smith’s coaching team after missing last month’s Pacific Four Series.
However, McMenamin is happy to be playing again – in whatever form – after needing her surgery last October.
It was only days before the Black Ferns faced England in their first test of last year’s troubled northern tour – they lost 43-12 and returned home with four heavy defeats from Europe.
McMenamin is back this year, although she missed Super Rugby Aupiki in March, and is expected to feature prominently for Auckland in the Farah Palmer Cup.
That starts next weekend and gives her more time, potentially, to be in the mix for the Black Ferns.
She last played in black in two matches against the New Zealand Barbarians in 2020 and has been a contracted player since 2018.
Several promising loose forwards have since emerged and
were excellent on tour and in the Pacific Four Series, such as
fellow Coastie Kaipo Olsen-Baker and her Auckland team-mates Liana Mikaele-Tu’u and Tafito Lafaele.
McMenamin said the added competition was good for everyone ahead of their home World Cup in October and November.
‘‘Of course, you’re going to feel a little bit anxious for your spot, but it’s just footy at the end of the day. You can only do what you do best,’’ she said.
‘‘What they’ve changed the most is keeping the ball alive. Smithy is really big on that. I enjoy that because I play like that anyway,’’ she said.
‘‘I’m quite excited to have a jam and go at it.’’