Cheree Kinnear
Meets the rugby player who just won’t quit, works 60 hours a week and keeps pushing to be better and bolder
Imagine playing competitive sport while working a 60-hour week. Well, Billie Jones makes it look easy. Starting each day at the crack of dawn, Jones, 37, makes her way to the Albany Massey Recreation Centre where she works as a fitness instructor and customer service representative.
Jones works eight hours a day in the university student gym, instructs four Fast Circuit Training classes, and at least two nights a week, works an additional six hour night-shift at The Warehouse.
Yet remarkably, you wouldn’t find Jones catching a nap between jobs. Instead, she’ll be running, jumping, and tackling at her local rugby club.
Like many of New Zealand’s weekend warriors, Jones isn’t a professional athlete, and with the ongoing pressure of balancing a busy work schedule, social life and sporting commitments, she admits things can get tough at times.
However, Jones’ determination to not let life get in the way of her passion for playing rugby has kept her on the field for more than 20 years.
“It gets really really hard because you have to be committed and you can’t let your teammates down. I get drained and tried, but I know I just have to keep pushing and go to training,” she said.
“I can’t just go to training either, I have to do my best, I can’t just slump around on the field. I have that internal drive that says ‘keep going, keep going, keep pushing’ and then it becomes automatic, just get up, go to work, go to training, go.”
Jones’ season will kick-off next month with the talented front rower playing for the East Coast Bays women’s rugby side. Jones has helped her North Shore-based club to the Auckland-wide premiership for the past two years.
But as if a large helping of club rugby success wasn’t enough to fill her plate, Jones has set her sights on re-selection in the North Harbour women’s representative side.
Jones has played for North Harbour over the past three years, and if selected this year, would be part of the Harbour Hibiscus team competing in the 2018 Farah Palmer Cup, the highest level domestic women’s rugby competition in New Zealand.
It features New Zealand’s top female rugby talent across 11 teams in premiership and championship divisions.
Jones described playing in the championship last year as “incredible”.
Inspired by her two brothers and growing up in a rugby-crazy household gave Jones a passion for the game from an early age.
“My family were all into rugby, but they were all boys and I always wanted to play, but there was no team that I could be in because I was just a 12-year-old girl,” she said.
“As soon as we got a school team, when I was 16, I was ready to play and I did.”
Jones played until her late 20s, when she opted to take a break from the sport.
After a few years away, she contemplated calling it quits, before deciding to make a comeback in 2014. It wasn’t just her passion for rugby that motivated her to return, rather the determination to break the agerestrictive stereotypes of the physically tough sport.
“I want to be fitter, I want to be stronger, and I want to be faster than all the girls that are 10 years younger than me, so that gave me motivation, and to know that I’m still playing at my age just feels good,” Jones said.
“When I was younger, I had different motivations. I wanted to play NPC and I wanted to push myself and make the team, but when you reach an age where you think, ‘I’m too old to play’, you just have to push yourself.
“One day, you won’t be able to play any more and what happens then? You missed out on doing those big tackles and scoring great tries.”
Jones takes her “no excuses” mantra to the field every time she trains and although the humble player wouldn’t call herself a role model, her commitment and determination is viewed as an inspiration by many of the younger players in her team.
Jones said now her original goals for the sport had now been ticked off, but if she were to set her sights on something, it would be to continue playing into her early 40s.
“I still want to be able to play for another three of four years,” she said.
“I still want to play in my early 40s and keep up with all the young girls even at an older age — they don’t even realise I’m so old because I’m so ‘kidish’ in the team.
“Everyone else is out there, so surely if they can do it, I can do it, too. That’s why I say ‘no excuses’.”