NO GRAY AREAS

Motherhood is no roadblock to league career for our new Origin talent

TAZMIN Gray is on a mission to show women that motherhood is no roadblock to a rugby league career.

The burgeoning women’s game will tonight take a leap forward with the annual Queensland versus NSW clash to be played under the State of Origin banner – instead of “interstate challenge” – for the first time.

Gray will start in the second-row for Queensland just four months after giving birth to her second daughter, Kyan, and less than two months after making her return to the field in club footy for Burleigh.

Before that late April comeback, her previous game

was in the corresponding match last year.

“My biggest goal this year was just to get back out on the field and play footy because of how much I missed it,” she told the Bulletin.

“I’m just grateful for the opportunities that I have been given because it is not

every day that a woman is able to come back from especially having kids because it is so hard to juggle the two.

“I just want to show that women can do it and it is achievable. Anything they put their mind to they can achieve.

“It’s not, you have kids and then your life is over – because

I kind of thought that’s how it was.”

The 22-year-old was full of praise for her husband Anthony’s role in making her sporting comeback possible.

“Everything he does for me and for our daughters is what needs to be commended,” she said.

Gray said she treated her time away from football during her pregnancy as she would for an injury-enforced break, with a rehab period required before returning to the field.

The match tonight will be Gray’s third straight appearance for Queensland and she’s hoping this will be the year they wrestle the trophy back north of the border.

She added the new-found Origin status for the women’s game was “a proud feeling” and had been reflected in the side’s most professional camp yet.

Burleigh coach Tahnee Norris said Gray’s selection was just reward for all the hard work she had done to get herself back to her best footy.

Tazmin Gray will tonight line up in the first women’s Origin match, just four months after giving birth to a second child, Kyan (inset with Velarn, 2, and dad Anthony Gray).

Picture: NIGEL HALLETT Origin representative Tazmin Gray with husband Anthony, and children Velarn (second from left) and Kyan.