Wayne’s World
Wayne Smith’s last dance with the Black Ferns is a Rugby World Cup final before an expected world record crowd for women’s rugby against a formidable England team on a 30-match winning streak.
The tournament hosts, and the reigning five-time champions, face the favourites tomorrow night in Auckland for what is likely to be Smith’s final match as a coach on the game’s biggest stage, with more than 40,000 due to fill Eden Park.
‘‘This has been an experience I never thought I would enjoy so much,’’ Smith said at yesterday’s press conference, ‘‘once you understand the struggle for these women to be here.’’
Smith, too, has led the Black Ferns in honour of another great mate, a man he considers his coaching mentor, the late Laurie O’Reilly, who died from cancer in 1998.
O’Reilly was a pioneer for women’s rugby who championed the game decades before the greater prominence it has today. He coached New Zealand’s first women’s team – before they were known as the Black Ferns – and led them at the first women’s World Cup in 1991 in Wales.
The trophy contested by the Black Ferns and Australia, the O’Reilly Cup, is named after him.
‘‘The other day, I got a text from his daughter, [former Black Fern] Lauren, and Chris, the son, saying he would have loved the freedom with which you play,’’ Smith said.
‘‘He would have said keep attacking, keep going at it, and don’t worry about the result.
‘‘That’s coach. That’s what he would have said.’’
Smith asked the Black Ferns to adopt a more attacking, expansive game plan to suit their DNA for the immense challenge of northern powerhouses England and France.
It’s got them to the final, albeit with slices of luck in last Saturday’s semifinal win over France, and it’s won plenty of admirers.
‘‘I think we’re in a place not a lot of people thought we would get to. That French team was outstanding, athletic and wellprepared,’’ Smith said.
‘‘We’ve got perhaps the best team of all time to play on the weekend. We’re enjoying it, but we’re going to have to be at our very best.’’
This unexpected journey has been memorable for Smith, who will head to Waihi Beach once the tournament is over and, potentially, back into retirement.
His career could have yet another highlight tomorrow night to match, or surpass, his success in roles with the All Blacks, Crusaders and Chiefs, amongst others.
The Black Ferns have only turned fully professional for the first time this season.
‘‘They’re smart and make the most of the occasion. They don’t get too uptight. They don’t see the point because it’s been that hard to get here,’’ Smith said.
‘‘They enjoy it, they sing, they dance and thump the music out on the bus. I’m trying to think about what I’m going to say at halftime, and this music is pumping out, and I’ve got people talking.
‘‘But I’ve come to love it. I love these girls. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a lot of fun, but I’ve got other plans coming up.’’
One member of England’s formidable forwards was a Black Ferns triallist in her teens and remains good mates with star New Zealand loose forward Sarah Hirini.
Born in England, Amy Cokayne captained the Feilding High School first XV team that won 53 matches in a row under the tutelage of Rob Jones and has become one of the world’s best hookers – with England’s Red Roses, however, and not the Black Ferns.
She starts in tomorrow night’s Rugby World Cup final when England are favourites to beat the Black Ferns at Eden Park.
The 26-year-old lived in New Zealand between the ages of nine and 17 and was called up for the Black Ferns’ wider training squad, at just 16, after impressing for Manawatū in the Farah Palmer Cup and the Feilding Old Boys Ō roua club.
‘‘It was a shock. International rugby was so far away from where I was,’’ Cokayne said.
‘‘It closed that gap a lot and made me think seriously about it which, at 16, I probably wasn’t ready to do.’’
Black Ferns assistant coach Wes Clarke, who was coaching around Manawatū at the time, remembers she was special.
‘‘I remember taking her to a coaching course. She was teaching the men about toes pointing out versus toes pointing in,’’ Clarke said this week.
‘‘They were all saying ‘who’s this girl?’ She was great.
‘‘Unfortunately, she was lost to us. We probably had a chance to keep her if we were better at the time.’’
Her family emigrated to New Zealand when her father transferred from the UK’s Royal Air Force to the Royal New Zealand Air Force, based in Ohakea near Bulls, in a career she would follow once returning to the UK, earning the rank of flight lieutenant while continuing to transition to full-time rugby.
It’s why she stands to attention, separately from team-mates, for England’s national anthem.
‘‘It’s what you do when you’re in the military,’’ she said.
The Black Ferns trial in Auckland, however, was one of the catalysts for her rugby career to take off after first playing the game as a five-year-old with Bristol’s Cleve Rugby Club.
‘‘My older brother used to play rugby.
‘‘I was dragged down to his trainings when I was a bit of a nuisance, getting in the way of his age group,’’ Cokayne said.
‘‘They booted me to my age group. I’ve played ever since.’’
She was also a talented javelin thrower at high school in Manawatū but committed to rugby. ‘‘I tried to get involved in as many sports as possible because it normally meant you got a day off school,’’ she said.
Her family are fanatical for sport, too, and especially football, naming Cokayne after their beloved Premier League club, Aston Villa. The first letter in each of her names, Amy Victoria Fiona Cokayne, is the same as the club’s initials.
Cokayne says Jones, who was also a coaching mentor for Hirini and opposing Black Ferns hooker Georgia Ponsonby, instilled in them the drive to work hard and be ‘‘super professional’’, as a player as well as a person.
‘‘If your boots weren’t clean, it didn’t matter who you were, you weren’t playing. We trained really hard and had good fitness programmes from the age of 13,’’ Cokayne said.
Cokayne returned to England when she was 17 and hasn’t looked back. She was part of the English team which lost the 2017 Rugby World Cup final to the Black Ferns in Belfast.
Hirini and Cokayne’s families remain close, although neither of the players will catch up until after Saturday night.
‘‘She’s awesome,’’ Hirini said of Cokayne this week.
‘‘Other than [Georgia Ponsonby], she’s probably one of the best hookers in the world at the moment. There will be a few cheeky things from her at the bottom of the ruck.’’
‘‘There will be a few cheeky things from her at the bottom of the ruck.’’ Black Fern Sarah Hirini on friend and rival Amy Cokayne