Could Suzie be a triple-threat athlete?
SUZIE Bates has already played basketball at the Olympics and cricket at the Commonwealth Games, but now her White Ferns team-mate Thamsyn Newton is tipping her for a footy code too.
Newton ought to know – she’s a double-threat athlete who won the Twenty20 Super Smash cricket with the Wellington Blaze earlier this year and will line up today for the Wellington Pride against top-seeded Canterbury in the semifinals of rugby’s Farah Palmer Cup Premiership.
But could Bates really be a triple-threat?
‘‘We played Turbo Touch sometimes for White Ferns warm-ups and my go-to was always Suzie Bates,’’ Newton says. ‘‘We would just be a duo, so I actually wouldn’t mind kind of seeing Suzie Bates put the boots on. Maybe have her outside me, like a No 12, now that
I’ve transitioned into being a No 10, running some lines for me – things like that.’’
And it’s not such a long-shot. At Otago Girls’ High, Bates played in the backline alongside Black Ferns Sevens Olympic champion Kelly Brazier until she broke her collarbone, telling Newsroom this year that she loved the game. ‘‘I was a big girl for my age, so I charged through the midfield. I always wondered later in life, when I was fitter, how I’d go playing rugby again. But there’s always the fear of being injured.’’
Bates also told Newsroom that Brazier brought ‘‘the Black Ferns Sevens girls along’’ whenever the White Ferns were playing at The Mount.