Woodman continues path to recovery
Portia Woodman was an unstoppable force in world rugby but nearly two years of no professional sport and injury setbacks left the Black Ferns speedster questioning her future in the game.
Woodman was winning global accolades regularly, individually and with the champion New Zealand women’s 15s and sevens teams in 2017 and 2018, with her strength and pace bulldozing opposition defences.
But a ruptured Achilles in October 2018 sidelined her for 12 months, then a hamstring tear down the same left leg towards the end of last year meant no return on the World Sevens Series, which was abandoned in July because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In fact, the 29-year-old’s debut for her home province Northland in the Farah Palmer Cup last weekend was her first competitive appearance since an outstanding 10-try performance at the 2018 USA Sevens in Colorado, the same month of the Achilles injury she suffered in training.
Woodman said she ‘‘lost trust in her body’’ because of those injuries but sport’s hiatus once Covid-19 hit had its benefits for the former winner of World Rugby’s player of the year award.
‘‘I was quite excited about the talk of a lockdown [in March],’’ Woodman said. ‘‘With the pressures of the world, if you were lucky enough to still have your job, you could stop and do what you want to do.’’
Woodman spent lockdown at home in Tauranga with her partner and Black Fern Renee Wickliffe, her parents came down from Auckland to live with them, and a ‘‘big wha¯nau’’ was there for games, homeschooling, cooking – and she loved the downtime.
When the first lockdown ended in May, she also dabbled in club sport with netball and rugby in her hometown of Kaikohe.
The focus for Woodman and the Black Ferns Sevens in 2020 was the one prize still eluding them, Olympic gold, after World Series victories and a golden 2018 of triumphs at the Com
monwealth Games and the Sevens World Cup.
However, as soon as the Tokyo Olympics were postponed 12 months due to Covid-19, New Zealand was in its first week of lockdown and Woodman had more time to figure out a road to recovery, hoping a return to the netball court, albeit socially, would help.
Woodman played professional netball until switching to rugby in 2012 and believes netball could help her rediscover the career-best rugby form she demonstrated on the world stage until that Achilles injury.
‘‘I was working on speed training with netball and it was about giving myself a chance to do what I did way back in the day,’’ she said.
‘‘I know my body knows how to do it, but I lost the trust in my body after those injury setbacks and [netball] was another stepping stone towards getting back into rugby.’’
Woodman did return for the Black Ferns Sevens at last November’s Oceania Sevens in Fiji, but she ‘‘wasn’t in a good condition’’, succumbing to a low-grade hamstring tear that ruled her out of the World Series before it shut down.
With no sevens, Woodman has returned to the 15-a-side game for the first time since starring in New Zealand’s 2017 World Cup victory, representing Northland, who host Auckland tomorrow in just their second season in the women’s national provincial competition
Woodman is hoping to play on home turf when New Zealand hosts the 15s World Cup next September, subject to Covid-19 restrictions, and there is still the ‘‘unfinished business’’ of turning her sevens silver medal into gold at the Tokyo Olympics.