A young army captain who led the major rebuild of a flood-destroyed bridge, Laura Bayfield is now storming the rugby field, playing in the first Black Ferns XV this weekend. Suzanne McFadden reports.
There’s no bridge too far for Laura Bayfield.
A New Zealand Army captain at just 24, Bayfield believes in taking every opportunity that comes her way.
At the age of 20, she led a team of military engineers to build one of the longest Bailey bridges in New Zealand – across the Waiho River on the West Coast – after raging floodwaters washed away the lifeline between two key tourism communities.
A proud sapper – or army engineer – Captain Bayfield is now second in charge of the 3rd Field and Emergency Response Squadron based just south of Christchurch.
And all through her military career, she’s managed to stay on a parallel path with sport.
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She’s tried her hand at rugby league, playing in the national women’s premiership in her first year, and following in the strides of her fullback grandad, Roy Moore, who played for the Kiwis in the 1950s.
She’s battled back from two serious injuries – one, a fractured ankle that saw her choppered out of remote West Coast bush during the Godzone adventure race.
After only four years playing rugby, the soaring lock claimed the No.4 jersey as her own in the Canterbury side in this season’s Farah Palmer Cup. And now she’s made the inaugural Black Ferns XV to meet Samoa's Manusina XV in Pukekohe this weekend.
Bayfield puts this latest opportunity right up there with building a bridge.
“It’s unreal – they’re such a cool group of people to be around,” she says. “We’re preparing for the game on Saturday but also getting an insight into the life of a professional athlete.
“I’m loving it. If this could pay the bills, it would be awesome.”
Of course, it's Bayfield’s dream to make rugby a profession and play for the Black Ferns test side. And if it came down to a matter of having to choose between two careers, she thinks she knows which way she’d lean.
“I really enjoy being part of the army, and I know it will always be there,” she says. “If the opportunity came with rugby, I could always join the territorial forces and do that part-time.”
The army, she says, has been “super supportive” of her playing sport outside work, allowing her time to train, travel and play during rugby season. (Last week she managed to merge the two, and play rugby for the Defence Ferns).
“A lot of the values align between rugby and the army. So it feels like it’s been a pretty seamless transition between the two,” Bayfield says.
“The same things are valued – the camaraderie, the culture, and the connections with people.”
It was the armed forces that first led Bayfield to the rugby field. Well, more correctly, an international rugby-playing army supply technician.
Bayfield grew up in Auckland, where her parents still live, and in her years at Mt Albert Grammar School, she played netball, volleyball and hockey. “Never rugby,” she says. “I never thought about it – until one of my mates mentioned it.”
That mate was Black Ferns Sevens and Hurricanes Poua player Crystal Mayes, who was also in the 2nd Engineer Regiment in Palmerston North in 2020 with Bayfield. “She saw me at a PT session and said ‘Come along to rugby training you’ll love it’. And I did,” Bayfield says.
Bayfield started out with the Linton club. With her lofty height – 1.77m – she was put straight in at lock. “Fortunately, I’ve learned to love the position,” she laughs.
The next year, she moved to Pahiatua and played for the Bush club for a season, before her new role in the 3rd Field and Emergency Response Squadron took her south to the Burnham Military Base.
In 2022, Bayfield made her Farah Palmer Cup debut, but with Tasman Mako – as a loan player from Canterbury. “There was a group of us travelling from Christchurch to Nelson to train and play every week,” she says. “It was such a cool experience.”
Until it turned ugly. In her fourth game with the Mako, she tore the medial cruciate ligament in a knee, ruling her out for the rest of the season.
“The army were again so supportive,” Bayfield says. “We’ve got great facilities at work that support rehabilitation. I was able to really concentrate on my rehab, and come back fitter, faster, stronger.
“As bad as it was, it taught me a massive lesson about how to look after my body and how to prepare myself for such a high-intensity sport. I think it’s made me a better athlete.”
Bayfield had never been so nervous than before her debut for Canterbury this year, but she started the match at Christchurch’s Rugby Park playing at lock and finished at No.8 in their 58-29 victory over Wellington Pride.
The defending champions had “a very awesome season”, until falling at the last hurdle to Auckland Storm in the grand final earlier this month. “We knew it was going to be a tough game and they just wanted it more,” Bayfield says.
She wants to experience winning a national championship title, even defend a world title with the Black Ferns, and “become the best player and the best version of myself I can be”.
As with everything she’s done, her motto is “to put my best foot forward and take any opportunity that comes my way”.
The Mt Albert Grammar prefect enlisted in the army in 2017, after she went to a two-day symposium at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in Whenuapai focusing on women in the defence force. Engineers run in her family, but it was the variety of an army engineering career that piqued her interest.
“Engineering in the army is quite different to structural or civil engineering. We do boating, search, demolition and bridging,” she says. “The emergency responders are really diverse – we have combat engineers and firefighters. It’s a great squadron to be part of.”
Her dad and sister, Emma, are both civil engineers: “They always call me the ‘fake’ engineer, because I never got a degree."
But they haven’t built a Bailey bridge.
Reconnecting the Franz Josef and Fox Glacier communities with the 170m-long Waiho Bridge back in 2019 remains one of the highlights of her career, says Bayfield, then Second Lieutenant with the 2nd Engineer Regiment.
“That was incredible. I’d had no experience building a Bailey bridge before, but my team of 16 had. They were hands-on, getting the bridge physically put together,” she explains. “My job was a lot of liaison, working with the New Zealand Transport Agency and Downer contractors to build the bridge.”
The original bridge had been washed away by floodwaters and boulders after two days of torrential rain in South Westland – costing local businesses an estimated $48 million in lost income. But once the “giant puzzle” had been completed, in just 18 days, it was believed to be the largest bridge the Army has helped build since the Second World War.
“It was pretty cool to watch the first cars drive over the bridge, and know what it meant to the locals,” Bayfield says. “It was an honour to be part of that process.”
Most recently in her role with the Emergency Response Squadron, Bayfield has been training in small boats around Akaroa and Lyttelton.
She’s been out of the “office” lately, though – dashing from one rugby camp to another. Last weekend, she wrapped up the Defence Ferns series against the NZ Police and NZ Universities, to join the first ever Black Ferns XV squad of 27. The premise behind the new team, coached by Whitney Hansen, is to expose the rising stars of New Zealand rugby to the professional environment and give them a taste of international rugby.
To wear the fern twice in a fortnight is “amazing”, Bayfield says. “For me it’s representing my family name, and hopefully making them proud. And being able to do that with heaps of my mates is so cool.”
It makes little difference she comes from a proud league family. Her grandad, Roy Moore, a goalkicker who toured with the Kiwi Ferns to Australia, England and France in the 1950s, passed away last year.
“I guess I got a few of his genes passed down,” says Bayfield, who starred for the Mid-Central Vipers in the 2021 NZRL national premiership, but then put league aside to focus on rugby.
Bayfield harbours another sporting dream. Two years ago, she had to be rescued by helicopter from the West Coast bush after fracturing her ankle 24 hours into the Godzone adventure race.
“I’ve definitely got some unfinished business there once rugby dies down,” she says.
With so many opportunities flooding in, that could be a way off yet.
* The Black Ferns XV v Manusina XV kicks off at Navigation Homes Stadium, Pukekohe, on Saturday at 4.35pm, and will screen live on Sky Sport 1.
