It’s been a tumultuous year for the Black Ferns with a new coach and reshuffled squad, but Ruahei Demant has emerged as the unlikely leader as New Zealand chase a sixth World Cup title. Jim Kayes reports.
Ruahei Demant shouldn’t really be playing rugby.
The Black Ferns skipper has had three knee reconstructions and spent three years getting around on crutches, yet she will lead her country at the Rugby World Cup starting this weekend.
“I’ve done my ACLs three times, twice on the left and once on the right. The third one was when I was 20, it was the second time on the left knee and it was pretty challenging. The rehab was slow and painful," she says.
Let’s just run that through again. Three knee reconstructions, all before her 21st birthday.
Doubts crept in about whether she could come back, whether it was even worth trying, and she quickly realised she didn’t enjoy being around rugby if she couldn’t play.
That feeling was bittersweet as her younger sister, Kiritapu, made the Black Ferns in 2015.
“I wanted to wear the black jersey but it was hard to be around the game and to support my sister. It was really hard to separate my feelings of disappointment from supporting Kiri and the girls," Demant says.
But there was a flip side to being gutted at watching from the sidelines. “This is when I realised how much I enjoyed playing.”
Being at university (she's a lawyer) helped, as Demant mixed with women who cared little for rugby and had issues and problems to deal with that put a wrecked knee into perspective.
And then within rugby, she realised many of her teammates had careers, families, other interests outside of the game, that kept them grounded and, again, put a different perspective on her own setbacks.
Black Ferns co-captain Ruahei Demant scoring one of two tries against Australia
And then there is Demant herself. On my way to interviewing her, I flicked Black Ferns coach Wayne Smith a text to say we were about to catch up.
“You are a lucky man,” Smith, one of the greatest rugby minds New Zealand has produced, said. “She is eloquent, smart and considered.”
And so it proved.
Demant, 27, the fifth child in a family of six, is all of those things and, as Smith has also said, has a huge social conscience.
She has worked as a criminal registrar for the Ministry of Justice at Auckland’s North Shore District Court and now, as a contracted Black Fern, volunteers at the Community Law Centre in Otara.
Demant grew up in Omaio, a blink and you miss it town on State Highway 35, on the way from Ōpōtiki to Te Keha. It’s a place where life isn’t dictated by clocks but by the sun and where horses are as common as cars.
"We're not even a town,” Demant says. “There’s a shop, with a petrol pump, some food and a landline. We don't have Wi-Fi reception and the nearest pub is an hour away."
Demant’s life revolved around her marae, Ōtūwhare, and being completely immersed in a Māori world. It was a huge shock when the family moved north to live in Warkworth when she was 12.
“That was the first time I realised being Māori was different,” Demant says, adding that when she started at Mahurangi College, she was just as surprised to learn there were Māori who weren’t fluent in the language.
Equally, she was struggling with English.
“We had a spelling book to learn English words. We would write them down phonetically, but they still looked wrong. It was tough adjusting to this big Pākehā world," she says.
But there was a communal language the Demant sisters understood - sport. It was her older sister, Erina, who first played rugby with Ruahei and Kiritapu quick to follow.
“Girls rugby wasn’t very popular back then so the top athletes didn’t play,” Demant remembers. “It wasn’t a cool game to play but it was fun.”
And the Demant sisters were good at it. Kiritapu was playing senior club rugby for College Rifles in Auckland in 2013 and made the Black Ferns two years later aged just 18.
Ruahei debuted for Auckland aged 17 (the same year Kiritapu started at College Rifles) but those wretched knees meant she didn’t make the Black Ferns till she was 23.
She’s played 21 tests and will captain her country at the World Cup in October.
Demant says even thinking about captaining the Black Ferns - still now - stuns her as she had played under the amazing Fiao’o Fa'amausili and alongside some of the greats like Kendra Cocksedge, and never once thought she would lead the team out.
She takes over from Les Elder, who captained the Black Ferns on their terrible tour last year with two defeats each to England and France.
"I've never seen myself as a leader,” Demant says. “Definitely a game driver because of the position I play, but I was shocked to be asked. I definitely didn't expect that conversation."
She will share the duties with co-captain Kennedy Simon and feels the success the Black Ferns have enjoyed this year, first in the Pacific Four series with Australia, Canada and the USA, and then the Laurie O’Reilly tests against the Wallaroos, has helped the team’s confidence.
"The Pac4 success has also helped us as leaders. I look back at last year and Les [Elder] being captain for those four losses and the pressure she was under - I don't want to know what that feels like."
There is a calmness to Demant, an inner confidence that comes from her upbringing, her knowledge not just of who she is and where she is from. But it is also deeper than that.
“Being Māori is who I am, I wouldn’t be me without it. I know who I am and where I come from, and wherever I go, I carry that with me," she says.
That self-assuredness will help when the pressure comes on at the World Cup, her first, as the Black Ferns look to defend their title and win the trophy for a sixth time.
“Having it at home brings a different pressure because all our friends and family will be there,” Demant says.
“I haven’t thought about lifting the trophy, but I have fantasised about playing in the final at a packed Eden Park, where you can’t really hear because of the crowd, and being physically shattered at the end.”
It is a dream that may yet be a reality for a woman who has already overcome so much.
* This story first appeared in NZ Rugby World magazine, and is republished with permission. Their special Rugby World Cup issue is now on sale.
