The search for Whangārei's first wāhine rugby player - she was 7 years old in the 1960s

Dick Thorburn recruited one of the first females to play rugby in Northland. Photo / Tania Whyte

Rugby is ingrained into Aotearoa's culture and thanks to the Rugby World Cup playing in Northland's backyard, the spotlight is on wāhine.

While men's rugby has been running since the 1870s, it was only in the 1980s that females were officially welcomed into the male-dominated sport.

The first women's selection was brought onto the field in 1989 with the Black Ferns later competing in the 1999 World Cup.

Dick Thorburn was coach of the Kamo Rugby Club around 1967 and was involved in the administration of school-aged children's rugby.

He contacted the Advocate, requesting we track down the person he believed was the first female rugby player to register in Whangārei.

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"She used to come along and play around with the kids and practice in the afternoons," Thorburn recalled.

"So I said to her father, 'does she want to play?' and he just said 'she wouldn't be allowed to play?"

Thorburn took Elizabeth to Kensington Park to register along with the male players. Once there, she was placed on the scales to be graded as was the process back in those days.

He said when the people in charge of registering the children heard her name, they exclaimed "s***, she's a girl!"

"They got the rulebook out and read it, they couldn't find any reason why she couldn't play."

Elizabeth, who would have been roughly 7 years old, played a few games before moving onto something else "as kids do", Thorburn said.