Photo recall: Just one of the boys, even in a rugby scrum

Photo / Geoff Dale, Photo research / Emma Land

Opinion

As the first girl to ever captain a North Shore rugby team, 7-year-old Jackie Smith let nothing stand in her way of throwing the ball around with the boys - not even her long locks.

"I was adamant I wasn't going to cut my hair, you see," Smith laughs.

"And all the boys used to pull on it. I was quite fast so they didn't really like me."

Pictured is Smith in 1977, leading her team to victory 32-0 against Glenfield.

With no rippa division or girls' league available at the time, Smith tackled among the boys until she was 11.

"They all treated me the same, and in the end that's why I had to stop playing the game," she says. "As I got older it just got too rough."

Rugby was a family affair for Smith as her three brothers also played for North Shore.

"There's generations of us being involved in the rugby club for years and years," she says.

"It's going back to the 60s and 70s. I've been with them forever, ever since I was a little baby."

And rugby continues to run in the genes. Smith's sons, Hunter, 9, and Jackson, 11, have played rippa since the age of 5, now don the sprigs for North Shore and have made representative teams. Her partner, Dean Rice, is the North Harbour Rugby head trainer.

Smith is still good friends with one of her teammates from her captaining days, who also went to Takapuna Grammar School with Smith.

"It's funny because we often laugh that we used to play rugby together," she says.

After turning in the rugby boots at 11, Smith took up softball, which she played for the next 20 years.

She made the New Zealand youth team in 1986 and went on to represent the country in the women's team.

This is where she met Rice, who also played for the Black Sox.