Olympic gold medal winning Black Ferns arrive home. Video / Alyse Wright
Portia Woodman-Wickliffe will depart these shores leaving a legacy that will last long after her or anyone reading this is still here.
Two Rugby World Cups, Two Rugby World Cup Sevens titles and a runners-up, a Commonwealth Games gold and bronze and two Olympic gold medals with a silver to boot.
Along the way she has been named as a two-time World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year, Sevens Player of the Year and in 2020, World Rugby Women’s Sevens Player of the Decade.
Woodman-Wickliffe is also the most prolific try scorer in women’s rugby history with the most tries in Rugby World Cups, with 20, most tries in a Black Ferns test, with eight, and most tries in Sevens Series history with 256 and by capping her international career with Olympic gold, established herself as the greatest to grace the women’s game - perhaps even men’s or women’s.
But speaking to the Herald ahead of her impending move to Japan to take up a contract at the Mie Pearls XVs side, with her wife and fellow Black Ferns legend Renee Woodman-Wickliffe, who also joins the club as assistant coach, Woodman-Wickliffe says despite her and her wife’s respective legendary status, their daughter Kaia - already an avid rugby player - has eyes only for the stars of the present and future.
“She doesn’t really care about us, she looks up to Katelyn Vahaakolo and I get it, parents are boring.
“We’ll just have to follow her around the world, that’s ok, I don’t mind that.”
Kaia is just 11 years old but is already obsessed with the game of rugby, says Woodman-Wickliffe, and spent much of their time in Paris at the Olympics asking for score updates from her team in Tauranga.
“It’s all she dreams about. All our time in Paris when she came to watch she kept saying she couldn’t wait to get home to play rugby.”
Attempts to get Kaia into other sports like netball, where her mum Portia made her sporting start at the Northern Mystics, have fallen on deaf ears.
“I’m proud, but I’m also like ‘darling you’ve got a long life ahead of you. You don’t want to play too much rugby too soon.’ But we’ll see.”
Portia Woodman-Wickliffe kisses goodbye to New Zealand, for now. Photo / Getty Images
The expedition to Japan is a full whānau affair. Portia, Renee and Kaia will all be making the trip and Woodman-Wickliffe says being able to experience it together makes it all the more special.
“I’m really stoked that as a family we get to experience this together. It’s going to be hard but we’re lucky that there’s technology out there with Google translate and all that kind of stuff to help us out.”
Having taken previous trips to Japan with the Black Ferns Woodman-Wickliffe has picked up a bit of the local language along the way - confidently introducing herself to the Herald in Japanese.
Champions have a champions mentality and Woodman-Wickliffe says she can’t wait to organise a tutor to get her up to speed even more as she finds not being able to hold conversation frustrating.
“There’s little bits but, you know, you just want to make a conversation and that’s the part that gets frustrating - you just can’t continue the conversation. You can spit words out at them, but what does that mean to them? I’m really looking forward to getting a tutor over there to be honest.”
A proud Ngāpuhi wāhine, Woodman-Wickliffe says she sees a lot of similarities between Japanese culture, customs and language with Māoritanga, tikana and reo and hopes to bring some of Aotearoa to her teammates.
“The languages are very similar. What you hear is what you get with Japanese and that’s very similar to Māori. The vowel systems and the way you pronounce the words are very similar and I’m excited to pass that on as well and I’m pretty sure they’ll pick it up easy as.
“A bit of our cultural side, our tikanga, our values, some of the ways that we live and do things - I think they’re very similar in the Japanese culture so I think there’s going to be a lot of overlap there.”
Using the example of overseas sponsorships to illustrate her want to improve in Japanese, Woodman-Wickliffe says she has struggled to communicate when in France which hindered relationships with some of her partners so learning the language will allow her to engage fully with the Japanese people.
The Woodman-Wickliffes won’t be all on their own in Japan, though. Fellow former Black Fern and sevens representative Janna Vaughn is the head coach at the Pearls and will be a friendly face and point of communication for the new arrivals.
“She’s so passionate, I was fortunate to play alongside her with sevens and fifteens... she’s from up home in Ngāpuhi. She talked about how there aren’t many foreigners in the team, let alone in the town we’re in, so it’s going to be interesting.
“I think for me I really enjoy that kind of challenge, as long as we do have a point to talk to and a communication point, which will be Janna, I think we’ll breeze through it,” she says.
Woodman-Wickliffe will take a little bit of home with her to Japan. Photo / Getty Images
It was another Black Fern, Sarah Hirini, whose own experience at Mia Pearls with the sevens team that lead Woodman-Wickliffe to sign in Japan once she called time on her international career.
“Talking to Sarah last year after she came back from her sevens campaign, she just raved about how cool the club was, even though she didn’t get to play in those early stages - by the time she did play she absolutely enjoyed her time there - and then her husband went back there this year with his coaching opportunities for their sevens season.”
A relationship between player and coach can swing like a pendulum depending on a team’s success or lack thereof. Adding a marriage into that relationship is an intriguing proposition but one that Woodman-Wickliffe says she and Renee are looking forward to the challenge of.
“I can go two ways, right? She can tell me I’m not doing enough and I need to train harder or I could be the one telling her what I want to be put forward to the coaches so we’ll see how this goes - it’s going to be interesting.”
Woodman-Wickliffe quips that her wife has dropped hints that she should return for a quick stint to sevens to work on her fitness ahead of the season - a clear display of how the work/life balance will operate.
A legacy of all-time success on the rugby field will not be the only thing Portia Woodman-Wickliffe leaves behind. A long time advocate for reducing food waste, she partnered with KiwiHarvest and HelloFresh 12 months ago and in that time the initiative has saved $300m in food waste in Aotearoa.
“Reducing food waste has always been a big passion of mine... when I was pitched the campaign and the kaupapa that was planned I thought ‘man, I’d love to be a part of this’ because I know I need a bit of help with it to be able to help other New Zealanders get the help and better understand of food storage, meal planning and all sorts of opportunities that are out there. I thought ‘let’s just get on this and have a go’.”
Through the use of social media in hopes of reaching younger Kiwis, the initiative aims to educate all age groups that there is time to make a difference no matter how late you start in life.
“These are moments where I really we think we can utilise it [campaign]. With the rise of social media and all those different aspects it allows us to break through as the new demographic for younger age groups.”
“I think we always have time as long as we make an effort.”
Kawhena Woodman, Portia’s father, was an All Black and played rugby until he was 55. His daughter is only 33 but has ambitions to play for as long as her pāpā rather than cross the bridge into the world of coaching, for now.
“To be honest I’m going to be playing rugby as long as my dad was. He always said as soon as he stopped rugby he’s going to cark it, if he was fit and ready he would definitely still be playing. The other thing is there’s no golden oldies for girls yet, so maybe by the time we get to 40 we’ll have to start up a golden oldies women’s competition.”
The Woodman-Wickliffe Cup certainly has a ring to it.
Will Toogood is an online sports editor for the NZ Herald. He enjoys watching people chase a ball around on a grass surface so much he decided to make a living out of it.
