Awhina Tangen-Wainohu on Finding Strong
Lessons from the front row
What do I spend more time on? Writing these or making these little graphics to go with?
With all the buzz of the upcoming Rugby World Cup, I have been thinking about a couple of players. At this point in the last cycle they weren’t on the radar of many, too busy grafting away in their regions. They would go on to become bolters of the Rugby World Cup squad. I am of course talking about Awhina Tangen-Wainohu and Santo Taumata. Two front rowers that would enter the cauldron of a world title defence having played just one Black Ferns match each.
After this whirlwind introduction to the world stage, we haven’t seen either of them since. Their names instead have been relegated to the injury lists.
This rapid ascension followed by serious injury had me asking questions. My own pathway to the front row was far from perfect. A blindside flanker, selected for representative rugby at hooker despite having zero experience in the front row. My first start was on Eden Park, where Seiuli Fiao'o Fa'amausili pinned my forehead to my knee at every scrum.
A couple of seasons later, I played my first game at prop again against the Auckland Storm. This time it was because the paperwork hadn’t cleared for a teammate and I was deemed capable purely on vibes. I called up my childhood friend to give me a crash course on the basics. I learnt more in that 40 minutes with him then I would from coaches in the rest of my career. When I arrived in England a couple of years after that, it was teammates who would finish my tuition in the dark arts.
I physically survived these first seasons in the front row, only just. Alongside a tricky shoulder, I carried the mental scarring of the experience for a long time afterwards. It was there in my throw til I hung up my boots.
But I hadn’t got to the top of our game, so surely the experience of a Black Fern would be something totally different? I sat down with Awhina to ask her some questions.
This is her story, in her own words.
A young Awhina on the charge for the Hawke’s Bay Tūī
AWHINA:
I've always been a bigger girl. My legs have always just stood out to everybody. But it wasn't until playing club that then they were like, ‘Let's try chuck you at prop’. I definitely didn't know technique at all but I fought a lot better than a lot of the other girls that were in.
Back in the days, all the coaching that I had through club as well as playing the Tūīs (Hawke’s Bay), was just ‘Put your head in, girl, stay in the fight. Stay in the fight. Put your head in’. That was just the way that it was.
I played prop and then I did my ACL. Had surgery, came back, played prop again. My first Farah Palmer Cup game, all I remember was it was against Counties. Before the game at training, they're like ‘All these Black Ferns play in this team. You need to put your head in and have confidence’. I was like, thanks?
So came up against T K (Te Kura Ngata Aerengamata, Black Fern #178) and Aotearoa (Matu’a, Black Fern #190). And we did like we always do. Hawke's Bay came in hot in the first 15 to 20 minutes and then we just went nnnyyyeeerrrn (imagine a descending aeroplane noise).
But I loved it, I loved being in the Tūīs.
We had a lot of older women in the team. And as much as it was a different environment, I just loved playing rugby. I wouldn't change anything but I just wish that I was more developed. As in I knew and got taught a lot more.
But I, to be fair, I still love being in the front row. Even having surgery, I still want to be in the front row.
I think I learnt more off players. Coming up here to Waikato, Toka (Natua, Black Fern #181) she did a little bit of helping with me. Showing me body shape, where to put my neck, where to put my binding arm. And then even Tarns (Tanya Kalounivale, Black Fern #237), she did a little bit of ‘this is how we need to sit with our legs’. But I would say I didn't start learning stuff properly until when I went to the World Cup.
A lot of technical stuff, I didn't get taught - Well, it definitely didn't register until Crono (Mike Cron) broke it down. Then that's when I was like, ‘Oh, that's what it's supposed to be’. Even when I look at my footage from back in the World Cup, I still wasn't great then. But I didn't get any feedback really until I was prepping for the World Cup and I was in some of the Black Ferns camps.
So you make FPC and coaches come into a season and prioritise certain things. A lot of the time it's like you should know your set piece. You should know how to lift. You should know how to scrum. But a lot of the time the girls obviously didn't learn anything in club. Most of them are really excited to play FPC, so they're like, ‘yeah nah, I can do that. Chuck me in and I'll do it for you’.
One thing, since finding out about my neck, was how can I help in my region? So pre-surgery I was helping with my club team. Even then, set piece development wasn't a priority. So it was like ‘Let's chuck them up against the under 85 men’. But we've got school girls. And I'm like, ‘No, I don't think that's right’.
The one thing that was really lucky here is that we actually had two wāhine, they're working in the union and they're actually leading front row clinics. We have that in different parts of the region, out in the countryside and one here in Hamilton. Holding them where we could get the bulk of the girls to come and have a look. We had that mid club, pre FPC.
Semps (James Semple) actually reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Are you able to help with our front row clinics?’ So I was working with individuals breaking down the fundamentals of scrum shape. How do we warm our neck up? How do we warm our shoulders up? How do we engage our core? How do we get power through the ground? Just the key little things, not fully going into technique of how to scrum as a loosehead, as a hooker or as a tighthead. Just really breaking down the fundamentals.
Coach Tangen-Wainohu in action
Travis Church and I did a lot with Vei (Veisinia Mahutariki-Fakalelu, who was a standout in the Premiership winning Waikato side), who was transitioning into the front row. She's been to every single front row club since I started and seen huge improvements. With the likes of her, she transferred early but she's had the fundamentals taught to her and you can see that in her play now.
Whereas you've got a lot of girls that were coming along that are in the FPC team, who have been playing prop for at least two - three years, that have bad habits. They just want to get in there, into a strong position to fight against somebody. It was really hard to break those habits down. Whereas, if you can catch them early, she's technically still learning a lot but she's strong. She's using her neck, she's making sure she's nice and stable in the neck. Staying nice and tight, big shoulders, big chest, all that sort of stuff. And it's been really cool to be in that because I never got it.
Post World Cup, I wanted to be that starting number one for the Chiefs Manawa. I was tracking really well, probably my better Bronco than I had in a long time. We had a pre-season game against the men's 85s and I did my AC joint and so I was out for a couple of weeks.
So finally though, we're looking good. You're named, you're cleared. Thursday scenarios I was playing. I ran the ball, went to go place but as I went to go place one of my mates came into clean and knocked the top of my head. The body was going down into placement and then just complete numbness.
I dropped the ball, legs went numb and I just yelled, “FOR FUCK SAKES!’ Everyone scattered. I got up straight away, I thought that I had a concussion, right? But I got up straight away, went over to the Doc (Dr Deb Robinson) and was like ‘I'm all good. Ask me a question. My name's Awhina. I'll tell you where I was born’.
She was just pretty much like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down. What happened? Tell me how you felt’. I was like, ‘Oh, it went a bit tingly, bit numb in the fingers and the legs’. And they're like ‘It's not a concussion’. What do you mean? I had no weakness. I had all my strength. I didn't get any tingliness or anything straight after.
That afternoon, we went for an MRI. She got it back pretty much straight away and Doc Deb called me into the room and said, ‘Look at this. I’m sorry, but you're not allowed to play this weekend’. And then she was like, ‘Do you need anyone to talk to? I need to tell you that you've got a bulge in your neck’.
I said, ‘Pardon me?’. And she said, ‘You've got a couple of bulges in your neck, you can see here’. She's showing me the photo. ‘So this is supposed to look like this, but yours is looking like a bean shape in your spinal cord’.
At that point, I didn't take it in. I didn't understand that's really bad. So stupid now that I think back but I was just like, ‘So when's the return? How long is it? Does it just go down?’ Because I didn't really know anything about it. Is it sort of like a fracture or is it like a bone? Does it just sort of go down in time?
I think obviously now, she probably didn't want to go too much into detail. She just wanted to explain where we were. You're not allowed to play. I think I need to talk to you a bit more in depth. Do you want to go home? Like, blah, blah, blah.
A couple of weeks later, we had more of an in depth conversation. And she explained that I do have a bulge, but I also have another bulge, which means I’m not allowed to pay for the rest of the season. And I just thought, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’.
Just like worlds, worlds of emotion. I was super, super angry and initially I blamed my mate. But as I started learning more about the injury, it was actually I've got to blame those coaches that put me in as a front rower at 16, 17, up against Black Ferns with no knowledge of playing in the front row.
Awhina and her son Hipirini are all smiles after her surgery
Obviously we had heard about this type of thing with Mains (Charmaine Smith, Black Fern #182). She was the first wahine that I'd ever heard of that had this injury. So I reached out to her. At this point, Aupiki is finished so Black Ferns now look after you. Everything is sort of transferred over. Dr Deb, she's a well known doctor but very, very busy. Once Aupiki is finished, she's done and dusted. So it was like onto the next, chuck you into a specialist, see who we can get.
There was not a lot of information. It was really new. We didn't really know what to do so I did a lot of contacting people. So I reached out to Niall (Williams-Guthrie, Black Ferns 7s Star and Aupiki champion), I reached out to Mains. I reached out to Angus Ta’avao who I still have conversations with now around the injury. I just tried to get as much information as I could, because ideally, I didn't want to have surgery.
I was trying to find all this information to decide what I wanted to do. Because it was, well, you're definitely not allowed to go back to rugby, right? Unless this bulge goes down. Mains went conservative. They say that her hormones from having a baby helped her bulge go down a little bit. Obviously, there's been no research to support that, but that's what it looked like.
I thought well, I don't really want to have another baby. I’ll just go conservative, see what it looks like and hope that it goes down. So every three months we were having another MRI and it just kept up showing the same thing. It wasn't until nine months down the line that I got sent for a CT and they found that it had calcified, so the bulge had actually turned to bone. So really, it had been there for a long time or was getting worse and worse and worse. But it wasn't until that knock on the top of the head that they realised that it was there.
Because I was asymptomatic, I had no problem moving and was training pre surgery. So they said you can either not have surgery but you're not allowed to play rugby anymore or we go for the surgery. For a front rower, the surgeons only recommend to have fusion and not the disk replacement, which Niall had. With fusion compared to disk replacement, disk replacement seems to be a little bit better but it's not strong enough for front rowers necks.
Booking in for surgery was then a whole other story. I got fucked around a lot. My CT was in September last year, I didn't get to see my surgeon until January this year and then I wasn't able to go for surgery till April. The delay was partially my fault because I wanted to go conservative. But also, how can we find out that it's turned to bone quicker? Why did I not get sent for my CT earlier? That should be a baseline. I'm grateful and privileged by being a Black Fern but an All Blacks would, 100%, get sent in straight away.
For people that are coming into this environment that’s so ugly to hear. But the reality is that there’s so many parts to being in this world. It’s really cool as well, you’re on Black Ferns Instagram, you get to go to Adidas in Germany and you get free kit. But when you’re not a part of that, you’re actually left to fend for yourself. You’ll get some help but only if you are lucky to have good people in your hub or place of training.
I’m concerned with the safety of looking after our people. Understanding that playing footy, there's so much light around rugby when you see it on social media. You see all the lovey dovey stuff. But there's so many other things that happen when you want to be a part of this world, you're involved in all of that. You see it, you hear it, you talk to people.
So being a wahine, be proud to be a wahine. Be proud to be part of a sport that never was given to women. We were just like, give it here, we play it better- nah! (Awhina laughs). You gotta be grateful and know you’re privileged but also ask questions.
Ask questions, stand up for yourself.
Awhina and her team mates face the sellout crowd at the 2021 World Cup
When I hear Awhina’s story, I hear a lot that deeply worries me. We are still profiling women and girls into the front row due to their size and then offering little guidance on how to safely succeed. Our position is an important and dangerous one. Knowing that, there needs to be a better standard of training across the board. That training needs to be universally accessible for front rowers.
I know as a club coach how hard it is to make room for these sessions amongst all the other aspects but Waikato have set up a pretty simple fix. Surely this should be the standard across the country?
We can’t get away with shrugging shoulders, offering cliche advice and making jokes about not understanding “what goes on in there”. The stakes are just too high.
I think how lucky we are that Awhina experienced this serious injury in an Aupiki environment. At the Farah Palmer Cup level, with a more green physio, her protests of being fine after the knock may have been taken at face value and then you shudder to think what would have happened.
I still see a lot of gaps in player welfare, even for those at the top. Our game demands we put our body on the line but are our preparations enough to help us meet those demands? Rugby can give so much but we have to get real about what it can take from us too. The risks we take in the dark places.
Awhina and Santo are both looking to return to play now, having done the work to rebuild their bodies. Let’s meet their effort and rebuild our systems to better look after our front row.
With you,
Alice
PS. I know the pools were drawn for next year and I will bring a break down of that in time for the next ticket general release on the 5 November. My key takeaways for now are:
Pool A: England, Australia, USA, Samoa - Very crunchy
Pool B: Canada, Scotland, Wales, Fiji - Lots of plot lines
Pool C: New Zealand, Ireland, Japan, Spain - Thank goodness we now have quarters
Pool D: France, Italy, South Africa, Brazil - No matter your allegiance, South Africa is ready to become your second favourite team.