Cassie Siataga - In her own words
On wanting to be the person she needed.
All the images in this story come from the supremely talented, Toreka Tele’a.
I’m going to be honest, I had a hard time trimming this conversation down.
Cassie Siataga is a beautifully open book, willing to talk about the real stuff alongside her vision for the game we love. I have left almost all of it in cause who am I to keep you from these gold nuggets? So consider this your warning and bookmark this yarn for a moment you have time to digest.
One of the questions I like to ask the old girls of our game is “Were you aware you were making history when you were living it?”. It feels like we are at another one of these moments for the women’s game at the moment, particularly for our sisters in the Pacific. So I feel privileged to share this story with you of one of the players in what I believe will be one of the key moments in our games history.
CONTENT WARNING: The conversation discusses mental health and suicide. If you are not in a place where this feels safe to engage with, please give this one a miss.
If it brings things up for you, here are some links for folks here in Aotearoa who are here to help:
Lifeline (open 24/7) - 0800 543 354
Depression Helpline (open 24/7) - 0800 111 757
Healthline (open 24/7) - 0800 611 116
Samaritans (open 24/7) - 0800 726 666
Suicide Crisis Helpline (open 24/7) - 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.
Youthline (open 24/7) - 0800 376 633. You can also text 234 for free between 8am and midnight, or email talk@youthline.co.nzFor further information, contact the Mental Health Foundation's free Resource and Information Service (09 623 4812).
Let us begin.
Alice: I just hit record on this so I don’t have to-
Cassie: Remember?
Alice: *laughing* take notes. So how are you doing?
Cassie: I’m slowly getting used to the jetlag. I think it's 3pm here and in my head, I'm like, man, it's 2am in the morning. I've only recently just stopped feeling like I'm flying in the air because of the long trips.
I was born and raised in Christchurch and I have a lot of family here. So it was kind of easy for me, I went to all the brown schools so I didn’t feel too out of place. My Mum is Samoan Māori. She's also German - you find a lot of Samoan Germans actually. So my Mum’s Māori side is Kahungunu so from up north and then my Dad is Tokelauan. Which is a small island and global warming is making it even smaller.
I actually grew up playing so many sports. I love soccer, I think it was my first main sport - I'm sorry football for you, England. So soccer, basketball, volleyball. Kind of dabbled in a bit of any sport I could find. But I finally landed myself in softball, honestly like just out of intermediate, and then I started taking it a bit more seriously.
Pretty much as soon as I could leave New Zealand, I did. I think that softball was my first way out. Obviously I love to travel. But it kind of fell in my lap at the right time and I was offered a place where I was able to be a student athlete for two years.
I think it's probably one of the hardest parts of my teenage years. You’re a student athlete, but for a while you're training, like pretty much every day AM and PM. And then you got that four or five hour time slot where you get to be a student. But you don't get to be an athlete unless you're passing your classes. It was good character building for sure but I’m still not the best at prioritising. I think I still love my sport a bit more than I do work and study.
Playing all these sports has come in handy. Even the other night, we've been split into mini teams based off the Samoan goddesses of war and whatnot. And my one was based on Taemā and Tilafaigā. These twins that went over to Fiji and then learnt the art of tattooing and actually brought it back but kind of got, I guess, distracted in their message. And we were told to try and relate it back to us.
For me, I've been playing all these different sports, and it's kind of made me the athlete I am, you know? Obviously football is the kicking, my hand eye coordination for catching is a bit better just through softball. I think it's probably beneficial at a young age to do so many sports, it definitely makes you a better athlete.
People will say I'm a very calm ten. I think it's probably also from handling those pressure situations. You can’t really let it get the better of you in softball. You make an error there and that’s potentially the game. Whereas in rugby you make one error or someone else does and you’ve still got like 79 more minutes to make it right. So why bother yourself with that one error?
I took a year off rugby actually, just to find some kind of passion again for it. I’m real open about this stuff, there’s no stigma behind it for me but it was quite hard. I dealt with a lot of my own stuff that had been going on, just from my childhood. I went through a lot of trauma when I was little and just kind of got to the point where I wasn't enjoying the things that were my outlet. My partner, she was really good and a lot of my close friends were too. They were like maybe you just need to go see someone.
Another beautiful shot from Toreka Tele’a, go show them some love!
And yeah, I went and saw someone. She's awesome, I love her - shout out to Paula. She helped me deal with a lot of things. And I’ve been seeing her constantly, every Friday, for almost two years. So I dealt with a lot of that and then once I got to a stage where the world didn’t feel like it was on my shoulders, I decided to do things I enjoy again.
One person who had a big part in that was Billy Guyton. He was very open, you know, about his mental health. He would talk about it, he would always call me on a Sunday after a game and we’d just chat, check in.
Losing him was probably one of the hardest things this year. It was just before Oceania so that made it even tougher but it was also one of our biggest motivators. The most important part is knowing that although he's physically not here, everything he's instilled in us is still there. When I’m kicking a conversion, no matter how long I've gone without actually physically hearing his voice, that's all I hear when I'm kicking.
Losing Billy sucked, big time. Especially to what eventually did take him away from us. We preach if you're not doing well mentally you need to speak to someone. But I also think it's just important that you need to reach out to your mates regardless of how you think they're doing. Just knowing, especially when I went through that space, like I didn't reach out to anyone. I didn't want to burden anyone with any of that.
The way I see it is I just want to be the person that you needed when you were younger. They always asked for my ‘whys’, you know, every camp we go into. And I’m always like, man, I just want to be the person I needed when I was that young.
Myself growing up, I didn't see a lot of Pacific Islanders in the Canterbury team. So there was no one that I could be like ‘man, that could be me one day.’ Whereas in the Manusina just like the connection we have, even if it’s just to take the mickey out of each other, you don’t get that in other spaces. You definitely know you're out of a bunch of Samoans if you’ve got a sore shoulder. They’ll give you a whack as well as a laugh.
Shot from Toreka Tele’a
I think holistically, all of those things if you can get them right, even if you can get two thirds of it right, you're definitely going to make you better in the long run as an athlete and most importantly as a person.
We’ve got some really good people actually come into our fold. We obviously have Cynthia Ta'ala and this year, we have Onehunga Matauiau, ex Manu Samoa, working with the front row. He's just taking their game to a whole nother level.
We are looking forward to playing South Africa. We're doing a lot of review and they are very physical and use their forwards quite a lot. I'm hoping we have the edge where we're quite physical in our backs and quite skillful too. But the other game would definitely have to be the USA. Now Bosman’s coaching them and that’s our Tasman coach, so it'll be fun. Also, there's a lot of Samoans and Pacific Islanders in that team. So it’ll be awesome to see the raw physicality that they bring to the USA team.
Definitely excited to see what 2025 looks like for Manusina. Hopefully I make that and that we see some former Black Ferns come across. We want to build that depth of players, even our local girls. Man, we've got some very, very talented local girls in our team this year. You'll get to see them during WXV. I think you look at any sport- any physical sport at least anyway - it’s strong Pacific Islanders that are playing. There's some big things happening in the next two to three years for all of the Pacific nations, not just Samoa.
I’m definitely quite grateful for World Rugby for putting on this WXV comp. Because we were barely having a test a year. The past, what? Six or seven years? We were kind of lucky to get a test in here and there. We were already good back then but we never had those opportunities to play the bigger teams to kind of size up, see where we needed to get better.
Cassie’s game face courtesy of Toreka Tele’a
I'd definitely love to see, you know, a Cook Island team get involved in the Oceania comp within the next couple years. I know a lot of proud Cookies that would love to play, there’s actually a lot of them in Christchurch. We have a Pacific series coming up for League and they have a Cook Island team. And a lot of the women show up for that.
Even with the Tonga team, what they did last year. They were scary to play. Mele Hufanga was running a muck on the side and I took a couple big hits. But you know, if you give them that wraparound support, you give them a little bit of expertise and teach them the rules of footy then they're gonna compete against any team.
So I think keep growing this Oceania space and man, watch out world.
If anyone is thinking about putting their hand up for Manusina, it's important they talk to people they trust, to the people that want what's best for them. Because you can have someone in this ear saying, ‘Play for New Zealand, you've got a shot, you got a shot’. But someone else is going to be completely honest with you, that loves you and cares for you and just says you're not actually losing anything by choosing to play for Samoa. You can make your own legacy and that's exactly what the Black Ferns have done, they made their own legacy.
And if your heart’s telling you to go play for your homeland, your grandparent’s homeland, your mother's homeland, your father's homeland then do it. Man, like I can tell you now, I've put on a black jersey and it hadn't didn't have the same feeling for me that putting on the blue jersey did.
So there you have it. One of those players at the crest of this big wave rising in the Pacific, ready to ride it further than we’ve seen the women’s game go before.
Manusina’s first match of WXV2 is against USA. They will be kicking off 1.00am, Sunday 15 October, NZT. Tune in live on Rugby Pass TV. I’m hoping we will be able to catch a replay on here but not sure yet. Will let you know when I do!
With you,
Alice