Les Elder: In Her Own Words
Part one of a two part kōrero with a Black Fern captain
I’ve been thinking about Les Elder. Hers was the story that ran along the sideline of the highs and lows of last year’s Rugby World Cup. It’s one I’ve been deeply curious about. Questions I return to again and again. How can the Black Ferns captain go from the highest position a player in the game can reach to being dropped in the wake of the review without deeper discussion?
It’s yet another example of the difference in treatment between men and women rugby players in Aotearoa. There would be no version of events that would see an All Black captain dropped this way.
So I had questions, many questions. And speaking to Les one Sunday morning, she was gracious enough to try and answer some of them for me.
So here’s what happened. In her own words.
Today is actually a year, exactly, since I announced my retirement. So pretty cool that me and you are chit chatting. Since retiring, I've had time to think about a lot of stuff. Being a mum for the second time around, not working full time, I’ve been able to reflect. It's been a year of just waking up a little bit.
I see Abby Ward has returned to rugby. It’s an amazing achievement by her. I was about the same number of weeks post-partum when I returned. I had a lot of issues occur over the next couple of years and even still now which, although not proven, I do believe was attributed to how quickly I returned.
I returned with very little focus put on the smaller muscles that needed to be strengthened with having a baby. Even though that was only three years ago, the S&C I was given at the time was quite generic, not specifically tailored to a rugby player who’d just had a kid.
It wasn’t until I went outside the rugby system and found my own physio that I actually started to get better. It was my own physio that got me on the 2021 northern tour in my opinion.
So this year, I’ve stepped outside of the system again. This time by not being an athlete and not being so involved which has allowed me to reflect. Especially on my last year of playing. I was just absolutely heartbroken, day in, day out, with how things were unravelling for me in my final year of rugby.
But to see things now, some of the terrible stuff happening in the world and even some personal stuff that happened towards the end of last year that we as a family went through I go, man, it’s all ok.
Now, I’m valuing time. I think for a long time there, especially as a captain of the Black Ferns, my family, hard as it is to say this, my family probably did take a hit. They were almost second priority to rugby for a bit there which is really hard to stomach. And to be honest, it was kind of part and parcel of the times. I’m not saying this is right but it was a rare situation I was in being the first Captain in the professional era. There were things us leaders had to navigate through that we were totally new too and totally under resourced and under prepared for.
So since retiring, it’s been about reconnecting, prioritising time with my whanau, doing things I want to do but also having the freedom to say no to things that I don’t need to do. Slowing down but still allowing small windows of chaos - cause I love a goal!
I do feel that as an athlete you often put parts of yourself to the side, or on hold while you give all of yourself to this cause that has a short window. I hadn't got to spend a lot of time with some of my best mates over the past 8 years because I was just all rugby. I'm very grateful and lucky to have great people in my life that were patient with me through that time. So now that I’m retired, all my time is for them. By reconnecting with them, I am reconnecting with who I am.
All smiles as Les returns to her roots (image pinched from her instagram)
While I don't have any regrets and I loved every moment, the good, bad and the ugly, it's been interesting to see professional rugby from the other lens, from retirement.
If I'm being honest, things didn’t end in the way we'd been told. They said, ‘You won't make the Pacific Four, you’re carrying a bit of niggle’ - even though I was actually cleared to play for the third game. The narrative was your niggly, we want you to go away and spend some time on yourself. Get your body right, get your mind right, because obviously, you've just been through some pretty heavy stuff with everything in the NZR review. And then Laurie O'Reilly will be your opportunity.
But that opportunity never came.
It’s the nature of professional sport that things might not end up the way you’ve worked for. We always say, ‘It's never guaranteed’. I worked my ass off day in and day out so I know in my heart I never took it for granted. But I guess the hardest part for me was the way in which I was pushed out, not just from a tour selection but from the entire environment.
It’s not about being bitter, it’s about being better. But it’s hard to talk about this stuff though without coming off that way. I can just say, for a proud Wahine Māori where Mana is a central pillar to our existence, this hurt and made it very hard for me to move on. I got there in the end whanau, but heck it took walking through some pretty ugly emotions that's for sure.
Of course everything that was playing out at once, my transition out of the team, the review and our country hosting a World Cup for the first time, meant all of our emotions were running hot. We were asking a lot of everyone and I’m not sure we were resourced well enough for all the pressure of that moment.
At the time, during the review, no one knew what to do. No one knew what they were allowed to say or do. I felt for both parties and I wanted to be respectful of both sides. But I also felt I had to keep a team looking forward towards a World Cup.
That was really hard because you had to allow almost like a grieving period. You had to allow people to express themselves and get whatever they needed off their chests, to feel and come to terms with what was going on in our environment. But also, you had to awhi them along and go, ‘Okay, it's now time to move forward, or it's now time to try and control some of the things that we can control’. Which at that point was to go and train, to go and play rugby.
But yeah, it was hard and often felt a little bit lonely. And just really confusing. You felt for everyone. At the end of the day, I guess where I got to was the system had failed us. And the people who manage the system needed to take accountability for that and for ensuring the system would be better set up to support us moving forward. So I was on a waka to try and ensure at least that was happening for our girls.
The stuff in the background was really tough for me and my whānau. Obviously I had to put on a face for the team and then another face for the people that I was dealing with at New Zealand Rugby. So once I got home, I was just absolutely exhausted. I was a full time athlete mum to a new baby and so my family wore it a bit.
This is people's lives, people's wellbeing, their mental state. The beauty of the situation was, that while all of that was messy and there were so many broken parts to the system, the girls remained tight. And that was really, really critical.
The narrative I kept pushing within our leadership group was we just need to ensure that as a team, we have each other's backs, but we need to allow safe spaces for everyone to talk and feel.
I think that allowed for those that came into the environment to get stuck into the rugby. While some of us were sacrificed, if the team culture had not been strong within the playing group and the leaders had not taken control and stood up for the team during a crucial window where no one was standing up for the team, then that fight even with the new management that came through would have been a lot harder. So I think ensuring that the sisterhood was still strong, meant that the new coaching group, while they still had a bit of work to do, they didn't have to mend those pieces.
When we won the final, I was right there. I was on the grass as a commentator watching Joanah, get up in the air. As soon as she hit that ball, I sprinted 100 metres down the sideline, hugging people in the stands. That is how happy I was. I felt it just like everybody else did. I wasn't sitting there holding on to grudges.
A screenshot from the video LJ took of Les joining the Black Ferns haka on the sideline of last year’s Rugby World Cup
But I do feel that we missed a beat at the Rugby World Cup. We often talk about legacy, standing on the shoulders of those who had gone before us, being caretakers of the jersey. So you’d think that having a Women’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, the first in Aotearoa, one with a lot of drama around it, where records were aimed to be broken, that this would be the best time to honour that legacy. To let the shoulders of those we stand on be acknowledged, seen, thanked. To be front and centre of this massive milestone.
There is still a lot of work to be done to embrace all those parts of our Black Ferns whakapapa. But we didn’t even include all of our contracted players in celebrations of this event. While we weren’t selected in the 32, we were still training every day, on standby as injury cover. We weren’t yet part of the Black Ferns legacy, we were still a part of their reality.
It might sound pathetic to most people but a big thing for us was we didn't even get invited to the after match. We didn't even know there was one. And I remember getting instastory from my two younger brothers. They sent me a photo and they're at the after match function holding the World Cup and they’re like ‘Where are you?’. And I was like ‘Where are you?’. That was tough.
I feel like we are very good at hindsight. We're a bit reactive and maybe again it could be a reflection of where the women's game is at. I do feel though that a lot of the issues our ladies face are preventative. Stuff can be avoided just by planning for it, or front loading conversations about the hard stuff that people are uncomfortable talking about.
I have had an opportunity to give feedback around the retirement process and my career which I'm really grateful for. My mindset is, let's learn from it. Use these experiences to help us all be better. As we move through these early stages of professionalism, someone has to go through it, someone has to be the sacrificial lambs. And if that someone has been myself and a few others then at least let's learn from it.
But it’s not just us we can learn from. There’s so much knowledge in our past players that is still untapped. When you look at the Black Ferns who have not long retired, or you think of all our past Black Ferns - We've got politicians, lawyers, CEOs. We've got some amazing women that have come through the game.
So why not tap into that wealth of knowledge, experience and passion? People Who have a love for the game and who give to the game for the right reasons. They're not climbing ladders, they're not trying to get to the top and find the power. These are women that love the game and have a whole heap of experience to give to the game. Why would we not wrap around it or better the ecosystem to support people post the game?
I want to thank Les again for sharing her story with us.
There is often a sentiment expressed that retreading the hurt from the past is an exercise in bitterness. I often see that feeling exploited to keep folks quiet. But what happened to Les matters and if we don’t know about it, we can’t learn from it. As was said above, it’s not about being bitter, it’s about being better.
It’s also not about blame.
It’s about how we ensure that such treatment is a mistake, not a habit. How we can equip all our people to carry themselves through the minefield of call ups, coach handovers, selection, retirement, injury and setbacks with their mana intact.
There’s more on that coming in part two. Because I’m not the only one that’s been thinking, Les has too. And she’s got a couple of ideas about where we go from here.
With you,
Alice