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Former Black Ferns captain Fiao’o Fa’amausili is awarded the Laurie O’Reilly Cup by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after beating Australia in 2018.
Black Fern’s great Fiao’o Fa’amausili will be inaugurated in New Zealand’s World Rugby Hall in Hame in November.
Fa’amausili, who won four Women’s World Cup titles and retired in 2018, will be joined in the Hall of Fame by Deborah Griffin (England), Sue Dorrington (England), Alice D. Cooper (England), Mary Forsyth (England) and Kathy Flores (USA).
While Flores will be inaugurated posthumously, Griffin, Dorrington, Cooper, Forsyth and Fa’amausili will attend the private ceremony before being presented to the Eden Park audience between the two semi-finals of the Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Hooker Fa’amausili, the youngest of the six inductees, has played in five Rugby World Cups and won four – the last as captain during the 2017 edition in Ireland. She was Black Ferns’ most capped player until she was passed by former teammate Kendra Cocksedge this year.
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The six inductees bring the total in the Hall of Fame to 160 since its inception in 2006.
In a Rugby World Cup year, the theme selected for Hall of Fame inductees in 2022 is women in rugby.
GOODS
The Black Ferns will play their first Rugby World Cup on home soil in October and November.
Fa’amausili became the first Black Fern to play 50 tests during the 2017 World Cup.
She was named captain in 2012 and led the Black Ferns 34 times, including winning the 2017 World Cup.
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New Zealand captain Fiao’o Fa’amausili dives for a try against Canada during a test in Wellington in 2017.
Fa’amausili always led by example and was a huge driver of the level of professionalism and dedication that allowed the Black Ferns to dominate much of her time in the black jersey, which came to an end in November 2018 when she made an attempt – say goodbye to France.
In 2018 she was named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit and nominated for the World Rugby Women’s 15s Player of Year award for the second time in three years.
Throughout her 16-year testing career, Fa’amausili served as a police detective in the Auckland district of Counties Manukau, while representing Auckland 106 times in the Farah Palmer Cup.
During her time at Auckland, she won a whopping 15 domestic titles.
Fa’amausili was selected as a hooker in the World Rugby Women’s 15s Team of the Decade in December 2020 and a year later she was elected president of Auckland Rugby – the first woman to hold this position in the union’s history.