The Star: October 24, 2019

The Star Thursday October 24 2019
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SPORT
On Saturday, Canterbury
have a shot of winning
their third straight Farah
Palmer Cup title. The Star
continues its Canterbury
sporting legends series by
taking a look back at a tryscoring
machine from the
late 1980s and early 1990s,
who also represented the
province in netball. Sports
reporter Gordon Findlater
caught up with Helen
Mahon-Stroud
WHEN HELEN Mahon-Stroud
began playing rugby in the late
1980s the sport was in a far
different position than today.
The former New Zealand
winger got introduced to the
sport somewhat by chance when
Canterbury netball teammate
and Black Ferns legend Anna
Richards was on the hunt for a
ringer.
“I think it was after a Canterbury
netball training one Sunday
morning. Anna [Richards] said
she was off to play rugby and
that they were short on players
and did I want to go along, so
I ended up going from Hagley
netball courts across to South
Hagley rugby fields and putting
on someone’s spare boots which
were about two sizes too big
. . . I played on the wing, scored
a couple of tries and that was it,”
said Mahon-Stroud.
“I ended up going home and
saying to my father: ‘Wow I’ve
just played a game of rugby,’ to
which he replied in the very traditional
sense: ‘Girls don’t play
rugby,’ and that was the beginning
of a rugby career.”
Her early rugby days were
spent playing for the Crusadettes
– a Canterbury University team
put together by Laurie O’Reilly
who converted many netballers
to the game.
“Kay O’Reilly was the matriarch
of the Hearts club. Her
husband Laurie used to come
down to netball and was running
a bit of a talent ID and recruitment
programme. He used to
come down and spot all the tall
netballers and say: ‘You’ll be a
lock,’ or: ‘You’re quick, you’ll play
on the wing.”
The Crusadettes broke new
ground when they toured the
United States and Europe in
1988 which saw them play in
six different countries. The
team won 17 from 21 matches
abroad and racked up a staggering
520 points with only 67
conceded.
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Helen Mahon-Stroud: Women’s rugby pioneer
“We were sleeping on floors of
clubrooms. In Wales we slept on
the floor at a pub . . . I look back
at it now and you just think how
crazy it was, but what it did for
us in terms of us for our passion
of the game was incredible,” said
Mahon-Stroud.
The side were a milestone
for both Canterbury Women’s
ROUND BALL: Mahon-Stroud played provincial netball for
Canterbury before going onto coach the Tactix for their first
four seasons in the transtasman competition.
HONOURED:
Helen
Mahon-
Stroud was
among 46
former Black
Ferns who
received test
caps at a
ceremony in
Auckland last
year. ​
Rugby and New Zealand Rugby
as 10 members played for the
country’s first women’s team at
the first ever Women’s Rugby
World Cup in 1991 in Wales.
Mahon-Stroud created a bit of
world rugby history herself by
scoring the tournament’s first try
in a 24-8 win over Canada. New
Zealand went onto be defeated
by eventual winners United
States 0-7.
However, her fondest memory
with rugby came just last year
when she was one of 46 Black
Ferns acknowledged at a capping
ceremony at Eden Park which
was held as a 20th-anniversary
celebration of the Black Ferns
first World Cup title in 1998.
“A number of the former and
current players performed a haka
at the back of the room as we
were presented with our caps.
That was hugely emotional, it really
hit home the culture and the
value these women placed on the
importance of that first team,”
she said.
Mahon-Stroud played both
rugby and netball for Canterbury
through the late 1980s and
early 1990s. One year she says
she even played both codes at
both club and provincial levels
at the same time which was
manageable due to netball being
played on Saturday and rugby on
Sunday.
In 1993 Mahon-Stroud
finished playing rugby due to
commitments with netball and
beginning full-time work as a
police officer. However, she continued
playing national league
netball through to 1998 before
the birth of her first child Ben.
Following her playing career
Mahon-Stroud began a coaching
career which started with humble
beginnings as a player-coach
with Heart’s B team and finished
with her coaching the Tactix in
the transtasman competition
between 2008 and 2011.
In 2008 and 2009 the Tactix
finished a respectable eighth and
sixth in the 10-team competition,
but finished last in 2010 and
2011.
“It was a pretty challenging
four years. Huge learning experience,
but with it I was given a
big opportunity. It was a new
competition and the beginning
of semi-professionalism. The
insights that I got from that and
the learnings was pretty huge,”
said Mahon-Stroud.
Mahon-Stroud also spent
three-and-a-half years with
New Zealand Cricket as the
White Ferns’ high performance
manager before returning to the
police where she now works as
an investigator.
“After 23 years it’s what I
know, what I’m good at and what
I enjoy. Being back working for
the police is really nice, it’s like
coming back home,” she said.
“One of the things that attracted
me to working for the
police in the first place was that it
is a very big team environment.
You work with people, you work
for people and in sport that’s no
different.”
While working full-time in
sport has been put on the backburner
for now she says she will
“never say never” to another high
performance role.