Ruby Tui

Ruby Tui's return to fifteens rugby in 2020 brought her back to Counties Manukau at a moment when many athletes might have been content to rest on their laurels. She had already won Olympic silver in Rio, claimed World Rugby Women's Sevens Player of the Year in 2019, and established herself as one of the most recognizable faces in New Zealand rugby. But the shorter format had been her world for years, and the fifteens game represented both a homecoming and a new challenge.

She joined Ponsonby Fillies and pulled on the Counties Manukau jersey for the Farah Palmer Cup, the competition that serves as New Zealand's premier provincial women's rugby tournament. What followed was not a tentative reintroduction but a statement season. Tui finished as the competition's top try scorer, a feat that demonstrated her ability to translate the speed and instinct honed in sevens into the more structured demands of the fifteen-player game. For Counties Manukau, a union that has always punched above its weight from its base around the Manukau Harbour in South Auckland, her performances reinforced the region's reputation for producing players who combine flair with substance.

The union now lists Tui among its legends alongside Jonah Lomu and other figures who have shaped New Zealand rugby. It is recognition that speaks to more than statistics. Counties Manukau has long been a place where talent emerges from communities that understand rugby as something lived, not just watched. Tui's connection to the union came at a pivotal point in her career, providing the platform she needed to prove herself all over again in a format she had left behind years earlier.

That provincial form led directly to her first Black Ferns selection in 2022. Within months, she was playing in a Rugby World Cup final at Eden Park, helping New Zealand edge England 34 to 31 in a match that became an instant classic. The tournament brought Tui a world championship and the World Rugby Women's 15s Breakthrough Player of the Year award, making her the first recipient of the honour in the women's category. The recognition carried particular weight because it acknowledged not just talent but the courage required to rebuild a career in a different format at the highest level.

Her story with Counties Manukau sits within a broader arc that includes Olympic gold in Tokyo, her earlier sevens accolades, and more recently, finishing as top try scorer in the 2025 Super Aupiki competition. But the provincial chapter matters because it represents the hinge point. It was where Tui demonstrated that elite athletes do not simply transfer skills between formats but must earn their place anew, in front of different crowds, under different pressures.

She has since taken on roles beyond playing, serving as a Player Representative on the New Zealand Rugby Players Association Board and advocating publicly for mental health awareness. Her autobiography, published in 2022, carries the title "Straight Up," a phrase that captures the directness she has brought to conversations about sport, identity, and wellbeing.

For Counties Manukau, Tui's time in the Farah Palmer Cup was brief but consequential. She arrived with a profile built elsewhere and left having added another layer to the union's story, one that connects South Auckland to the highest levels of international rugby. The tries she scored mattered. So did the fact that she chose to score them there, in a competition that gave her the space to become something she had not been before.