Acacia Te Iwimate and Petone fighting hard in competitive women’s grade

After playing rugby for the Johnsonville and Wainuiomata women’s teams, Acacia Te Iwimate will be a key player for the Petone 'Ponies' during her second season with the club.

Acacia started playing rugby for Wainuiomata High School when she was 14 and when she turned 16 she began playing club rugby for Johnsonville.

In 2008 when Wainuiomata formed a women’s team of their own she moved to play club rugby for them before switching to Petone last year.

“The majority of our women’s team at Johnsonville were travelling from Wainuiomata because they didn’t have a women’s team at that time, “says Acacia.

Acacia has now made 13 appearances for Petone, who only reformed their women’s team last year. In those games she has scored 82 points.

Outside of rugby Acacia works at Go Healthy in Petone but says a lot of her life is around sport and family.

“We’re pretty hardcore rugby and league fans, I also play rugby league, my husband used to but he’s now taken on coaching full time”.

Last year the Petone side won the Wellington club rugby second division title and Acacia reckons the team this year is looking good as they push to qualify for the first division.

“The competition allows for us to have flexibility with the newbies and the senior heads, so it’s quite evenly spread”.

“Last year was a good introduction for the Petone Women’s team to women’s rugby in the second division, obviously not getting annihilated by your top teams, this year it’s looking very good”.

“If we can get a couple more wins under our belt then it would be awesome for the club definitely if we can get up there and play those harder games it means the senior girls who play at representative level they can play better-structured rugby”.

They have started this season off with a narrow 22-27 loss to Northern United, a 19-51 defeat to defending championship winners Ories, a 17-12 win over Paremata-Plimmerton in a replay of their final last year and a 91-7 win over Avalon. Acacia scored two of 15 tries against Avalon.

Every year all of the women’s teams in Wellington receive an influx of players coming straight from secondary school and some who have never played the game before.

The Petone team has seen a number of new players join this year but Acacia reckons with the pre-season training and the work the Petone coaching staff has put in has helped develop the newcomers.

“It’s always hard but if you work together to make it happen it ends up making it easier to coach and to teach them."

Last year Acacia Te Iwimate played for the Wellington NPC team. The Wellington Pride were relegated to the second division of a competitive Farah Palmer Cup but she says they will be keen get themselves back into the first division.

“They are definitely looking at getting things rolling. We are playing in the second division this year, which could be a good thing, maybe we can step back a bit and start knuckling down on some crucial areas where we missed last year”.

“I think if we can strip it back a little bit and really focus on the basics that will definitely have an impact on the results that we get this year”.

Acacia says for young people aspiring to be rugby players, training hard and enjoying it are keys to making it to the top level.

“It all comes with training so the harder you train the more you get out it and enjoy and if you don’t know you just got to ask questions, there are people around you who will have an answer and if they don’t they will lead you in the right direction, you don’t know unless you give it a go”.

Petone takes on Old Boys-University at the Petone Rec this weekend, Kick off for that game 11:30 am.