The World Cup-winning Black Fern and Kiwibank spokesperson is sharing the ups and downs of her own journey in the hope of helping others along theirs.

It was Sarah Hirini’s mum who taught her what a true competitor looked like. When Ronnie wasn’t working during the week on their family farm near Feilding, weekends were for getting up early and travelling around to compete in woolhandling shows. “She was well known for being the most relaxed competitor anyone has ever seen,” recalls Hirini. “She was always the one who would give up her place just to help the other person beside her. That was just who she was – she wanted to give more than she wanted to get.”

Speaking from her Mount Maunganui home, cup of coffee in hand and her six-year-old Airedale terrier at her side, the world champion Black Fern says she is eternally grateful for those early-morning starts at the shearing shows. “I learnt a lot around those values of support, that you can make a real impact on other people by just giving up your time.” Her mum also proved that you don’t have to bring down others to get on top – she won 53 open finals, claimed the Golden Shears twice and came second at the 2014 world championships in Ireland. 

It’s a few weeks since the heart-stopping final of the Rugby World Cup, and Hirini is still, perhaps unsurprisingly, feeling “really, really good” about the outcome. She’s been relishing the chance to spend time with her friends and whānau after 12 months of non-stop work, but admits she feels a bit guilty that she hasn’t started training for Sevens again. “Maybe I’ll start this week,” she laughs. “It’s just been really nice being able to fully take time away, have a good break and just spend some time at home.” 

Hirini (Ngāti Kahungunu) grew up in the Oroua Valley, just out of Feilding. A tight-knit farming community, Hirini remembers her hometown as a place where everyone would show up for each other. “Everyone knew each other, so when anyone needed anything the whole place would go around to their house and help out.” Growing up with two siblings to share the household chores, she fondly recalls the simplicity of her upbringing. “We were so lucky because we always had access to fresh food, or we’d do food swaps with other people.”

There were also hard times on the farm. “My parents struggled a lot with their finances and times were not always easy,” she says. “But they were always very open with us about what was going on and why we couldn’t have certain things.” Despite the financial hurdles, her parents still found a way to send all their kids to boarding school in Feilding, a chance to give their sport-mad children the best opportunities in the region. “We were really, really fortunate for that – I’m pretty sure the farm is still paying for it now,” Hirini laughs. 

It was at boarding school that Hirini fell in love with rugby. She was focusing on field hockey at the time, but some friends were heading to rugby tryouts one afternoon and she decided to tag along. “I thought it’d be good fitness for my hockey and also, if I did one more sport I didn’t have to go to homework class after school.” After the very first training session – despite the age range of her teammates spanning a daunting 13 to 18 years old – she knew she had found her people. “It was the most welcoming place I’d ever felt,” she recalls. “I just felt like I belonged there straight away.” 

When she left high school, Hirini wanted to play rugby full time. “I was very passionate about it, but it just wasn’t a reality – there were no female professional athletes back then.” Without an obvious career path in rugby, she got a scholarship to Massey University to study Māori and sports science. Entering full immersion Te Reo classes initially made her feel whakamā, she says. “I didn’t really have a relationship with te ao Māori when we were growing up, I didn’t even take Māori at high school. “It really made me realise how lacking it was in my life.” 

Still, she admits to being “too stubborn” to give up, and was supported by her fluent friends who encouraged her to stick with it. “They made me feel a lot more comfortable about it, that it’s OK to be just starting out and trying.” In her second year, a full time New Zealand Sevens contract meant that she had to scale back her studies, but her Te Reo education continues to this day. “It made me realise that I wanted to carry on learning,” she says. “I would love to go full immersion one day. I want to be able to speak our reo and to fully understand my whakapapa.”

Hirini made another decision during her university years that would impact the rest of her life. Before Co-own was even an option promoted by banks, at just 19 she purchased a house in Palmerston North with her sister, who was 21 at the time. “I worked all summer to save up a deposit, and obviously… houses were a little bit cheaper back then,” she says.

“That was the best decision we ever made, even though I didn’t have a lot of money.” Having to bring in flatmates and share bills, Hirini says her parents’ openness around money during their childhood made things much easier.

This was all before she signed her first one-year Sevens contract for $30,000, the most money Hirini had ever been paid for any job, let alone a job in sport. “I thought I was a millionaire, it was so much money,” she laughs. “But to actually have a consistent income allowed me to budget for the whole year and gave me a great appreciation for working hard for my money.” She also allowed herself one splurge item: a flash new MacBook – “just because everyone at uni had them and I had this big, old-school laptop”. 

Although this was all a decade ago, Hirini carries many of those lessons from early in her career with her today. She tells a story from when her Sevens team had to fundraise $5,000 each to go to a tournament in Rome. “Someone in my community put it out in the paper that I needed to fundraise this money and people just started sending in cheques and cash in the mail,” she recalls. “I get goosebumps talking about it, but I learned so much from the way that the community got behind me to help me achieve my goals.” 

Now that she’s a two-time Olympic medalist and current world champion, Hirini says she wants to pass on some of that support and encouragement to others. During the 2021 Rugby World Cup, it was announced that she would be partnering with Kiwibank in the role of Whatu Kōkiri Kiwibank (Impact Champion). “It’s so important for me to be able to share my knowledge and share the things that I’ve learned through having to be a leader of a national team,” she says. “Their values aligned exactly with what I see my values as and that is putting people first.” 

Being a spokesperson is not something that comes naturally to Hirini – she admits to being an introvert who gets anxious in social situations – but she wants to be open about her struggles too. “I’ve had to step away from just sitting comfortably in my shell and I love talking about that as well.” She’s also quick to point out that she doesn’t know everything, but encourages teammates and rangatahi alike to think about their financial situations and plan for security. “Especially in women’s rugby circles, because it’s so new that we’re getting paid at all, it’s so important that we help each other.” 

Reflecting on the last 11 years of her rugby career, Hirini says she feels lucky to have made a career out of the thing that she loves the most. Looking forward, she now hopes that by offering as much support as possible, she can inspire – and enable – others to perform at their best too. “I think if you can wake up knowing that you’re doing something that you love, you’re gonna give so much more – and probably give people more as well,” she says. “I want to show people that it’s really possible to actually follow a passion into a career. That was something that my mum showed me, and now I want to carry that on.”

This content was produced in paid partnership with Kiwibank. To learn more about how they could work for your business, visit Kiwibank today.