Straight Up

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I cried a lot while reading this book, but there’s a passage early on in Straight Up about reading and the value of books, that gets me every time: “Every single night [Mum] buried herself in a book when she got into bed, and it made me look up to reading, and that’s the reason I am still a reader. I got Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone one Christmas, and it was just the best to have my very own novel to read.” I can imagine many a lonely child, adults too, thinking of Tui’s’ book in the same way. What a gift.

Of course, Dad’s an alcoholic, and she was young, so how we bonded was through drinking. I didn’t have the skills to say to her, I don’t need to do this. Honestly, I loved her so much, we could have just sat in a room doing nothing and I would have been happy. But I guess Dad and her were also trying to figure out their relationship, and so drinking was what we all ended up doing. Yeah, I was trying to think of ways I could get out of quarantine, and apparently if you break a bone they let you out,” Tui quipped.

And so therefore, I do feel a responsibility that the next choice I make is in support of people who see that and understand that.” One of the many personal details Ruby wasn't sure about including in Straight Up, she tells Susie Ferguson, is that by the time she was four she didn't want her mother and father to be together.

I go in there and I literally talk to a 16-year-old who’s trying to help his family. He’s studying to be with Downer, on the road programme. You know, he might be struggling with work and family things. That day with Lesh, it still stands as one of the best days of my whole life — like God had heard me and gifted me this new best friend. She was connecting with Dad for the first time, so suddenly she was like an addition to my life with Dad. Later on, Lesh ended up living with Dad at Grandad’s house. She took over part of the basement, covered the walls in drawings and quotes and made it her own — she’s a real incredible artist. The least she can do, she says, is talk to the workers, and take some selfies with her Rugby World Cup medal.I guess that's why I committed so hard to rugby because I was like where these people end up is really cool places. I was like 'maybe if I just follow this path it'll be different to that path that I'd seen.' What happens to us, especially what happens to us as children, doesn't need to define who we are as adults. And it's never too late to look into these things that happened to us. I guess in one long night of tossing up between do we call help, are we loyal to the friend, how do we help dad, I'm scared… all those emotions and perspectives [combined] in one harrowing experience." As we wrap up lunch, one of the Accor managers comes to chat. It’s the school holidays and his two young boys are with him; Tui spends the next 15 minutes talking to them, showing them her World Cup medal.

That’s been really, really huge and it matters … you’ve got to go out of your way for things you actually believe in. Everything I do every day, I believe in every job I do. Her memoir Straight Up was the bestselling book in New Zealand in 2022, and Ruby's brilliant rugby skills and amazing personality won the hearts of New Zealanders, culminating in her shortlisting for the New Zealander of the Year. Down in Canvastown I was a loser, bottom of the heap; but in Wellington I felt cool. I felt better-than — more grown-up than the other kids at my school. No one else was going out and drinking yet, getting stoned. I felt like I was Dad’s bro, his mate, and that’s how he always treated me. I didn’t understand that I was any different to him, that I was just a child. I didn’t see any difference between me and Lesh, even though she was five years older than me. In Straight Up, Ruby writes about finally releasing the shame she carried for years after that night.As she writes the next chapter of her life, it’s perhaps best to cite another of her training bag mantras: “I take control of the pressure. I let go of my stress and I find my excitement.” Anyway the conversation between Tui and co-hosts Melanie Bracewell (another kiwi) and Tim McDonald was very tongue-in-cheek. Laugh-a-minute stuff. People are always asking me why are you guys so hard out at training? When I'm in a team I'm all in. I cannot play in a team where I don't want to die for my sisters next to me." She definitely wants to have children. “But I mean, like when, eh? But, yeah, definitely. Don’t we all want kids?” Ruby Tui with the Rugby World Cup - won in an extra-tense final against England. Photo / Hannah Peters, Getty Images

Ruby could have chosen to have her life take a very dark turn - but she didn't. She worked like a dog to get a university education & discovered rugby gave her a sense of belonging that no other sport did. Even after training and hard, physical work she remained small, but her speed, determination & team spirit made her perfect for rugby sevens & her personality should give her a media career long after she retires from this sport. Things happen in your life and unfortunately they can shape you in negative ways. I became very fearful, I was holding it within me. I actually, in my little kid brain, thought that if I was around drugs or the white powder that I was responsible for killing people because of what I'd seen. While she’s had a nomadic existence around New Zealand, her roots are firmly, proudly, planted and shared in her Samoan heritage on Dad’s side, and in her mother’s palagi – European – side.And Dad? “He’s not as much of an avid reader as Mum, but he’s probably been more open than Mum about his situation. When I was talking to him, I was like, ‘I believe alcoholism in this country is a lot more rife than is talked about or we would like to believe, or is represented anywhere really’. She's excited about playing at this month's Women's Rugby World Cup and hopeful New Zealand crowds will break the world record for attendance at a women's rugby game. Her hand has fended off rugby players around the globe, lifted two gold medals, and – devastatingly – held a knife as she contemplated suicide when she was only 11 years old. I reach out to shake it, but she sweeps my arm aside. I’ll concede, dear reader, that there isn’t much to this story. We shan’t be winning any Walkleys here. But I’m also a kiwi, and Tui is hilarious, and her hilariousness deserves to be known as widely as possible. Let’s just say it’s in the public interest, or something. We can put on a World Cup that makes the rest of the world go 'whoa, New Zealand truly is the home of rugby'.