Milly Mackey a former Newlands College student has made huge strides in her Rugby career after being selected for the Hurricanes Poua squad. Have a read below at an article posted on the All Blacks website. Congratulations Milly and good luck for your upcoming season!
Not only has she represented the Wellington Pride, a team her father named, in the Dame Farah Palmer Cup but she is employed by the local union as one of six “activators” in the Rugby Her Way program. In 2023 the 20-year-old will feature as a halfback in Super Rugby Aupiki for Hurricanes Poua.
“I can’t wait for the season to kick off. We had a connection camp before Christmas which was amazing getting to know each other and establishing standards and ideas about how we’re going to play,” Mackey said.
“We’ve got a few big names like Krystal Murray, Ayesha Leti-I’iga, and Joanah Ngan-Woo which is incredible and then we’ve got a group of youngsters grateful for the opportunity and growing all the time.”
Mackey has been playing rugby since she was five. She attended Newlands College in the Northern Suburbs but when Newlands couldn’t assemble numbers for a team, she was forced to get a dispensation to play senior rugby for Paremata-Plimmerton aged 16 in 2018.
“That was petty daunting. I was a 56kg teenager with a ponytail,” Mackey laughed.
“It wasn’t as foreign to me as a couple of other girls in the competition. They’d never played rugby before. I actually started most games that season and really grew as a player and a person.”