Black Ferns Captains Compared: all 20 captains, from Helen Littleworth to Ruahei Demant, ranked fairly

The Black Ferns have played 151 Tests since their first, against Canada at the 1991 World Cup in Wales, and won 125 of them. Twenty women have led them out as captain. They have won six World Cups, more than any other nation, and lost only 24 Tests in 35 years. But their captains led in very different worlds. Farah Palmer's Black Ferns played three Tests a year and were almost never beaten. Ruahei Demant's play ten a year against professional opposition that has caught up. This is our attempt to compare them fairly, using the same method as our ranking of every All Blacks captain.

The eras

Win rates count a draw as half. There were no Tests in 1992, 1993 or 2020, and the Black Ferns did not go to the 1994 World Cup.

The table explains why raw win percentages flatter the early captains. For the first two decades the Black Ferns lost five Tests in 57, and New Zealand Rugby did not begin funding the team until 1995. Players were offered semi-professional contracts in 2018, Super Rugby Aupiki began in 2022, and since then the Black Ferns have played as many Tests in a year as they once played in four, against England, Canada and France sides that are now full-time.

How we measured it

Every Test was given an expected result: what the Black Ferns would normally have achieved against that opponent, at that kind of venue, within ten years either side, with the captain's own Tests left out so she is not measured against herself. A captain's wins above expected is her actual results (a draw counts as half) minus her expected results. The RUGBE rating is wins above expected per ten Tests, with every captain starting as if she had already led ten Tests at exactly the expected level, so a short tenure cannot top the table on luck. Share of the job is the Tests she captained as a percentage of all Black Ferns Tests between her first and last.

Two things are different from the men's game. The samples are smaller, so the ratings move more. And since 2022 the Black Ferns have often had co-captains: Ruahei Demant and Kennedy Tukuafu shared the role in 18 Tests. Where two women were named co-captains in the starting side, both are credited with the Test.

The established captains: six who led eight Tests or more

What the rankings say

Melissa Ruscoe is first: eight Tests between 2007 and 2010, eight wins, and the 2010 World Cup final, 13-10 over England at the Twickenham Stoop. A perfect record over a short tenure is exactly what the confidence adjustment is designed to discount, and she still leads.

Farah Palmer is second, and on volume she is in a class of her own: 29 wins and one defeat in 30 Tests between 1997 and 2006, and three World Cups (1998, 2002 and 2006), winning all 12 of her World Cup Tests. Her only loss as captain was 22-17 to England at Albany in 2001. She became captain in 1997 with a 67-0 win over England, captained 88 percent of the Tests in her time, and on today's calendar her 30 Tests would be worth about 80. The Black Ferns of her era were expected to win almost nine in ten; she won more than nineteen in twenty.

Fiao'o Fa'amausili is a close third, and her record is the one that adjusts most in her favour. She led 35 Tests from 2012 to 2018, almost every Test of that time (97 percent), through the years when England turned professional first. She lost three times to England on her first tour as captain, in 2012, and the 2014 World Cup pool match to Ireland, 17-14, which cost New Zealand a semi-final. Then she won the 2017 World Cup, 41-32 over England in Belfast. Her side was expected to win about 27 of her 35 Tests; it won 29.

Ruahei Demant, the most-capped captain in Black Ferns history, comes out below expectation, and so does her co-captain Kennedy Tukuafu. That is a measure of how high the bar now sits rather than of either woman. Demant led the Black Ferns to the 2021 World Cup, played at home in 2022, beating England 34-31 in the final at Eden Park in front of a record crowd for a women's rugby match, and she has 30 wins from 37 Tests. But her six defeats, two to England, two to Canada (including the 2025 World Cup semi-final in Bristol, 34-19), one to France by a point in Wellington and one to Ireland in Vancouver, came against opponents New Zealand had historically beaten almost every time. Tukuafu's record, 12 wins from 20, is weaker because she was co-captain in most of the hardest Tests of the period and captained alone in only two, one of them a 24-12 defeat by England at Twickenham in 2024.

Lesley Elder led nine Tests between 2019 and 2021 and ranks last of the six. All four of her defeats came on the 2021 tour of England and France, when the Black Ferns lost 43-12 and 56-15 to England and twice to France, after a year without Tests because of the pandemic. The tour led to a review, and the coach, Glenn Moore, resigned.

The short tenures: 14 more captains

Most of the other captains led in one to five Tests, usually in place of an injured captain. Lenadeen Simpson-Brown won all six Tests she captained from 1994 to 1996. Georgia Ponsonby led five Tests this year, including the 81-12 win over France in Hamilton and the 26-19 defeat by England at Twickenham. Alana Bremner won all three of hers, including two World Cup pool matches in 2025. Maia Roos became the youngest Black Ferns captain, at 21, against the USA in Ottawa in 2023. Helen Littleworth captained the very first Tests, at the 1991 World Cup, where New Zealand lost the semi-final to the USA 7-0.

Every captain

Listed in the order they first led the side.

The fine print

• Counts. We count Tests in which a player started as captain or co-captain, from New Zealand Rugby's match records cross-checked with World Rugby's. New Zealand Rugby's own count for Demant is higher, because it also credits her with Tests in which she was named co-captain but started on the bench: on that basis she passed Fa'amausili's 35 against the USA in April and has 43. Wikipedia gives a third figure. All three are defensible; we use the one that can be applied the same way to every captain.
• What counts as a Test. New Zealand Rugby's first Test is 6 April 1991. The 1989 match against the California Grizzlies and the 1990 RugbyFest matches are not counted, and neither are non-Tests against the New Zealand Barbarians and Black Ferns XV sides.
• What the rating does not measure. It compares each captain with what New Zealand's own record said she should achieve; it does not measure leadership, and in a sport that has changed this fast, the most recent captains' ratings will move most as more Tests are played.

Sources: New Zealand Rugby, Black Ferns match records (stats.allblacks.com); World Rugby match records; Wikipedia, New Zealand women's national rugby union team and player records; allblacks.com; RUGBE analysis.