Georgia Ponsonby: the netballer turned No 8 turned hooker who led the Black Ferns in 2026

Early in the 2022 World Cup final, moments after England had a player sent off, the Black Ferns set up a maul from a lineout and their hooker went over for New Zealand's first try of the night. Five years earlier Georgia Ponsonby had been a No 8 in Manawatū. Canterbury's high performance manager moved her to the front row, and by 2026, at 26, she was captaining the Black Ferns in Johannesburg, Lyon, Edinburgh and at Twickenham.

Gisborne, Taihape and the netball court

Georgia Robyn Alice Ponsonby was born in Gisborne on 14 December 1999, the daughter of farmers. When she was two the family moved to Taihape, where her father had found work as a shepherding manager, the New Zealand Rugby Museum profile records.

Netball came first. She played goal defence, was picked for Manawatū age-group sides and, at 16, was playing in a Massey University senior team.

Feilding High School

She boarded at Feilding High School, a school whose old boys include Codie Taylor, Aaron Smith and the Whitelock brothers. The driving force behind girls' rugby there was a Welshman, Rob Jones, who coached the school's girls' sevens and fifteens sides from 2006 to 2020 and won 268 of their 354 matches, according to the museum profile. He talked Ponsonby into trying rugby in Year 12.

She liked what she found. "I found rugby more social than netball," she told the museum profile, describing the travel, the after-match functions and the billeting that came with it. "Rob Jones has been huge in my career," she said. When she made the Black Ferns in 2021, Jones brewed a special cider for her to celebrate.

The Manawatū Turbos

In 2017, while she was still at school, she was picked for the Manawatū Turbos in the Farah Palmer Cup. She played six games, mostly at No 8, scoring one try, and the museum profile picks out a 35-27 win over Wellington and an 86-8 win over Hawke's Bay as the highlights. Her club rugby was with Feilding Old Boys Oroua.

From No 8 to hooker

A scholarship took her to Lincoln University in Canterbury, where she joined the Lincoln University club. She spent two seasons at No 8 for Canterbury, and then Amanda Murphy, the former Black Fern who was Canterbury's high performance manager, asked her to move to hooker for 2020.

"I found I improved really quickly," Ponsonby said. She also felt the other loose forwards were bigger and more dynamic than she was, so the front row suited her. Canterbury won the Premiership in 2018, 2019 and 2020 with her in the squad, and the 2020 final against Waikato, won 8-7, stayed with her. She called it "the best game ever, we won in the last minute".

She played 39 games for Canterbury from 2018 to 2023 and scored nine tries, five of them in 2023, according to rugbyhistory.co.nz.

Matatū

When Super Rugby Aupiki began in 2022 she was named in Matatū's first squad. In 2023 she started at hooker in the first Aupiki final, at FMG Stadium Waikato, where Matatū beat Chiefs Manawa 33-31 to win their first title and hand Manawa their first defeat in the competition.

In 2024 she scored five tries for Matatū, including two against the Blues and two in a 37-17 win over Hurricanes Poua. She started the 2025 final against the Blues at Eden Park, where she was sent to the sin bin in the 63rd minute and Matatū lost 26-19.

In the 2026 final in Christchurch she came off the bench in the 48th minute. With three minutes left and the Blues down to 14, she powered over from a rolling maul, and Maia Joseph's conversion levelled the scores at 21-21. The Blues scored in the final minute to win 28-21. To the end of 2025 she had played 21 games for Matatū.

A Black Fern in France

Glenn Moore picked her for the 2021 tour of England and France, the Black Ferns' first Tests in two years. She called her parents ten times in four hours to tell them, the museum profile records, before reaching them through her sister.

She did not play against England but came off the bench in both Tests in France, making her debut in Pau on 13 November 2021. "I was sick before my debut, didn't sleep, didn't eat," she said. "When I got on the field I was ridiculously calm though." In Castres, Stuff noted, she "immediately got the lineout functioning" when she came on early in the second half.

Both Tests were heavy defeats, and she was frank about what she learned in the mauls. "You either put your body on the line or die wondering," she said.

World champion

She made her first Test start in Wayne Smith's first match in charge, the 23-10 win over Australia in Tauranga in June 2022, and played 11 Tests that year. At the World Cup she came off the bench in the opening win over Australia and then started at hooker in every game from the 56-12 win over Wales onwards.

In the final at Eden Park on 12 November 2022, England's Lydia Thompson was sent off in the 18th minute and Ponsonby scored straight afterwards, from a maul following a lineout, according to the BBC's report. England had been unstoppable with their own maul, and New Zealand Rugby's report noted the irony of the Black Ferns' first try coming the same way. The Black Ferns won 34-31.

The regular

She has been a fixture since. She played seven Tests in 2023 and seven in 2024, starting every one of the 2024 Tests she played. That year she scored three tries, in wins over Australia at North Harbour Stadium and in Brisbane and in the 49-31 loss to England at Langley in Canada. She was nominated for Black Ferns Player of the Year at the 2024 New Zealand Rugby Awards and was a finalist again in 2025.

In 2025 she played ten Tests, nine as a starter. At the World Cup in England she scored off the bench in the opening 54-8 win over Spain in York and started the other five matches, including the quarter-final against South Africa, the 34-19 semi-final defeat by Canada and the 42-26 bronze-medal win over France at Twickenham.

Since her debut the Black Ferns have played 50 Tests, and Ponsonby has played in 48 of them. She missed only the August 2022 Test in Adelaide and the 2024 WXV game against Ireland in Vancouver.

Trailfinders

After the World Cup she spent the 2025-26 northern season in England with Trailfinders in Premiership Women's Rugby, alongside her Black Ferns team-mate Alana Borland. The club's head coach, Barney Maddison, called her "world-class". "I'm stoked to be joining Trailfinders," she told the BBC. Her team-mates there included the Scotland captain Rachel Malcolm and lock Emma Wassell, whom she would meet again in Edinburgh. She has since returned home.

Captain

Whitney Hansen's first season as head coach brought the busiest year in Black Ferns history, and Ponsonby started all 11 Tests. Before the first Test on South African soil, against the Springbok Women at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on 5 September, Hansen named her co-captain for the first time, with Ruahei Demant on the bench. Hansen said Ponsonby "has the presence to lead as captain". The Black Ferns won 52-20.

Demant hurt her calf in Johannesburg and was ruled out of the rest of the away series, so Ponsonby led the side alone in Lyon, where the Black Ferns beat France 28-14, in Edinburgh, where they beat Scotland 66-14 in their first Test in Scotland, and at Twickenham, where England won 26-19 with an interception at 19-19. Back home in Hamilton on 17 October she captained the team again and scored on the stroke of halftime as the Black Ferns led France 43-0 at the break and won 81-12.

She has led New Zealand in five Tests, for four wins. She played the last two Tests of the series under Demant's captaincy, and the Black Ferns finished the year with ten wins from 11.

What is next

The Black Ferns play the Wallaroos at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Anzac Day 2027, and then host the British and Irish Lions Women in three Tests: Auckland on 11 September, Wellington on 18 September and Christchurch on 25 September. Ponsonby will be 27 when the tour begins.

Career at a glance

Provincial and Super Rugby figures to the end of 2025 are from rugbyhistory.co.nz. Test figures are from World Rugby's match records and New Zealand Rugby team lists; the New Zealand Rugby profile lists 49 matches, which includes one non-Test game. Awards: Black Ferns Player of the Year nominee 2024 and finalist 2025.