Justine McGregor: a Test debut on her 20th birthday, from a school with no rugby field

Justine McGregor played her first Test for the Black Ferns on her 20th birthday. By then she had played Farah Palmer Cup rugby for Wellington at 16, been the youngest player in the first Black Ferns XV at 17 and gone straight from school into the Black Ferns Sevens, all from a school in central Wellington without a rugby field of its own. In her first season of Test rugby in 2026 she played eight Tests in the backline and scored three tries.

Wainuiomata and St Mary's

Justine McGregor was born on 11 April 2006 and grew up in the Hutt Valley. She is of Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Kahungunu descent. Softball was her first sport, and she also played netball, touch and league, but rugby took hold early: she started with Rippa rugby at the Wainuiomata club, where she has said her family were a bit shocked by how quickly she took to it, and then played junior rugby for Hutt Old Boys Marist.

She applied for a place at Manukura, which College Sport Wellington calls the country's leading school for girls' rugby, and was turned down. Instead she went to St Mary's College on Guilford Terrace in Thorndon, a few minutes from Parliament, which has no full-sized field and relies on clubs for somewhere to train. The school has still won the city's First XV grade four years running and the Wellington Condor Sevens nine years in a row, according to College Sport Wellington. In 2023, her final year, McGregor captained the First XV to the Wellington title before losing the Hurricanes regional final, a qualifier for the national Top 4, to Manukura.

Sevens was the game that captivated her. She played for Central Storm at the 2021 World Schools Sevens in Auckland, and after watching the New Zealand under-18 side she decided, in her words, "Wow I want to make that team". She made it in 2022 and again in 2023. From Year 12 she dropped every other sport to concentrate on rugby and sevens.

Club rugby and the Pride

She was still at school when she started playing senior women's club rugby. In 2022 she scored a hat-trick on debut for Marist St Pat's against Poneke, and in 2023 she moved to Petone, closer to home and coached by Shannon Nightingale, who also coached St Mary's. Playing centre, she won the Erin Rush medal as best and fairest player in the Wellington women's senior competition. Petone lost the club final 36-32 to Marist St Pat's. By then she had played 20 club games and scored 16 tries.

"Justine has a work ethic that is second to none," Nightingale told College Sport Wellington, adding that the coaches sometimes had to talk to her about training too much.

New Zealand Rugby's profile records that she made her Farah Palmer Cup debut for the Wellington Pride in 2022 at 16. She got only half a game that season, she said, and came back determined to show more. In 2023 she played all six of the Pride's games on the wing or in midfield and scored six tries. On her first start, against Canterbury in Christchurch, she scored three, including a 60-metre intercept and a 40-metre solo try, although Wellington lost 58-29. The Pride did not win a game that year.

The youngest in the Black Ferns XV

In September 2023 she answered the phone at home and found Whitney Hansen, then coach of the new Black Ferns XV, on the other end. At 17, McGregor was the youngest of five teenagers in the squad. "It was a shock," she said, explaining that she had no idea she was part of the selectors' plans. On 23 September at Pukekohe the Black Ferns XV beat a Manusina XV from Samoa 38-12, and off the bench she threw the pass for a try by lock Laura Bayfield.

The Black Ferns Sevens

In February 2024, in her first year out of school, she was contracted to the Black Ferns Sevens and moved to the team's base at Mount Maunganui. She was 17, the same age at which Risi Pouri-Lane and Tenika Willison had been contracted. Coach Cory Sweeney called her "a standout performer in the secondary school scene" who had not taken a backward step since joining the squad.

She spent most of a year travelling with the team without playing. In November 2024 Sweeney named her as one of three debutants for the opening event of the 2024/25 season, with Katelyn Vaha'akolo and Olive Watherston, saying she had been to a number of international tournaments and was "really determined to take her opportunity". She made her debut at the Dubai Sevens, where New Zealand reached the Cup final and lost 24-26 to Australia. She became Black Ferns Sevens player No.88. "I love the speed of the game and the space it provides," she has said of sevens.

Black Fern No.270

When Hansen, now head coach of the Black Ferns, named her first squad for the 2026 Pacific Four Series, McGregor was listed from the Black Ferns Sevens. On 11 April at Heart Health Park in Sacramento, on her 20th birthday, she came off the bench in a 48-15 win over the USA, one of four debutants with Mia Anderson, Tara Turner and Maddison Robinson. She was a replacement again in the 36-14 win over Canada in Kansas City, then got her first start, on the right wing, in the Anzac Day Test against Australia on the Sunshine Coast. The Black Ferns won 40-5 to retain the Pacific Four title and the O'Reilly Cup, and McGregor scored her first Test try.

In June she joined Chiefs Manawa for Super Rugby Aupiki, starting at centre in round two against the Blues at FMG Stadium Waikato. Chiefs Manawa lost 26-27, and she was shown a yellow card in the second half.

The northern tour

Hansen kept her in the 31-player squad for the rest of the year, listed with Chiefs Manawa and the Black Ferns Sevens. She was not in the 23 for the 66-19 win over Australia in Auckland in August, but came off the bench in the 52-20 win over South Africa at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg.

In Lyon on 12 September she started on the left wing and scored as the Black Ferns beat France 28-14, with Mia Anderson, Mererangi Paul and Liana Mikaele-Tu'u also crossing. A week later she was back on the right wing at Hive Stadium in Edinburgh and scored again in the 66-14 win over Scotland, the Black Ferns' first Test in that country. She came off the bench in the 19-26 loss to England at Twickenham, the side's only defeat of the year.

Back in New Zealand she was not in the 23 for the 81-12 win over France in Hamilton, then got a late call for the 150th Test in Black Ferns history at Semenoff Stadium in Whangārei on 24 October. When Amy du Plessis was ruled out with delayed concussion, McGregor moved into the starting side at outside centre, and the Black Ferns beat France 31-12. She was not in the 23 for the series finale in Christchurch.

That made eight Tests in her first season, four of them starts, with three tries and 15 points. The Black Ferns lost only one of them.

What is next

McGregor is 20, and NZR's profile describes her as having a future in both fifteens and sevens. The Black Ferns open 2027 against the Wallaroos at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Anzac Day, after the first Anzac Day Bledisloe Cup Test, and in September they host the first British and Irish Lions Women's tour, with Tests in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Career at a glance

Test figures are New Zealand Rugby's. NZR also lists one non-Test match, against a New Zealand Women XV in Upper Hutt in August 2026. Club and provincial figures are from College Sport Wellington to early 2024.