Renee Holmes: shut out of men's football, she became a World Cup-winning fullback

Renee Holmes had represented New Zealand in three sports before she turned 21, and rugby was not one of them. She wanted to be a Football Fern until a men's league in Gisborne decided a girl could not play. She turned to rugby at 16, and by 2026 she had won a World Cup at Eden Park, scored 23 points in an Aupiki final, kicked her way back into the Black Ferns from the outside and taken her total past 250 Test points. This is the story of a fullback from Gisborne whose father drove her seven hours in a day, there and back, to get her to training.

Four sports from Gisborne

Holmes was born in Gisborne on 21 December 1999 and is Ngāti Porou, according to her Hurricanes profile. She is one of six children, and the whole family played football. "Renee Holmes grew up wanting to be a Football Fern," Newsroom's Ashley Stanley wrote in 2020, and the NZ Rugby Museum profile describes her as the best player in Gisborne in her teens.

In Year 11 she moved to Auckland on her own to attend Massey High School for its football programme. That year she made the New Zealand under-17 women's squad and played in the national league. Then she went home to Gisborne to finish school, and the trouble started. She was given approval to play in the men's local competition, and her team won her first game. The opposition complained because she was a girl, and the result was overturned. She tried again with another team, got the opposition's blessing, and the same thing happened after another win. She told Newsroom she had been told a girl would "ruin the culture of our game", and that "it really took a toll on me". She gave up football.

She was not short of other sports. As a child living in Christchurch she became an intermediate Māori and national taekwondo champion, two levels short of a black belt. At 16 she went to the under-20 world championships in ultimate frisbee in Poland with the New Zealand team, the Kahu, and by the museum profile's account she was the tournament's top point scorer with 42 scores in eight games, runner-up for most valuable player, and part of a team that finished fifth after being ranked 21st. In 2017 she was picked in the New Zealand secondary schools team for ki-o-rahi, the traditional Māori ball game, after Gisborne Girls' High School finished third at the national tournament.

Three and a half hours each way

Rugby came at 16. She had captained an intermediate sevens team that won a tournament, and now she wanted fifteens, but Gisborne could not offer what she needed. So she joined the Hastings Rugby and Sports Club, three and a half hours away. Her father drove her there and back every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and some sessions had only four players. They would get home around midnight. "Dad just wants what's best for me and he's given me every opportunity," she told Newsroom. She was the club's women's MVP and top points scorer in her first season.

In 2017, at 17 and in her first year of fifteens, she made the Hawke's Bay Tui for the Farah Palmer Cup, which meant leaving school early every Wednesday for the drive to Tui training as well. Hawke's Bay did not win any of the five games she played, but Black Ferns first five Krysten Cottrell became an early mentor.

Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Japan

Another Black Fern, Les Elder, persuaded her to join Bay of Plenty in 2018, and in 2019 she moved to Waikato, where she has stayed. She scored a try in a 34-28 win over Counties Manukau in her first season, was named Waikato's women's player of the year for 2019 and, by her own account, her favourite game was a win over Auckland at Eden Park in which she scored, with Black Ferns selectors in the crowd. Waikato reached the Farah Palmer Cup final in 2020, losing 8-7 to Canterbury, and won it in 2021, 22-20 against Canterbury, although she missed the final.

Sevens kept calling too. In 2019 she spent nearly four months in Japan playing sevens. She said she never imagined "getting paid to just train and play rugby at the age of 19". A return trip to play for the Hokkaido Barbarians in 2020 was stopped by Covid. She was named most valuable player at the Red Bull Ignite7s tournament and went to a New Zealand sevens development camp, which she called her "this is where I want to be" moment.

Off the field she began a Bachelor of Health, Sport and Human Performance at the University of Waikato, and she was one of the first recipients of a three-year Tania Dalton Foundation scholarship for young sportswomen, mentored by former Silver Fern and Silver Ferns assistant coach Debbie Fuller.

A black jersey

On 21 November 2020 Holmes started at fullback for the Black Ferns against the New Zealand Barbarians in Nelson and played the full 80 minutes of a 19-17 win, which gave her Black Fern number 221. Her Test debut came on 31 October 2021 in Exeter, in the Black Ferns' 100th Test. England won 43-12.

When Super Rugby Aupiki began in 2022 she missed out on a Chiefs Manawa contract. According to Wikipedia's account, Crusaders chief executive Colin Mansbridge approached her, and she signed for Matatū instead.

World champion

Wayne Smith took over the Black Ferns in 2022, and Holmes started at fullback in eight of her 10 Tests that year. She started in the 23-10 win over Australia in Tauranga that opened the Pacific Four Series, then scored her first Test try and kicked a conversion as the USA were beaten 50-6 in Whangārei, and the Black Ferns won the series. She kicked three conversions in a 52-5 win over Australia in Christchurch, and scored a try and kicked four conversions in the 95-12 win over Japan in Auckland.

The World Cup opener against Australia at Eden Park on 8 October 2022 began badly for the hosts, who were 17-0 down, and Holmes has since admitted it was a rough night for her personally. The Black Ferns won 41-17. Two weeks later she scored two tries and kicked six conversions, 22 points, as Scotland were beaten 57-0 in Whangārei. She came off the bench in the quarter-final against Wales, kicked a conversion and a penalty in the 25-24 semi-final win over France, and started the final against England at Eden Park on 12 November. Early in the second half Stacey Fluhler broke from the Black Ferns' 22 and linked with "fellow Gisborne girl Renee Holmes", in NZR's words, before taking the ball back. Holmes kicked two conversions and the Black Ferns won 34-31.

Twenty-three points in a final

Holmes re-signed with Matatū for 2023, and the first Aupiki final, against a Chiefs Manawa side that had won every regular-season match, became her game. At FMG Stadium Waikato on 25 March 2023 she scored two tries, kicked two conversions and landed three penalties, 23 points in all, and Matatū held on to win 33-31. No player has scored more in an Aupiki final since: the best individual tally in the three finals that followed was her own 13 in 2024.

That year she scored a try and kicked six conversions as the Black Ferns beat Canada 52-21 in Ottawa during the Pacific Four Series, which they won again, and she started five of the six Tests she played in 2023.

Back to the Chiefs

Holmes lives in Hamilton. Wikipedia records that she did not want to spend long periods away from home training in Christchurch, so she rang Chiefs Manawa coach Crystal Kaua about a contract and was signed in November 2023. In the 2024 final against the Blues at Eden Park on 13 April she scored in the fifth minute and kicked a conversion and two penalties, 13 points, but the Blues won 24-18.

She played six of the Black Ferns' eight Tests in 2024, five of them at fullback, kicking six conversions in a 67-19 win over Australia on Auckland's North Shore and five in the 62-0 win at Ballymore in Brisbane.

Dropped, and grateful

The 2025 season started badly. After an Aupiki season with Chiefs Manawa in which she shared the fullback role with Tenika Willison, she was left out of the Black Ferns' Pacific Four squad altogether. The Waikato Herald's Christopher Reive reported that she went back to club rugby, played centre for Hamilton Old Boys and spent the extra time on her kicking.

She was recalled for the trial against the Black Ferns XV and the 37-12 win over Australia in Wellington in July, and then named in the World Cup squad. In England she took over the goal-kicking. By the end of pool play she had landed 14 of 18 attempts and was second on the tournament's points list behind team-mate Braxton Sorensen-McGee. She kicked seven conversions against Spain in York, scored off the bench against Japan in Exeter and landed five from six against Ireland in Brighton, the miss a charge-down. "I'm actually really grateful it happened," she said of her omission earlier in the year.

She scored twice in the 46-17 quarter-final win over South Africa in Exeter, kicked a conversion in the 19-34 semi-final loss to Canada in Bristol, and in the bronze final against France at Twickenham scored a try, kicked three conversions and two penalties for 17 points in a 42-26 win.

Attack and skills coach Riki Flutey, a former England international and British and Irish Lion, was the man she credited with having "made the biggest impact on my career this year". He described her as a player who could kick off both feet and from 22 to 22, and added: "she's an outstanding human, mate, that cares deeply about the Black Ferns."

A homecoming and a new code

For 2026 Holmes signed with Hurricanes Poua, a move the club called a homecoming for a Gisborne-born player. "I cannot wait to be a part of it," she said. Head coach Hayden Triggs called her "a humble, kind person, a dedicated athlete, a world-class competitor".

The Test season came first. Against the USA in Sacramento on 11 April she scored two tries and kicked five conversions and a penalty, 23 points, the most she has scored in a Test, as the Black Ferns, only 19-15 up at half-time, pulled away to win 48-15. She kicked three conversions against Canada in Kansas City and five on Anzac Day as Australia were beaten 40-5 on the Sunshine Coast, and the Black Ferns kept the Pacific Four title.

In the Aupiki she was the competition's top points scorer with 71, from two tries, 20 conversions and seven penalties, and Poua won four of their six games to finish third, missing the Grand Final on the table.

Then she turned to sevens. When the Black Ferns named their squad for the rest of 2026 in August, Holmes was listed as unavailable because of Black Ferns Sevens commitments, and in October she was named in a 13-player Black Ferns Sevens squad for a three-match series against Australia in Sydney.

Standing

Holmes has 33 Tests and 255 Test points, from 11 tries, 88 conversions and eight penalties, and she has been on the winning side 26 times. The judgements on her come from the people around her: Triggs's description of a world-class competitor, Flutey's of an outstanding human. Ben O'Brien Leaf, the Gisborne commentator who remembers her as an intermediate school athlete, told the museum profile: "She's always had a spark and is very sweet personally too."

In 2020 she put her own ambition plainly. "The ultimate end goal is to have a black jersey," she said, whether in fifteens or sevens.

What is next

Holmes turns 27 on 21 December 2026. 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 host the British and Irish Lions Women for three Tests in September, the first women's Lions tour.

Career at a glance

Test figures are New Zealand Rugby's (stats.allblacks.com), which match World Rugby's records for her. She also played one non-Test match for the Black Ferns, against the New Zealand Barbarians in 2020.