Straight Up

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Sometimes a cliche but mostly an inspiration. We are going to give tis book away to young people doing the Award in our Christmas giveaways. Following the success of the World Cup Tui didn’t return to playing for the Sevens team for the remainder of the 2022-23 season. Tui set out to write a sports book and ended up with an astounding masterpiece on life. At various times it crosses into self-care, leadership, relationships and teamwork. Each chapter concludes with a piece of advice from ‘Ruby’s training bag’. Experienced New Zealand sevens squads revealed for Commonwealth Games". Stuff. 29 June 2022 . Retrieved 4 July 2022. Tui credits her loved ones for getting the team to gold and wants to thank anyone who has ever turned out to watch women’s rugby.

a b Bailey, Judy (4 October 2018). "Women's Rugby Sevens Player Ruby Tui Thanks Sport for Helping Her Overcome Her Difficult Upbringing". The Australian Women's Weekly . Retrieved 22 October 2018– via Now to Love. Tui's relatability and sense of humour have been on full display over the past 18 months and her star has shone to the point where she was at the centre of the advertising campaign for the Rugby World Cup, inviting the world to a family reunion in Aotearoa. We can put on a World Cup that makes the rest of the world go 'whoa, New Zealand truly is the home of rugby'. She speaks openly in the book about her parents and upbringing. Why they weren’t right for each other – and Tui recognising that herself when she was only a young girl. Following his appointment as head coach, Allan Bunting organized Kelly Brazier, Kayla McAlister, Sarah Hirini, Niall Williams, Tyla Nathan-Wong, Ruby Tui and Portia Woodman into a leadership group.

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Hosting the Women's Rugby World Cup is an extremely special opportunity for New Zealand, Ruby says. If you go to a rugby tournament [overseas] and sing ‘Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi…’, about six people in the crowd turn around and go ‘Aue!’ That’s how you can find the Kiwis. So, it’s always been in and around rugby life to me. There was no doubt in my mind it would work.

In 2023 Tui used her sabbatical to play in the United States for the Golden State Retrievers in the Premier Rugby Sevens (PR7s). One of the team's assistant coaches was Mere Baker, who had been one of Tui's earliest Sevens coaches. An example: “Our team is a waka and we leave mana in our wake.” And another: “It’s not your skin colour, your salary or any of that stuff that makes you great; it’s your fight, it’s your work ethic.” I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately and [the answer], fortunately, continues to be yes.” She definitely wants to have children. “But I mean, like when, eh? But, yeah, definitely. Don’t we all want kids?”I’ve got a surprise for you, Dad said one day. I was 11 years-old. We were driving around in his van, and I just looked at him. OK . . . And he dropped a bombshell. Until just before this book was published, most people didn't know the truth of Ruby's childhood. I'll leave it for you to discover in this book - other than at the end there is just the slightest tinge of bitterness when she says; Ruby never pulls out,” says Hireme-Smiler. “Ruby will do everything 110% and I think that's what you learn to love about her.

I had this internal guilt, I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I had no safe spaces at that time so it ate away. But after talking about, accepting it and releasing that guilt and shame [I realised that] sometimes these things happen. Tui moved to Christchurch after high school to study, with dreams of becoming a professional netball player for the Silver Ferns. But getting to netball training across the city cost money she did not have.I stood in the sports section, and I searched and searched. I pulled out book after book, but there wasn't a single biography on a Kiwi female in the whole section. I eventually found an autobiography of Billie Jean King, a famous white American tennis player who did amazing things, but that was it. In Straight Up, Ruby writes about finally releasing the shame she carried for years after that night. Between the ages of nine and eleven, she would spend her schools holidays with either with her mother's relatives on the West Coast or with her father in Wellington. [12] It was during one such stay with her father when she was eleven that Tui learnt she had a 16-year-old half-sister, Lesh. At this point her father’s life revolved around alcohol, recreational drugs and partying. Tui was to witness the impacts of drugs on people, drug dealing and on one occasion, witness firsthand the death of a woman from a drug overdose. [12] [ needs copy edit] In such an environment Tui had begun drinking alcohol by the age of 11. She writes impactfully of winning the Sevens silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games - and the drama which surrounded that campaign - before going one step higher on the dais to win gold at the following Tokyo Olympics. Strang, Ben (10 July 2018). "Ruby Tui grateful for Sevens World Cup after mumps ruined Comm Games quest". Stuff . Retrieved 5 September 2023.

Winning] was a positive moment out of so much negative. It was a very emotional moment, but one of the most beautiful emotional moments I’ve ever had, because you felt everything in one go.” The section I found most fascinating was her candid discussion (I don't think Ruby does any other kind of discussion!) of her own sexuality & her refusal to be put in any kind of box. This will make me look at sexuality in quite a different way & is totally in keeping with Ruby's wonderful free spirit. We had stopped playing for a long time. By the time I got pulled into that interview, I look up and all three tiers [of the stand] are chokka, I’d never seen it. And so, I was like, ‘Oh, my guys are keen! My guys are here for the party!’

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As a child, Ruby was exposed to a lot of drug and alcohol abuse and later had a period of "chaotic lubrication" herself. Ruby says she was freed up when she eventually came to understand that the difficult events of her childhood were not her fault. It's never too late to forgive ourselves. I had to forgive myself because I thought I was killing people, and I wasn't. The World Cup success catapulted women’s rugby into the spotlight in New Zealand like never before. Tui, who was later crowned World Rugby’s Women’s Breakthrough Player of 2022, was inundated with “lucrative” offers to play overseas and signed to play in the Premier Rugby Sevens competition in the United States, for which men and women are paid equally.