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Why coach was ‘worried’ about Black Ferns’ heartfelt hug with King Charles
By Finn Morton
Black Ferns assistant coach Dan Cron has reflected on the incredible experience of meeting King Charles III at Buckingham Palace and explained why he was “worried” when the players went to hug the 75-year-old Monarch.
In the leadup to the Black Ferns’ clash with England’s Red Roses at Allianz Stadium in Twickenham, the New Zealanders had the privilege of meeting the King. The Black Ferns have shared multiple videos on social media, including one moment that has gone viral.
With some of the Black Ferns watching on, winger Ayesha Leti-l‘iga stood in front of the King and bravely asked whether the players could have a hug. “A hug? Why not,” was how King Charles responded before the players came together for an iconic embrace.
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Of the four videos the Black Ferns have shared online from their trip to Buckingham Palace, that moment has caught fire online. At the time of writing, other videos have 277 comments and another has 480, but the hug clip has a staggering 5,993.
“I much appreciated this chance to meet you and have such a warm hug from most of you,” King Charles III later said. “Very healing.” When looking back at the entire experience, coach Cron reflected on how “surreal” it was to visit the royal palace.
“The hug thing, I could tell it was coming… I was worried they were going to put a scrum down to be honest,” Cron quipped during an interview on SENZ’s Scotty & Izzy.
“It was a pretty proud moment, mate, to be honest. It was a boy from Hillmorton High in there meeting the King. It was pretty cool.
“I was very lucky enough to be directly behind him, for me it was a way of looking over his shoulder, and it was a pretty proud moment as a Kiwi to be standing in that room and that occasion,” he added when asked about the team’s waiata.
“To see a team that I’m apart of perform like that, words can’t describe it pal to be honest.”
On Saturday, the Black Ferns will look to cap off an exciting week when they take on the Red Roses at the iconic London rugby venue. The newly named Allianz Stadium is expected to host about 40,000 spectators less than a year out from the Rugby World Cup.
New Zealand claimed a thrilling 34-31 win in the last World Cup Final in 2022, with a full house at Auckland’s Eden Park watching the two heavyweights of international women’s rugby go head-to-head in an enthralling decider.
They met again last year in Aotearoa, with the English taking out that one 33-12. It was a commanding performance from a side that still would’ve been hurting from that loss in the biggest game of all, where they almost pulled off a comeback despite going down to 14.
England have won three of the last five, including two commanding wins 43-12 and 56-15 during New Zealand’s end-of-year tour in November 2021. But that was then and this is now.
The stage is set for another epic between the top two ranked sides in women’s rugby.
“I know when I signed up to coach, the first thing I looked at was when we play England,” Cron explained.
“we’ve had a very big build-up for it. We had a great three-week camp in New Zealand and came over here Saturday. We’ve ticked the tourist box now and now it’s footy time.
“We pretty much had a game today against Wales, had a good hit-out against them. The girls just don’t hold back at training – it’s two girls enter, one girl leaves.
“From a coaching point of view, I’m pretty excited about where we’re at. It’s been a good prep and all that is left to do now is go out and execute and play with a bit of mana.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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