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Honey Hireme-Smiler on 'Honey: My Story of Love, Loss and Victory'
By Adam Julian
The sporting prowess of Honey Hireme-Smiler was so redoubtable she was famously nicknamed ‘Honey Bill Williams’ because, like Sonny Bill Williams, she was a hugely successful dual international in both union and league.
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“I told the local Putaruru newspaper I was Honey Bill Williams as a joke when they were writing an article about me. They printed it on paper and the name has stuck ever since,” Hireme-Smiler laughed.
“There were years where I could play for the Black Ferns, Black Ferns Sevens and Kiwi Ferns because we weren’t professionally paid as such but then as the game has evolved, we are not able to transition between the two anymore.”
Hireme-Smiler began her union career with Melville and Waikato in 2001. She had another season with Waikato University and the senior representative side in 2005.
She became one of New Zealand’s first professional women’s rugby players, playing for the Black Ferns Sevens and winning the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2013 and two World Sevens Series titles. In 11 tournaments, Hireme-Smiler scored 44 tries and at one stage the Black Ferns Sevens won 44 matches in a row.
She played 18 tests (16 wins) for the Black Ferns XV’s, earning selection on the 2014 Rugby World Cup Dream Team.
Rugby League was her first love. Honey was New Zealand’s Women’s Rugby League Player of the Year three times and has been honoured with a New Zealand Order of Merit.
She played four league World Cups, winning twice, and captained the Kiwi Ferns to victory at the inaugural Nines World Cup in 2019.
Her newly-released memoir, Honey: My Story of Love, Loss and Victory, written with acclaimed sports journalist Suzanne McFadden addresses all those sporting triumphs.
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But the book is so much more than a sports story. Hireme-Smiler addresses her struggles with family violence, alcohol, and maturing from school bully to head prefect.
Hireme-Smiler has lost her best friend, grandmother and mother to tragic and untimely deaths. Her wife is suffering from terminal cancer. She works closely with troubled young people and those with disabilities.
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Hireme-Smiler is a commentator on both rugby and league for Sky Sport, a job that hasn’t been easy with criticism of her appearance and approach, most often from male trolls.
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The book is currently the sixth best-selling non-fiction publication in New Zealand and just the second mainstream autobiography of a female rugby player after Ruby Tui’s Straight Up in 2022 to enjoy such a widespread readership.
McFadden believes the book resonates because of Hireme-Smiler’s huge generosity.
“Honey fills every waking moment with something and much of it is giving to others. Whether that’s turning up to a league prizegiving to hand out awards, coaching kids, attending tangihanga or looking after family, Honey is a giver and a fighter and Kiwis love that,” she said.
The role that the Aotearoa Maori Sevens team played in the development of both Hireme-Smiler and the Black Ferns Sevens is only briefly alluded to in the book but is one of the most important stories in New Zealand Rugby history.
The Aotearoa Maori started as a local team in 2000. They quickly fashioned a formidable reputation under the visionary coaching of Peter Joseph [PJ], a Union leader and rugby stalwart from the Bay of Plenty. Joseph coached Waikite to several tournament wins nurturing All Blacks Sevens greats Peter Woods and Martin (Boogie) Jones. In 2000 Bay of Plenty women were national champions.
“I really like Sevens, the full width of the field is used, and being from the Bay freezing practices on a Tuesday and Thursday night never agreed with me,” Joseph said.
“I started in women’s Sevens after I went to a Volcanix game to help the coach select the rep side. I saw Black Fern Kellie Kiwi play. Wow. If ever there was a sevens player, she, was it. Then I started looking at the whole team imagining the prospects.
“I was approached by New Zealand Rugby in 2002 asking me if I’d be interested in coaching a New Zealand Sevens team. It didn’t happen because it was World Cup year and the remaining money for women’s rugby went to the Black Ferns.
“The US coach Emil Signes, who I’d met when we beat his USA team at a Whangarei International 7’s tournament, asked if I could take our Aotearoa team to Hong Kong. He’d taken American teams all over the world and was afraid sevens might fall off the map without a New Zealand presence.
“We only had a few weeks’ notice and had to find a lot of money. We got turned down by the charitable trusts because we weren’t a national team endorsed by New Zealand Rugby. My wife Shelly and I were thinking of moving so we put our house on the market. We put in just over $64,000. We got to Hong Kong and won the tournament,”
The Hong Kong Sevens was supposed to be a “one-off” but Aotearoa Maori grew into such a juggernaut that by 2012 they’d provided nine players for the New Zealand Sevens team that won the inaugural World Rugby Sevens series – including Sarah Hirini (nee Goss), captain of the Black Ferns Sevens Olympic gold medal-winning team in Tokyo in 2021 and Paris 2024.
Aotearoa Maori won 14 of the 18 tournaments they played between 2000 and 2012, beating 23 different countries with 34 of the 81 women to represent the side either Black Ferns or Black Ferns Sevens representatives.
At the Hong Kong Sevens, they won 33 consecutive matches between 2002 and 2007 with the Black Ferns Sevens officially born in 2008.
“It was a battle for us every year, especially as it got to year three and four. I think it became a bit of an embarrassment for them. We weren’t considered a national team but we were cleaning up the tournament. In 2007, the last year, we went unbeaten 195-0.”
Hireme-Smiler was first involved with Aotearoa Maori in 2003.
“Physically and mentally, PJ took my game to a whole new level. Sevens is a different beast to league with all the fitness but he never doubted our rugby knowledge and let us play,” Hireme-Smiler said.
“The way the team hooked you in was addictive. The girls became your sisters and we stayed in touch years after it happened. PJ helped many girls through hard times. We were trailblazers really.”
Hireme-Smiler introduced Amy Turner to the team and she played at the Whangarei and Hong Kong tournaments in 2004 before moving to Australia. In 2016 she became a gold medallist with Australia in Sevens at the Rio Olympics. An ex-miner, she won a League World Cup in 2017 too.
In 2008 Aotearoa Maori were so highly regarded by England they played the first ever women’s sevens match at Twickenham. It was before the men’s final of the London Sevens and in front of Olympics organisers keen to see if the women ‘measured up.’ The Maori were beaten after the full-time whistle.
In 2009, the first year of the women’s sevens World Cup, America paid the team’s airfares over to the IRB San Diego 7’s and then went into a week-long camp in Arkansas to help them with their World Cup preparation.
The Roma International Sevens has been held every year since 2002 and was an important event in promoting the merits of the female game. Between 2010 and 2012, Aotearoa Maori won the tournament each year – 13 game wins in a row. A young teenager from Feilding High School, Sarah Hirini, arrived on the international stage.
“I selected Sarah as a playmaker and she was a good player but we already had three of them,” Joseph recalled.
“We were at a training camp in Rotorua doing scrum practice and Honey came away screaming ‘Jesus PJ’ I can’t scrum against her. I decided to put Gossy in the forwards and after that thought, ‘Yep, I’ve made the right call. I later told New Zealand coach Sean Horan she’ll captain your team at the Olympics.”
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