Honey Hireme-Smiler: I still have that fire burning

It’s been 10 years since E-Tangata first interviewed Honey Hireme-Smiler.

That year, she’d made her debut in the Black Ferns, our national 15-a-side women’s rugby team, where she was such a star that she was named in the World XV. The year before, she’d helped the women’s rugby sevens team win the World Cup title in Moscow, and then had flown straight to the UK where she’d captained the Kiwi Ferns to the final of the women’s rugby league World Cup. They didn’t win, but she was named the player of the tournament.

Not surprisingly, Putāruru’s best-known sports star was being hailed as “Honey Bill”, in a nod to another overachieving dual international, Sonny Bill Williams.

These days she’s better known as a sports commentator for Sky TV, for both rugby and rugby league, in both the women’s and men’s games. Dale, who’s often alongside Honey in the commentary box, caught up with her before the launch this week of her book Honey: My Story of Love, Loss and Victory. 

 

I’m honoured to have a kōrero with you, Honey, and I’m really pleased that you’ve put a pukapuka together. Did you write it yourself, or did you have a shadow writer to tautoko you?

I had a shadow writer, Suzanne McFadden. It all kicked off about four years ago when Bateman Books asked me if I’d be interested in doing the book. It was about a year after I’d lost my mum, and I felt it would be a good time to tell my story.

They asked if I wanted a ghostwriter, and if so, who. I’ve known Suzanne for quite a few years, through sports writing. She had written a story about me after I’d signed with the Warriors, when I had to put my career on hold and never got to wear the Warriors jersey because my mum was going through her end-of-life journey, and I became her primary carer.

Suzanne wrote that story with massive respect for my mum and my family and the journey that we were going through, so she was the first person that I thought of when it came to writing a book.

I’m looking forward to reading it. You’re such an inspiration to not just wāhine, but to athletes, Honey. And part of what makes you is the journey that you’ve been on. So it’s with great respect that I join this conversation and interview.

I always start with names, Honey. Would you be kind enough to speak of the names you were gifted by your parents and how you come to carry those?

I grew up with the name Honey Hunter. It wasn’t until I turned 16 and wanted to get my driver’s licence, and needed my birth certificate, that I discovered that my first name is actually Arneta. My middle name is Honey and my surname is Hireme, which is my mum’s maiden name. My dad’s the Hunter.

Arneta is my great-grandmother’s name. She’s from Raukawa and spent a lot of time at Tūkorehe marae in Levin. The story goes that my great-grandma, my nanny Arneta, was the eldest girl in her whānau, and then my nanny Liza, her daughter, was the eldest of their siblings. And then my mum is the eldest girl again. And I’m my mum’s oldest girl. So I’m pretty privileged to carry the name Arneta.

You’re only the second Honey I know. I’ve got a Honey in my whānau, my beautiful cousin. Did you ever cop any flak from people about your name or have you just been comfortable to be called Honey all your life?

Kids at school would call me “Honey peanut butter jam and marmite,” mocking me in that way. And I sometimes get random texts on my phone from people saying: “Who’s this? Why is my husband texting you?” I’m like, “Uh, who is this?” And then they’ll say who it is, and I’m like: “Oh, they’re texting me because my name is Honey. I work with them,” or something like that.

But, nah, I enjoy the name. I think it’s quite fitting.

And the Smiler name?

Oh yeah. Smiler is my wife’s name. They are from Waituhi, up in Gisborne, the Smiler-Ihimaera whānau. We’ve been married for five years, been together for 12 years. And we’ve got an awesome blended whānau. We’ve got three boys — well, men now. My son’s 20, Rochelle’s two boys are 22 and 24, and we also have two new mokos, a two-year-old and a two-week-old. So we’re a very growing family, and we’re very lucky. Our three boys are awesome.

You’ve had a hard run, Honey, with losing your mum and now with your sweetheart going through her own cancer journey. How are things sitting there?

Well, I’m chatting to you from the hospital today. She’s had a few complications with her recent chemo, had a bit of a reaction. So we’ve been up here for the last five days. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, and today is the fifth anniversary of the day my mum died. So yeah, it’s a very emotional day. Sorry . . .

It’s okay, Honey.

Sorry. Going through it with my mum and being her carer, and then now going through it with Rochelle — and Rochelle also lost her mum to cancer 10 years ago. So we’ve both experienced it, and so far she’s putting up a pretty good fight despite knowing that she’s stage 4 and terminal.

But she’s defying the odds, which has been awesome. When she was initially diagnosed, she was given a six-month time frame. Six months without chemo, and 12 months with chemo, and we’re now coming up to two-and-a-half years.

We definitely have rough days and rough weeks and rough months. Like, as of recent times, she’s had another scan which hasn’t been very good, so she’s had to go back on treatment again. But we remain positive and open to any opportunity that might come to find some hope and support for her to live as long as possible and as well as possible.

It’s not lost on me the major challenges that you’ve confronted. While we revel in your exploits on the sporting field, we’re touched by your commitment to those who you love. All the best with that, Honey.

You’re known as a footballer extraordinaire. Not a lot of famous sporting identities have come out of Putāruru, but there might be more than I realise! What is it about footy, and was it always your game?

It was always my game. Things weren’t easy at home. There was a fair amount of alcohol involved, and a fair amount of domestic violence that went on in our household. So I was quite an angry little Honey. I tried netball as a five-year-old and it wasn’t really my thing. I constantly got pulled up for contact. League was a really good outlet and I loved the physicality of it. Just the freedom of running around. I was always a bit of a tomboy as well.

Being from a big whānau, my mum being one of 11 siblings, all my cousins played. So it was just like running around with a team full of cousins and a team full of all your mates. It was like playing bullrush which we used to do at the marae whenever there was a tangihanga on, or whatever we were hanging out at the marae for. I was always the first to try and rark up a game of bullrush against my boy cousins, and just get stuck in.

If we weren’t playing sport, we were swimming down at the river or riding bikes or just finding enjoyment in the little things.

What about schooling and stuff? You’re very articulate — I love your commentary work. Did you excel in academics or are you just good at thinking on your feet?

I really struggled with school, to be honest. I came through kōhanga reo, went into primary school, went through the whānau unit. I loved anything that was te ao Māori. I loved learning the reo. I loved kapa haka. I loved all of that.

I went back into the mainstream for intermediate, and then I was in and out of the whānau unit when I went to Putāruru High School. My favourite subjects were te reo Māori and PE. I got my School C te reo Māori in the third form and then sat bursary te reo in the fifth form. PE and Māori were probably the only things that kept me at school. Other than those subjects, I struggled as a learner. I was a very practical person and I had a limited concentration span. So sitting in classrooms reading books wasn’t my thing. But if you give me anything practical to do, I was right into that.

What about the reo? You’ve obviously had the grounding, the love for it. But sometimes life can have us drifting away from the use of everyday reo, and all of us are at different stages of our journey. Where would you say you’re at? How often do you get a chance to use the reo that was gifted to you as a young person?

When I came out of school, I worked for Te Wānanga o Aotearoa for about four years, in an administration role, but I was able to go through all the reo programmes there as a staff member, and obviously was fully immersed working for a Māori organisation. I was quite confident there.

Then I went to work in Māori mental health in Hauora Waikato, and spent a big chunk of years working in disability. I suppose I’ve always picked up roles where I could work as a sort of cultural advisor or promote the reo or promote tikanga. In a lot of those roles, I’ve worked with Māori families or Māori patients or tāngata whaikaha.

My current role is with Hospice Waikato as a kaiāwhina, and it forces me to learn a lot of karakia. I learn a lot of hīmene, waiata and ways that I can support whānau going through the end of life.

I’ve picked up bits and pieces and done a whole lot of courses, whether they be online or face-to-face. But I’m still very determined to go full immersion to really get a core foundation of the reo, because I’m probably that classic case of someone who can hear and understand, but I don’t have the confidence to kōrero out loud.

I think you speak for both of us. You know, working in the mental health field can be very humbling. How do you think that working with people with disabilities in the mental health sector, and now people facing the end of life, has affected your perceptions of life and your priorities in life?

Very grounding, to be honest. I’ve lived a long life as a high-performance athlete. During a lot of my Black Ferns or Kiwi Ferns career, though, I was always working part-time with our tāngata whaikaha disability communities.

It is really grounding to know that, as an athlete, I can have the best of the best in terms of resources and overseas travel. And then the moment I step off that plane and come back to work on a Monday, say at Life Unlimited, working with intellectual disability, you’re working with people who have a wide range of limitations, whether that be physical or cognitive.

I’ve worked in different support roles with different people and their families. You can take what you learn from sport into those other roles. Resilience is one thing. Another is empathy. That’s massive for me.

Working in palliative care or end-of-life care, I’m often going into the house of a whānau who’ve been referred to hospice. I go in and explain to them a little bit, so they get an understanding of what hospice is and how we can support the whānau.

If they recognise me, whether it’s from doing the commentary on TV or from my sporting background, I think it helps build trust. More importantly, they see a Māori face when I walk through that door, and they hear the reo. And that’s probably more important in building a connection with these whānau who are going through a difficult time as they adjust to that end-of-life journey.

Have you come to terms with losing your mum?

Yeah, I have. I’m in a bit of a unique position in that I have my darling wife going through her own journey of terminal illness.

Sometimes it’s about compartmentalising my day-to-day mahi and ensuring when I’m working with a specific whānau, that this is their journey, this is their life, and I’m here to support them in that. So, I have to take off my own pōtae and put that aside in that moment when I’m working with those families.

And then on the flipside, when I come home, I’m also taking off that pōtae as a kaiāwhina of hospice and ensuring that I’m caring for my wife and playing that role at home as well.

It’s a privileged role, to be honest. You get to see the most amazing side of people when they’re on that journey. It’s important to normalise the conversations we have about death and dying. Our main outcome is that we want to live well, but also that our whānau are educated to die well, because we have so many of our whānau who suffer, and they don’t have to suffer. There’s a way in which we can die well.

That’s something that I’ve come to learn, and it sits with me, and I feel tau, at peace, working in those spaces. And very privileged.

You’re known as a wahine toa, never a backward step. But you must have private moments of sadness as well.

Absolutely. Sometimes when you’re working on live TV, you have to put on a bit of a mask when things aren’t looking so well and you’ve got to go out and front an All Blacks game or a Black Ferns game or something like that.

It’s nice to feel that I still have that fire burning in my tummy when it comes to sport. It’s the same fire that I had when I used to play. So if I’m on the sideline of a Warriors game and they’re about to kick a drop goal to win a game, it’s that thing that just pulls me into the sport, and I just love it. I’m still super competitive.

I get to pick those things that I really love, being involved with sport, although I’m not physically doing it myself. I can have the best seats in the house, sitting in the commentary boxes or being down on the sideline, and being able to call games and be fully immersed in those environments. I just love it. I can’t get enough of it.

And it’s a nice way to put things into perspective and be like: “Far out. I’m really lucky to be able to be in these places, watching these amazing athletes, both wāhine and tāne, playing in the black jersey.” Or, you know, when you’re on the sideline watching the haka in real life — those moments it’s hard to believe that I get to experience that.

We can spend a lot of time during the week previewing what we think might happen on a Saturday. And then we spend quite a lot of time during the next week going over what happened. But surely it’s the unpredictability of sport that is its attraction, the fact that an underdog can get up and win. What do you say of that part of sport, the constant unknown?

I love that. Sport can take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, all in the space of an 80-minute game. Take, for instance, Saturday with the All Blacks game against Australia. At half-time you’re thinking: “Oh, we’re going to thrash these Aussies.” And then you’re sitting on the edge of your seat, hands all sweating, freaking out because you think you’re about to lose to them come full-time.

It’s what draws you into sport, those massive moments of joy and then those massive moments of frustration and anger — and you go through all of that.

I also enjoy analysing the game. How could a team have done this and how did they create this moment and what could this player have done? And even just learning about players and having the privilege of being able to technically and tactically break down a game and how an individual player is doing or how they’re working as a collective. All of that stuff is what I really enjoy.

It keeps me learning. I retired four years ago, and now it’s about trying to stay relevant in the game so I can make sure that I’m up with the play and know what’s going on — and also seeing the development of new players. I love seeing them in their rookie season, and then to be watching them two years later and they get player of the year or team player of the year. I really love to see people thrive in sport.

Who were your sporting heroes growing up?

I grew up watching State of Origin with my dad, so I really loved Wally Lewis. I really enjoyed Mal Meninga and Greg Inglis.

Those players were my idols growing up because I didn’t really know about female league players and it wasn’t until I got into my teenage years that I even found out that there was a Kiwi Ferns team. I think the only female athlete I ever saw on TV was Beatrice Faumuina when she won an Olympic medal. And I thought: “Oh, wow. There’s a lady winning on TV, doing sports.”

But then Stacey Jones, Ruben Wiki. I grew up idolising those players.

You’ve played and won some fantastic trophies over the years. But sometimes it’s not necessarily the big ones that mean the most. So I invite you to touch on a moment that means a great deal to you.

The one that sticks with me the most is definitely the 2013 Rugby League World Cup in England. It’s a sore point in that it was the first time the Kiwi Ferns lost the Rugby League World Cup, and I was the captain at the time. We’d beaten Australia in the rounds prior to that, and we went down by a couple of tries in the final, and that one just hurt. It hurt so much because we were good enough to win, and we should have won, and it was just a couple of key moments in that game that I never forget.

There is one rule of thumb as an outside back in rugby league, and it’s: “Don’t get pushed out of the sideline”, right? So I get the ball off the scrum, do a couple of steps, start running wide and eventually I get pushed out of the sideline. And I’m like, how did I make such a rookie mistake like that? I’ve been playing for so long, I’m the captain, and on the very first tackle, one, I get pushed out, and then there’s another play where I think I knocked the ball on. And it’s just those two key moments that stand out for me, that I played a role in us losing the World Cup.

And since then, we’ve never had it back. We’ve lost it.

I’m surprised but delighted that you would point to a loss as a highlight when you look back at your career. That reveals something about you, Honey. You are talking about how you might have been able to do better, but you didn’t. You must have played alongside and against some fabulous athletes over the years. It’s time for a bit of a roll call. Which women in sport have stood out for you?

Without a doubt, clear in my mind is an amazing wahine named Trish Hina. I first watched her as a 16-year-old. I was playing for the Bay of Plenty women’s rugby league team. I went down to the nationals. Our team got a hiding. We got thrashed from everybody. I don’t think we won a game. It was my rookie year playing women’s nationals.

And then the final for the nationals was Auckland versus Wellington, and Trish was playing for Wellington and she was up against the likes of Luisa Avaiki. This was my first time seeing these women, and as I watched Trish Hina play, I just thought: “Far out, she’s amazing.” She was head and shoulders above everybody else on the field.

I wanted to play like her. She had such a massive skill set. Her step, her ability. Very humble off the field. Quite shy in her persona. And then when I first made the Kiwi Ferns, I was named as centre and she was the other centre, and I was shell-shocked. I was thinking: “Far out. I’m going to play against this chick that I’ve been watching for the last two or three years.” I was really excited by that. And I got to build a cool friendship with her and play alongside her for a few years.

She’s unbelievable. She’s a multi-New Zealand representative in softball, touch, rugby league and rugby. I think in your lifetime there’s always a unique player that you just think: “Man, they’re just something special. They’ve got something different that everybody else doesn’t quite have — including myself.” She was definitely one of those players.

There’ll be some young athletes looking at you in the way that you looked at Trish, thinking they’d love to emulate some of what you’re about. Women’s sport is on the rise. And that’s very appropriate because women’s sport has been somewhat overshadowed by men’s over the years. How satisfying is it for you that you’ve been part of the long overdue journey to see women’s sport getting a higher profile?

I love that. I came through two very different eras of female sports. I started out in the days when we were running raffle tickets and doing hāngī fundraisers to get us to Auckland to play in the World Cup back in 2003. We played in jerseys that were three times too big, and we were grateful to have one jacket and one pair of shorts and one T-shirt.

And then, because of the longevity of my career, I picked up my first full-time professional contract at the age of 33, and for a good five or six years I was able to experience what high performance looks like, and be a part of the NRLW, New Zealand Sevens and travel the world.

I’m really grateful that I got to be a part of those years where we did it pretty tough and we were just grateful for anything, through to the more professional era now and seeing the growth.

I tell you what, I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to compete with the athletes that we’re seeing out on the field these days. I’m just amazed by the skill set and the talent and the way they play the game now. They’re so much fitter, faster and stronger, and I love that. I want to be a supporter of that, because I think it’s still really in its infancy and it’s going to keep getting better.

The quality of women’s rugby and women’s rugby league right now is unreal. It’s going through the roof. And I just love promoting all these amazing young kōhine and wāhine who are coming through the grades now.

It’s been a privilege to talk with you, Honey. I’m very mindful that it’s a special day for you, and I want to acknowledge your mum and your aroha for her. Thank you for sharing some time with us, and all the best for the book launch.

Thank you, Dale. Awesome to catch up here.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Honey: My Story of Love, Loss and Victory, by Honey Hireme-Smiler with Suzanne McFadden, was published by Bateman Books and released this week. RRP $39.99

E-Tangata, 2024