This isn't Ilona Maher's first trip to New Zealand, but you wouldn't know that from your first conversation. Ask her how she's enjoying her stay and she'll respond with an enthusiasm not usually found in someone who's been here, done that.
The fast-rising TikTok star with 1M followers and formidable American Rugby Sevens player has been to Aotearoa once before, specifically Kirikiriroa – "that always confuses people" – to play in a sevens competition, but this time she’d stuck close to the action in Tāmaki Makaurau. "It's a great city! I know everyone says 'well you know Auckland is not the real New Zealand, there's so much more to it' But for the city it is - it's been awesome."
Visiting and chronicling her stay here as an ambassador for World Rugby, Maher is here to "use my platform to get the Rugby World Cup out there, and show the experience of being here." The 26-year-old has been lapping up all that the super city has to offer: jumping off the Sky Tower, trying local delicacies (Pineapple Lumps were underwhelming but our breakfasts hit the spot) and, of course, taking in lots of the games at Eden Park. "It's been a lot, but it's been really fulfilling," she says when we meet during the final week of her trip at the Sunset rooftop bar in Auckland Central.
It's ‘a lot’ because she's keen to make the most of every opportunity being passed her way. The rising TikTok star knows that her global profile presents opportunities not necessarily offered to other rugby players. And although she's not playing at the World Cup, she can't afford to lose sight of the fact she is an athlete first and foremost.
Because of this she's been getting well-acquainted with our local green spaces. "My team's all training back home, so one of the conditions with me coming is that I'd keep up with my training. I've been working out right over there in Victoria Park, which has been so great. Because I play Sevens, which is such a running heavy sport, a lot of it is just running.
"Being a professional athlete you have to love the grind and love being uncomfortable. I think of my teammates back home working so hard and I want to come back ready to join them again."
At home or away, the training is physically gruelling work. Back in San Diego, she'll typically do "Two trainings a day on the field, then we'll do a gym session. We spend about from I would say 7.30 in the morning until 5pm at our training centre. It's a very busy day and during that day I'm also trying to make TikToks and get my team out there, get myself out there."
The especially relentless schedule is reflective of the reality that Maher isn't only an athlete. "I am a professional athlete but I'm a full-time athlete and a full-time content creator." While many brand admins and influencers will insist the key to success on TikTok is to 'just have fun with it’, Maher is more candid about the workload. “I don't treat TikTok like a side-thing anymore, it's full-on.”
That’s not a complaint. "My favourite quote is 'work hard in silence and let success make the noise' and that's what I want to do,” says Maher. “I don't need people to know how hard I work, I just want it to show later on."
Does she do it all because she loves it and thinks it's important? How much can be attributed to the financial impetus?
"Definitely both. I think I'm in a very cool and privileged position now in that it's making me a lot of money, it's actually my biggest source of income.
"This allows me to keep playing this sport and I don't have to look for another job."
Although Maher and her team mates are lucky enough to be paid full-time athletes, the demands of the sport mean if they weren't remunerated, it'd be a real struggle to fit other work in. "We're working 8-9 hours a day Monday to Friday so you can't really have other jobs. You also want to recover, and we travel so much."
It's a global issue across women's rugby, but one that is hopefully changing. Here in Aotearoa, the Black Ferns (who won the Rugby World Cup) only received full-time paid professional contracts earlier in this year. They didn't receive automatic bonuses for winning like their male counterparts the All Blacks would have. The Black Fern Seven programme has been fully professionalised since before the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Even so, as it stands the game can't currently be viewed as a long-term career prospect for Maher or her contemporaries.
"It's interesting... we don't think about it as a career right?" Maher contemplates. "Because it's not going to make you any money in the long run. You have a very short period of making money, because I think we have different things [to consider] than the men. If you want to have children, you can't play when you're pregnant so that takes you out of there and then I've seen a lot of women who want to get back into rugby after having kids but as society is women become mothers and it's a full-time job as well.
"It's weird that we can't call it a career. We just call it, I guess, a job for now but it’s barely that because it's such a weird job. It's such a fun job that we get to play and we're so excited to play it, but we're constantly having to think about what we want to do afterwards."
Maher, for her part, has a degree in nursing and also recently completed a master’s degree in business administration and management. Then there are her social media skills which, particularly on TikTok, are nothing to sneer at.
The Vermont native began posting on the app in late March 2021 but her presence on the platform really took off when she posted a series of behind the scenes dispatches from the Tokyo Olympics. To date, Maher's videos have garnered 72.4m likes.
Earlier in November, while in Auckland, her follower count ticked over into seven figures. For comparison, Black Fern Ruby Tui currently has 81k and Dan Carter has 89k. It's a metric Maher says the wider rugby community has been "incredibly" supportive of.
"World Rugby is obsessed, they love it, they're so excited for me to get a million and it's such a big deal for us rugby community – whereas in the greater scheme of things on TikTok, a million might now even be that big."
More importantly, for Maher at least, her elevated public profile is having tangible results when it comes to raising the profile and allure of the game she loves so much. "For me, spreading the game is so powerful. Whenever I get messages that say 'I tried rugby because of you,' or, 'We had literally 100 girls come out to try out for our team because of your TikTok', that is why I do it."
Rugby is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States. More than 100,000 USA Rugby members play in over 2500 clubs nationwide. Up-and-coming university and high school-age players make up nearly half of the community. Maher makes no bones about making hay while the sun shines. Not just because of her personal interest, but also for the betterment of women's rugby as a whole.
"Myself and others, like the Black Ferns, we're using these big moments like the Olympics and this Rugby World Cup, to push ourselves and our brands forward which is not selfish in any way – it's smart and it's business wise because we're in a sport that doesn't make a lot of money, especially for females, so it takes that social media, it takes putting ourselves out there to make an impact for your life and to make money."
There are challenges that come with putting yourself out there so publicly. With social media especially, you're opening yourself up to a free-flowing tap of criticism. Maher was very candid about the weight of responsibility she felt when her team didn't place as highly as they hoped to at the Olympics; surely having a million critics in your pocket adds to that?
"It gives you so much, but then it also can beat you down at times. People want to get into social media because of the money but it's really not for everybody and not everyone has the personality for it,” says Maher. “But I would encourage more of the women players who do have that personality, because there are so many of them that are so funny and charismatic and would do well."
Ignoring the hate and focusing on the positives is, she concedes, easier said than done. "You'll get a thousand positive comments and one negative and yet you'll be like ‘Oh my god, this one 12-year-old boy in Minnesota says I look like a man!’”
Hoping to quieten the critics, she's been focusing on appreciating the output made possible by her physicality. She's had people criticising her body for the entirety of her athletic career, but soon after she played her first rugby game near the end of her high school experience Maher had a realisation: "My body is made for this."
"My body is so amazing and it does so much for me on the field. I run in it and it gets back up after being tackled," she says.
It's not a cure all for the inner-critic though. "But, then there are times when I wish that I could change parts of it. I hate that I think that way at times. I'm trying to change the narrative from just loving my body to appreciating it. I've come to a place now, I think because of the sport of rugby, that I really appreciate what my body has done.
"I'm a big woman, I'll always be a big woman and rugby has shown me that there's a place for that. It's shown me what it can do, so I'm taking up good space on the field.
"It doesn't affect me so much when people are like 'oh she's very masculine’, or ‘oh she's very manly'. I feel very feminine and these shoulders just allow me to be a great rugby player."
There's another aspect of physicality that Maher is working to de-vilify too, this time on the field. I ask whether as a sportsperson who menstruates, she feels aggrieved that her uniform is white.
"It seems like whenever I get my white jersey, my period decides to start. Without fail I'll come off the field and I'll start bleeding," she laughs good naturedly. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact she's not really given an alternative, she reminds herself that "tampons are a thing" and tries to just get on with it.
"I don't feel too harshly about it, but I'm also at a place where if someone did see blood, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I'm not going to be ashamed anymore, because it's natural."
Whether it's breaking down physical taboos or making strides for women's rugby, Ilona Maher makes it look easy. Even when she's working really hard.
