“I count myself lucky”: Wallaroo Michaela Leonard on her remarkable rise

Michaela Leonard laughs at the memory of her first training session with the Brumbies. “When I had to ask what a maul was!” she says with a smile.

Leonard had been convinced to attend the trial in 2018 by a couple of team-mates she had met through rugby league at the time and did not arrive with any expectations, having never played 15s before.

But the attributes that had once made her a standout basketball player in her youth marked her out as a prospect for the Super W side, and Leonard has been a willing and eager pupil ever since.

She would soon master the breakdown and all the other vagaries of rugby, earning her first cap for the Wallaroos within 18 months of pitching up at the Brumbies.

Having dabbled with league and sevens after drifting away from basketball, she had found her sport.

A little over five years on from that trial in Canberra, Leonard will captain the Wallaroos for the fourth time in their O’Reilly Cup match against the Black Ferns at FMG Stadium on Saturday.

It is the latest step on a remarkable journey that has also included playing stopovers in New Zealand’s South Island and England’s South-West, via a first Rugby World Cup. Not bad for someone who only took up the game at 23.

“I count myself lucky all the time,” Leonard tells RugbyPass. “From five years ago to now, I would have never imagined a lot of the things that I’ve been able to do, and I’ve been fortunate enough to experience.

“I don’t think I would have told you that I would have played Super Rugby let alone travelled the world and played in three different countries. And now to captain your country is the biggest honour I could’ve ever imagined and probably one that I could have only dreamed would come true.

“So, definitely nothing I foresaw, and it was a big shock to me, even receiving the call prior to this tournament and [being] asked if I’d be willing to maintain this position for the upcoming Laurie O’Reilly game and potentially into WXV as well.

“It’s an incredible honour and I think probably a moment that will hold a lot of pride and sentiment for me for the rest of my life.”

Leonard was first asked to lead her country in June in the absence of permanent captain Piper Duck, who continues to be sidelined by an ankle injury, ahead of the first O’Reilly Cup encounter of the year.

That match drew an Australian record crowd for a women’s test of 7,055 to Kayo Stadium but ended in disaster for the Wallaroos as they slipped to a 50-0 defeat to the Black Ferns.

The manner of the loss clearly still stings Leonard, who says it “definitely wasn’t how we wanted to play, and it wasn’t the performance we intended to put out on the field”.

“I think there has been a big shift throughout the group of wanting to do better and be better,” Leonard adds. “There’s an understanding that that performance isn’t what it means to be a Wallaroo.”

As captain, Leonard would have been at the forefront of driving that message and the squad displayed its resilience in Ottawa ten days later to beat the USA 58-17 to effectively secure qualification for WXV 1.

Certainly, the stand-in skipper did enough in tough circumstances to earn the trust of coach Jay Tregonning and her team-mates ahead of their end-of-year commitments in New Zealand.

“For me, growing into the role has been a learning curve and probably a continuous learning curve. Over the four weeks through the Pacific Four tournament in Canada, I learned a lot from day one and I’ve been really fortunate that the support group and the leadership group have been around to help.

“I think it’s been a learning process for all of us. I think the captaincy and [being] a leader, it’s an incredible honour, an incredible title. But it really comes down to a multitude of people, whether that be staff, whether that be the six people in our leadership team, the older experienced players, the younger individuals that have great ideas and great skills as well.

“I think it’s really a shared role and I’ve been really fortunate that there’s been such a good group around this squad and a group of experienced players that have been here to offer their insight, their experiences, their help and I guess to help take the load.”

That group of players has had access to semi-professional contracts since the start of this year, something that, according to Leonard, has allowed them to focus on rugby more than ever.

“There’s a big sacrifice that comes into playing rugby as most players that are below full professional level understand,” Leonard says. “Whether that be time, whether that’s spreading between uni commitments, work commitments and I think the introduction of a payment base… has just added a bit of security.

“That little bit of support allows you to take the time off to travel and to tour and to say to work, ‘Look, maybe I need to amend these hours here or adjust these hours here’. To not have to stress about balancing your work and your study life allows you to commit just that little bit more of your energy and more of your time into doing what we love.”

Rugby Australia announced last week that the recruitment process for a full-time Wallaroos coach was under way, as part of the union’s participation in World Rugby’s Accelerate programme.

Leonard welcomed the development and is hopeful that funding can be found to make full-time contracts a possibility for the players too.

“I [hope] that investment can continue coming into the game because I can only imagine what this team can do and where it can go with that opportunity to potentially train full-time or be together for longer periods,” she adds.

Leonard has recently completed a distance learning post-graduate course in veterinary physiotherapy with a view to translating her “love for sport” into a post-playing career helping both people and animals.

For now, though, she is focused on the job in hand and leading the Wallaroos into the various challenges of WXV 1 on the back of a first-ever win against the Black Ferns.

“I think you’re crazy if you don’t go into every game believing in yourself and believing that you have a good shot at winning,” insists Leonard, who has faced New Zealand seven times in her short test career.

“Obviously, that’s the reason we play and the reason we get out there and want to play and put on this jersey and represent what it means to be Australian and to be a Wallaroo.

“For us, I think it’s going to come down to the simple things. So, executing our set-piece, setting a platform that we can play off and create the opportunities that we want to attack.”

Whatever happens in Hamilton, though, it’s clear that Leonard made the right decision to attend that trial back in 2018.

“I always thought I was going to grow up and go to college and play basketball in America and hopefully play for Australia in a different sport. So, I guess one little decision or one little turn in your life can really set you on a new path,” she says.

“I’m definitely grateful that I showed up for that league training that day and definitely grateful that there was a group of girls there that knew what the union world could offer and how good the rugby community could be.

“I owe it to them and I owe it to everyone that I’ve met every day since then that’s made me want to stay in and keep going ahead because some of the things that we get to experience being part of this sport, and part of the rugby family as it is all over the world, it’s just nothing that I can compare to the experience I’ve had in other sports or other workplaces.”