Bundee Aki has revealed he became a father for the fifth time on the day of the British & Irish Lions’ first Test against Australia.
The 35-year-old Connacht and Ireland centre was talking after the Lions’ 22-12 third Test defeat to the Wallabies in Sydney as the touring party minds turned to celebrating a 2-1 series win and Aki’s thoughts were of a family reunion and a first meeting with newborn baby Áine, who joins siblings Armani-Jade, Adrianna, Andronicus and Ailbhe.
“I want to enjoy my break, my family time. I haven’t seen my family for eight weeks. I have a newborn child who I haven’t met yet.”
“She was born when we were playing in Brisbane, so I haven’t met her. Her name is Áine, so I’m looking forward to going and meeting my newborn child and we’ll go from there.”
Aki said his wife Kayla had given birth on her way to hospital in Auckland, where she was staying with family while her husband was on tour in Australia.
“Credit to my wife. She’s a powerful woman, a strong woman. I have to say it to her. If you only knew the story of what happened, it’s a funny story in itself.
“I was in the hotel. I knew we were overdue. The missus calls me and she’s like, ‘Water hasn’t broken but I’m going to the hospital, I’m feeling contractions’.
“I go, ‘Yeah, fair enough’. She goes to the hospital, we’re getting ready for the team meeting pre-match, and then she calls me and says she’s on the way to the hospital, so I said, ‘Fine, be safe’.
“Five minutes later, she sends a photo, her water broke. I was like, ‘Cool, okay, are you almost there?’ This is like 30 or 40 minutes away from the hospital, so I said, ‘You’ll be alright, Mum is there.’
“Ten minutes later, she video calls me and I was like, ‘Shit, what’s going on?’ I saw a baby on the video call, so she had it in the car on the way to the hospital. They’re both strong and healthy, so happy days.”
Aki came off the bench a couple of hours later at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium to help the Lions see out a series-opening 27-19 victory and said the day’s events had boded well for his team.
“I knew it was good Juju, I knew it was good Juju. So I knew we were going to have a good day.”
Saturday’s final Test was considerably less good for Aki and the Lions as they succumbed to the best Wallabies performance of the series a week on from the epic come-from-behind victory in Melbourne. Nor were they helped by a rushed restart after a near 40-minute delay just two minutes into the second half, due to lightning in the area.
“Look, it was a disappointing game, but what a great bunch of lads that we’ve had this tour with. Every single one of them, great lads. Tomos Williams, who wasn’t here, Elliot Daly who had to go home. Great bunch of lads and we could only wish they were here for the whole tour because they’ve added so much to the group.”
As for the enforced break after 42 minutes, television pictures of the Lions dressing room, with Aki one of the players captured on camera relaxing on a bean bag, suggested the tourists had been taken by surprise when the call came to warm-up for the restart after 27 minutes.
“They said 45 minutes, they would let us know,” Aki said. “We were all just sort of relaxed and then we got told, ‘Oh we’ve got 10 minutes before we get out. Oh shit!’ Everyone had to get on their feet and start moving again.
“It’s one of those games that was unique in itself, and the tour was unique. We’ll take it as it is. Fair play to Australia, they played better.
“There’s no excuse. We were just behind the 8-ball. I wasn’t great, myself, today was a poor game, but you have those days, you’ve just got to live with it.
“We’ll take the positive out of it. We won the series and that’s all we got here for and we’d have loved a clean sweep but it didn’t happen.”
Aki cherished his time on his second tour having made his Lions Test debut against the Springboks in South Africa during the “covid series” of 2021.
“It’s honestly one of those things that you don’t want to take for granted.
“Only so many people can say they’ve been on two tours or have won a series. Honestly, I can’t say anything high enough of this bunch of boys, the team, the staff, it’s been one of the most enjoyable tours I’ve ever been on. It’s so good. We’re going to enjoy tonight as a group of players together, and we’ll see them again in the new year.”
Aki described the Lions’ series victory as “definitely up there” on his list of successes with Ireland.
“Yeah, the best. Obviously there’s quite a few up there, Six Nations, Grand Slam at home, the New Zealand tour. The Lions is every four years, coming to Australia, being the first team to go back-to-back to win the series against Australia. It’s up there.”