Watch every second of the Wallaroos 100th Test live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nIt comes just over a year since the talented teenager burst onto the scene as a winger in the corresponding O’Reilly Cup fixture.<\/p>\n
Demant, named World Rugby Player of the Year in 2022, remains the Black Ferns’ longest-serving captain after guiding them to the World Cup title that year.<\/p>\n
The two faced off during the Women’s Super Rugby Champions Final earlier in the month, with even Ellis’ family star-struck by the legendary Kiwi.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty exciting and I\u2019m a bit nervous because growing up when we were watching women\u2019s Rugby, Ruahei was definitely someone I looked up to. Even when we played the Blues [in the Champions Final], my mum was asking for a photo of her because she\u2019s just such a world-class player,” she said and smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought I’d be here up against one of the greatest of all time. Knowing I’m there, and also believing in myself that I can do a job, hopefully one day like her. It\u2019s pretty surreal, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellis has made a seamless transition since taking over the playmaking duties for the NSW Waratahs.<\/p>\n
The move helped the Waratahs to a third straight title, having missed the start of the Super Rugby Women’s season due to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor myself, I debuted for the Wallaroos at wing, and then moved to fullback, but then also being in this flyhalf position, I think just my leadership has grown,” she said on her growth since the move.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coaches have instilled a lot of confidence in myself with just being able to play the game that I play and just getting the girls around me and really helping me lead the team around and playing the footy that I want to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c…I was definitely nervous at first because flyhalf is such a crucial position and you need to know the game and what you\u2019re doing but the coaching staff and girls have installed so much confidence in me.”<\/p>\n
Wallaroos assistant and Waratahs head coach Mike Ruthven has backed the agile flyhalf to defy her size disadvantage, standing at 170 cm, and make an impact.<\/p>\n
“There was never a question or a doubt around ‘Baba’ being ready to do that and she performed really well through Super W there. Her biggest growth has been her maturity in understanding the game and her capacity to manage momentum,” he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s communicated really well in team meetings and will certainly do a really good job to steer the team around, so really confident in her on the weekend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wallaroos flyhalf Waiaria Ellis is putting any personal feelings aside as she prepares to face one of her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,19259],"class_list":["post-862655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-wallaroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}