She said they had game reviews over Zoom on Monday nights and discussed key points for the week.<\/p>\n
While her busy week doesn\u2019t leave much time for rest, Donald said she wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can be tricky to fit it all in, and it is quite busy, but I guess I just sort of have to look at it as taking the opportunities when I can and just making it work.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said as a farmer, the social aspect of the sport was important, \u201cliving so far out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are farming, it\u2019s all that runs through your head, but when I go to rugby and on the rugby field, it\u2019s all that I can think about, so it\u2019s a good way to just have a bit of a break.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said another bonus was catching up with her teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a girl, it\u2019s nice to actually find some other friends that are girls, because there are mostly male shepherds out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going to Thursday training means a four-hour round trip, arriving home at 10pm, to start work at 7am the following day.<\/p>\n
She said her boss was supportive of her endeavours, and coaches were understanding if she was late or couldn\u2019t make training.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest part is probably just time; you can get a bit burned out, because rugby takes all of your weekend, and work takes all of your week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to finish work a bit early to make it in time just so I can feed my dogs and get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually only make it to one … and if I can I\u2019ll get into two.\u201d <\/p>\n
Donald said her passion for her work and sport made the dedication easy. <\/p>\n
\u201cI love being active, I love my job, and I love my sport, and even if you are a bit tired, you still do something that you really enjoy so you have just got to be grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald and the team will next play Otago Spirit on Sunday, 12.05pm, at the Hastings Regional Sports Park.<\/p>\n
After dropping their season opener, the Tui have rebounded with back-to-back wins to sit second on the Championship ladder.<\/p>\n
Michaela Gower joined Hawke\u2019s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke\u2019s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said they had game reviews over Zoom on Monday nights and discussed key points for the week.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,1975,56767,1561,2178,52606,1888,191632,5275,5194,1976,11551,2517,111,139,69,90,212453,13913,6327,213,13655,297244,7187,8812,20151,1316,2834,4576],"class_list":["post-603256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-and","tag-at","tag-balancing","tag-bay","tag-donald","tag-drives","tag-first","tag-flanker","tag-goes","tag-hastings","tag-hawkes","tag-hours","tag-kate","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-openside","tag-remote","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-station","tag-tautane","tag-team","tag-training","tag-tui","tag-when","tag-womens","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}