Blackswrugby: Congrats on becoming a Rugbymum recently! Please share with us any tell-tale rugby talents from your son?
Adik: Azel has no reaction to pain. He loves to bang his head on his Dad's shoulders. He has very strong kicks. And he growls. Hahaha!
Blackswrugby: With all the life experiences from a veteran rugger till a rugbymum, please give us some tips on how to have a good work-rugby-family-life balance!
Adik: I can't answer this question because I have stopped playing rugby. Training does take a lot of time because you have to do your own training on top of team training and having a son doesn't allow that. As a mom, you would want to spend as much time with your son especially in his developmental years.
Blackswrugby: fess up - your real name isn't Adik
Adik: The name came about because my elder sister and I came into Blacks at the same time and our names are very similar (Aslina & Aslinda). They decided to call us Kakak (elder sis) and Adik (younger sis) for convenience. The name stuck since then. Well, anyway I was the youngest in the club at that time so it fitted well. Hahahhaah!
Blackswrugby: Did you, like Ennie Toh and Kakak, come from the land before time?
Adik: I was a part of Blacks Angels, the first Black’s women’s team ever formed. Way before Ennie came into Blacks I think.
Blackswrugby: In another of our clumsy attempts to perform neat nifty footwork just like you - Did you write the pylometric sutra?
Adik: Haha, not exactly. I started off as a netball player and was playing very competitively at a national level where we did a lot of pylo work, more than we played the actual game itself. Compiled a lot since then.
Blackswrugby: Wonderkid image aside, have you had bad moments or faced any difficulties in your playing career?
Adik: I guess it’s a phase everyone has to go through before reaching great heights. Yes, I was very fearful of the physical demands of the game. It took a lot of courage to do a tackle on someone in the initial stage. Trust me, I was very small when I first started. But when it gets fun and you grasp the concept of the game, it’s easy to work your way around it.
Bad moments in rugby - when you know you had your man, but you let her go because you weren’t fit enough to bring the bugger down. So I did fitness sessions to the point of madness. But the good part was that I didn’t have to do it alone. My teammates, the coach and the team manager were there; I did it because they made me realize I could do it, that I could finish. Never regretted my decision to play.
Blackswrugby: What’s your best rugby memory?
Adik: My rookie year in Hong Kong, 2001. We were playing against Thailand and I was playing scrumhalf. Was a very raw player at that time. Followed whatever my coach or teammates told me to do. Tabbie was stand off, and it was off a scrum where she kept calling “Adik!!!!!! I want the ball!! Give me a good ball!! Give me the ball!!!” I decided to pull a fast one. I picked up the ball and ran straight for the try. Got the rookie of the year award. Hahahah! Very exciting!
Blackswrugby: What has rugby taught you that netball didn’t?
Adik: Rugby has taught me that you don’t have to be tall and wear body suits to be good at the game. And of course, mental strength, it’s gotten me this far.
Blackswrugby: For curiosity’s sake…ever tried being a prop?
Adik: I tried hooking once, and it was my first and my last time. Hahahah! I was born with an abnormally crooked spine, this, I’m not joking. So technically, my back is not very strong. One of the nights at SPE, we worked on the scrum machine. My first hit on the machine was dramatic, because I couldn’t get up after that. Hahahah! Till now, you can ask Mr Tong, I still can’t get my back straight on the machine. It was a dreadful incident, but every time that I think about it, I will laugh at myself.
Blackswrugby: Any damage (physical or otherwise) sustained from either sport?
Adik: One thing I wish to emphasize to all the athletes out there is that injuries are inevitable in sports. But you can try to avoid it by preparing yourself physically and doing all the required conditioning needed. A lesson learnt for me is that I was lazy to work on my shoulders and now, once in a while, my shoulder goes into a popping frenzy.
Had a concussion once, hahah, Miss Wang can verify me vomiting in the toilet and off the pitch in Bangkok after a game. It was dreadful. And of course sprains on both ankles. And my knees feel a 100 years old right now.
Blackswrugby: If rugby didn’t work out, you would have…
Adik: Become a boxer.
Blackswrugby: From whom do you draw your inspiration/depend on for support?
Adik: Mr Gene Tong was my inspiration to work hard for rugby. He’s one of the most positive coaches I’ve ever had and I’ve learnt so much from him, that to give up the game after all the years that he has spent coaching us for free would be an injustice. Even though he made us do a lot of stuff that nearly made us go crazy, he believed in us. He’s definitely an inspiration.
I remember the time I dislocated my thumb when we went up to Perth to play, and I was in a lot of pain. He strapped it up and said “I’m gonna strap up your thumb real good, so that you’ll feel like Superman and you won’t feel the slightest pain”. He put me back in the field to play, and I didn’t remember that I dislocated it until I got off the field. Yeah, I must have been really young and maybe dumb to believe what he said, but I did and I played and all went good.
One quote from Mr Tong “When you bring out the best in yourself, you tend to bring out the best in others.”
I also am very lucky to have very supportive teammates who take care of me and keep telling me that we’ll do it as a team.
Nothing can stop us if we do it together. They are always covering my back.
And of course, I’ll always have support from my mom who keeps bringing me back and forth to the hospital for treatments and traditional massages, and my Kakak who bought me my first pair of boots, and my boyfriend who constantly has to bear with my mood swings when I’m tired from training.
Hahahha, yeah sometimes you just need a person to hold you so tight till you can’t breathe to get your sanity back in place. Hahahah!
