Privileged Pressure: Cassie Siataga’s Historic Kick for Samoa

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Full Name: Cassie Muaimalae Tanu Siataga

Villages: Tanugamanono, Magiagi

Clubs: Linwood RFC, Christchurch

“Keep your head down and go through the ball.”

The Queensland rain is now bucketing down as hard as it has all game.

Passionate Fijian fans in the crowd are yelling at the top of their lungs.

It’s sensory overload, a real-life Hollywood moment as Manusina first five eighths Cassie Siataga lines up the penalty kick that would clinch Samoa’s first ever Oceania Rugby Women’s Championship title with time up on the clock.

But all she can focus on are those words she so often heard from her kicking coach at Tasman last year, former Māori All Black halfback Billy Guyton, who tragically died just last month.

“That’s all I was hearing when I was setting up the tee, when I was looking at the posts, thinking of all the little things he said to me, and he believed in me, so I couldn’t doubt myself,” Siataga said.

“It was having the team in my ear, you’ve gotta do it, you can do it. They call it privileged pressure. It’s a lot of pressure but we’re privileged enough to be in that position to do it.”

Manusina head coach Mata’afa Ramsey Tomokino was backing his star pivot all the way home too.

“Cassie Siataga, she’d be like Grant Fox to me… every time Grant Fox stood up for a kick you knew he was going to nail it, and Dan Carter’s probably the same,” he said.

“But even then I was thinking the rain, in my head thinking she could slip, she could slice it because it actually started to really bucket down. But Cassie man, she was on.”

Siataga scored all 19 of Samoa’s points in the finale and was the competitions’s top scorer overall.

It was a step up from the 28-year-old’s already impressive debut Manusina campaign in 2022 which saw her named the team’s MVP.

Tomokino said Samoa were very fortunate to have Siataga on board having been passed over for selection by the Black Ferns earlier in her career.

Born and raised in Christchurch with roots in Tanugamanono and Magiagi, Siataga was a key figure in the Canterbury teams that won all four Farah Palmer Cups from 2017 to 2020.

“We’d obviously made approaches to her earlier on, years back as well and she was kind a holding out,” Tomokino said. “The minute that Sui [Manusina captain Masuisuimatama’ali’i Tauaua-Pauaraisa, a clubmate at Linwood and close friend of Siataga’s] had said Cassie wants to play now, I was like ‘nah you’re kidding!”