CHIEFS STAR EMONI'S HEALING JOURNEY

How family helped the rising rugby star bounce back from his shattered Rugby World Cup dreams

- Jo Bailey

Making the All Blacks is the stuff of dreams for countless young rugby players, so it was a pinch-me moment for Chiefs speedster Emoni Narawa when he found himself training with the squad in Paris as they prepared for last year's Rugby World Cup.

The flying winger, 24, had already scored a try in his test debut against Argentina and was excited to be part of the All Blacks' latest bid for the prized Webb Ellis Cup.

But Emoni's dreams came crashing down during the team's last training run before the competition, when he felt a searing pain in his back. He knew straight away something had gone terribly wrong.

"I was running around, doing my normal thing, when a disc in my back slipped down and hit a nerve," he recalls. "It was the worst pain I've ever felt and my left leg went numb.

"I had some scans and when the results came back, coach Ian Foster sat me down and told me the injury would rule me out of the World Cup. I went back to my room and broke down. My dream was over before it had even started."

Emoni immediately contacted his partner Danielle Rihia, 24, who had been due to join him a few weeks into the competition, along with their daughter Milla, now two.

"Emoni was so upset," remembers Danielle. "It was really hard to see him like that. He said, 'Please can you get here?' So I changed all our flights and we went over to him as quickly as we could." It was a devastating situation, but as the days went on, the young couple decided to try to make the best of it.

"Although Emoni was in so much pain initially, things went numb afterwards, so he was able to comfortably sit," tells Danielle. "We took advantage of his downtime to do some travel around Europe with Milla and my mum Tina as our full-time nanny. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."