Inside Rugby is Australia's premier rugby magazine.

Rugby star's private pain

One of Rugby’s rising stars has spoken exclusively to Inside Rugby magazine about the pain he went through three years ago when his girlfriend committed suicide.

Former Australian Under 21 captain Tamaiti Horua, who has been signed by the Western Force for the 2008 Super 14 season, reveals in a touching interview how his promising Rugby career went into a tailspin when his then girlfriend Amanda took her own life after a battle with depression back in 2004.

Amanda had travelled with Horua from his home in Melbourne and helped him settle into the Brumbies set-up which saw him play in one of the most dynamic backrows in the competition along with Owen Finegan, George Smith and Scott Fava. For Horua it seemed the sky was the limit.

Then one day in April 2004 – the sky fell down. Amanda committed suicide. For 23-year-old Horua it was devastating.

“She had problems with depression but I never expected anything like that,” recalled Horua from Nagoya in Japan, where he is now playing with the Toyota Motor Corporation. “At the time I didn’t handle it very well.”

How exactly you are meant to deal with a tragedy like that is anybody’s guess. “After it happened I just had to get away”, he says.

Although it was the middle of a Super 12 campaign, that the Brumbies would eventually go on to win, sympathetic head coach David Nucifora let Horua go back to Melbourne, to try and come to terms with what had happened around his family.

“It wasn’t easy,” he says in something of an understatement. “Looking back I made that decision to just drop out. But other people go through challenges.” He stuck close to the family and bit by bit they pulled him through.

In the end the road to recovery was found in the place where he had found release ever since he was six years old – the Rugby field.

He made his way back through club Rugby with Eastern Suburbs in Sydney in 2005 and there was interest from Leinster in Ireland. But it was Japan, which grabbed his interest most and in March 2006 he left for Nagoya.

Now he’s back in the biggest provincial competition in the southern hemisphere and ready to make up for some lost time.

The touching story about Horua is part of Inside Rugby’s annual Super 14 preview issue that is at all good newsagents now.

Included in this issue is a 32-page wrap up of the Rugby World Cup and an exclusive chat with the Waratahs new boy Timana Tahu and his mission to release the likes of Lachie Turner and Lote Tuqiri into open space.

It’s 100 pages of action-packed reading and a must for every Rugby fan!

INSIDE RUGBY - OUT NOW