Layla Sae: 'I am going to make the most of it when I do get back'

Just 16 minutes into Layla Sae’s Harlequins and Premiership Women’s Rugby debut last November she was tackled and heard a pop in her knee. The New Zealand international got back to her feet and tried to continue but she was taken off and later told she had a grade three ACL tear.

Sae’s first reaction to the news was shock and she was “gutted”. Because just a week after relocating to London, alongside international teammate Liana Mikaele-Tu’u, her PWR journey was over.

“I got a phone call from the team physio,” the 25-year-old told RugbyPass. “He told me the news and I was quiet for a bit. I haven’t been injured too much and he said ‘you have done a grade three ACL’ and here is me thinking ‘okay grade three, there must be 10 grades so it’s not too high’. Then I said ‘so how many grades are there?’ and he said ‘three’. He explained what it meant and that I would be out for a certain amount of months.

“I was in shock for a little while, even days afterwards. What that actually meant for my rugby or lack of rugby I was going to be doing for the next couple of months, I think it was just shock. I was like ‘nah, not me, I only heard a little pop, it wasn’t that bad’.

“You just don’t really know how quickly things can change. It’s just rugby and injuries happen.”

The injury has a long recovery which has an average return of nine to 12 months in rugby, but that depends on the athlete and the severity of the tear. Eight months on and Sae is still rehabbing her knee with no return date to the pitch cemented in.

“I am taking it day-by-day because if I don’t make certain things then it seems like I am not achieving what I want to achieve,” she added. “I want to take it week-by-week and if I get to move on in my rehab then that is a small win.”

Now back in New Zealand, Sae is rehabbing at her Super Rugby Aupiki club Hurricanes, where the men and women’s teams are based. No other teammate in her team has a knee issue but she is not rehabbing alone.

She is training with Hurricane men’s players like Brett Cameron and Harry Godfrey who also have had knee issues. The training base is also shared by the men and women’s Wellington Phoenix football teams who also have athletes recovering from knee injuries.

Sae said: “Some of them are either just ahead of me or just behind me in my rehab journey so I talk to them and see how they are going. What does their knee feel like in this month? It can be a bit lonely sometimes because they are not directly in my team but there are so many people. People aren’t too far away with this type of injury, it helps having those people.”

Sae has also been able to call upon the advice of one of her teammates and friends Ayesha Leti-I’iga, who sustained an ACL injury in 2023. She spent around a year out of the game recovering but has since returned and played for the Black Ferns at Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025.

Sae added: “Ayesha is an awesome player and it is so cool to see that after an injury like this you can still go out there and perform really well.

“I talk to her every day after training and ask her things like ‘did your knee feel like this?’ or ‘what did you do for this?’ Any kind of question she is really open to because she knows what it is like to want to get back out there.”

On the sidelines Sae has watched the entire Aupiki season with the Hurricanes just one point outside of the Grand Final, finishing third in the standings. The New Zealand league season will end this weekend with the final being played between Matatu and the Blues.

The back-row also had to miss out on the Pacific Four Series where Sae’s national team, New Zealand, lifted silverware at the end of three weeks’ competition.

It has been frustrating for the star not to contribute on the pitch for her teams: “It’s not like you don’t feel a part of it but you just wish you were in it as well to experience it. Experience milestones with your teammates as well. It definitely has its ups and downs but I just know I am going to make the most of it when I do get back on the field.”

The next potential games Sae could be available for is New Zealand’s Laurie O’Reilly Cup clash with the Wallaroos in August before fixtures in the WXV Global Series across September and October.

However, in terms of club fixtures Sae has not ruled out a return to the PWR after enjoying her brief stint in the English top-flight.

“I found it so cool how many different nationalities there were in one team,” she said. “I think it is so different to New Zealand and how I would talk to different people with different accents, it’s not really common in New Zealand. It was cool to interact with so many different cultures.

“I am definitely open to actually getting a good turn and actually experience it and more rugby on the other side of the world. I am not too sure when but I am definitely keen to try some more rugby over there.”