Bundee Aki has revealed his wife gave birth to their daughter in the back of a car in New Zealand on the same day as the first Lions Test victory against Australia in Brisbane. Aki is yet to meet his fifth child, Aine, and said reuniting with his family is his top priority after helping the Lions to wrap up the series.
Aki was a second-half replacement in the first Test, coming off the bench after 57 minutes and all the while coping with the drama unfolding in Auckland. Aine is Aki’s fifth child – all five have names beginning with A – and Aki’s remarkable revelation details the sacrifices made by the touring side, who first got together for a training camp in Portugal in early June.
“I want to enjoy my break, my family time,” Aki said. “I haven’t seen my family for eight weeks. I have a newborn child who I haven’t met yet. She was born when we were playing in Brisbane, so I haven’t met her. Her name is Aine, so I’m looking forward to going and meeting my newborn child and we’ll go from there.
“Credit to my wife [Kayla]. She’s a powerful woman, a strong woman. I have to say it to her. If you only knew the story of what happened, it’s a funny story in itself. It was a good day. I was in the hotel. I knew we were overdue. The missus calls me and she’s like: ‘Water hasn’t broke but I’m going to the hospital, I’m feeling contractions.’ I go: ‘Yeah, fair enough.’ She goes to the hospital, we’re getting ready for the team meeting pre-match, and then she calls me and says she’s on the way to the hospital, so I said: ‘Fine, be safe.’
“Five minutes later, she sends a photo, her water broke. I was like: ‘Cool, OK, are you almost there?’ This is like 30 or 40 minutes away from the hospital, so I said: ‘You’ll be all right, Mum is there.’ Ten minutes later, she video-calls me and I was like: ‘Shit, what’s going on?’ I saw a baby on the video call, so she had it in the car on the way to the hospital. They’re both strong and healthy, so happy days. I knew it was good juju so I knew we were going to have a good day.”
Aki went on to start the second and third Tests, struggling in appalling conditions on Saturday night in Sydney. After being part of the side that lost against South Africa four years ago, however, the 35-year-old was happy to settle for series success even if the targeted whitewash slipped by. “We’ll take the positive out of it,” he said.
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“We won the series and that’s all we got here for. We would have loved a clean sweep but it didn’t happen. Only so many people can say they’ve been on two tours or have won a series.”
