Diana Wichtel: the Black Ferns and Auckland - City of Snarls

The Women's Rugby World Cup match at Eden Park. Photo / Photosport

Opinion

It was one of those days. We got left on the wharf, both going to and coming home from Waiheke Island. Auckland and its endlessly aggravating public transport needs a new motto: City of Snails has been suggested. City of Snarls?

It was local body election day and Lord knows that system wasn't working well either. Thanks to a happy accident, our papers had arrived earlier. By the time we finished waiting on wharves and got home, the results were coming in. Hey ho. You win some, you lose some, you get someone who was caught on camera declaring that the first thing he'd do as mayor would be to glue pictures of a certain journalist on urinals so people could "pee on him". A new vision for Auckland.

Still, reasons to be cheerful: on our way to the boat there was a line of young women in full rugby kit walking two by two, here for the Rugby World Cup. To see them was unexpectedly moving. I must have been grinning like a loon because they smiled back and a couple waved.

I am not a sporty person. Even so, a lifetime of seeing women's sport relegated to the background, undervalued, badly covered - if at all - in the media, must have chipped away at me because it's all been a little bit emotional. And historic. The first time the women's RWC has been played in the Southern Hemisphere. The first time Eden Park, with a world record crowd for a women's rugby match, has been filled for women's sport. A good day for things they said couldn't be done.

Portia Woodman and the Black Ferns perform the haka ahead of the World Cup match between Australia and New Zealand at Eden Park on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images

We tuned in to the Black Ferns vs the Wallaroos. A big rugby fixture: so familiar, so completely different. Hinewehi Mohi sang the national anthem a cappella. A chance to recall that, in 1999, Mohi famously and courageously sang the national anthem in te reo Māori at a test match in Twickenham, after which she had to explain herself to Paul Holmes. It has been reported that the inspiration behind the exuberant poi-twirling in the stands came from Mohi. The haka, with karanga to welcome the teams coming to Aotearoa, didn't need to be compared to the male version because it was in a luminous, badass class of its own.

The game was proof that the venerable litanies of sport speak know no gender. There was a lot of talk about the Wallaroos forwards "asking questions of the New Zealand defensive line". I think that meant the Aussies were about to score a try. There was urgent advice to slow the ball down in the ruck, "to stop that … that destructible Terita out on the edges!" One commentator demonstrated repeatedly that there is as yet no female equivalent for an anguished, "Man, oh man!"

After a tense first half for the home side, the Black Ferns came back from 17-nil to … get lots of tries. "The poi are flying in the crowd!" It was, everyone agreed, a "game of two halves" and "showed what you are capable of when you have the rugby ball". It was tough: "No one wants to see a shoulder to the head." It was emotional. Brodie Kane on the field with a Black Fern's mother: "We are just out here crying."

We at home didn't get to see Rita Ora's halftime performance – something about rights. We did get Taika Waititi introducing Pātea Māori Club performing that irrepressible masterpiece, Poi E.

On the first day of the Cup, this place didn't look like a country, to borrow some wild rugby speak, so destructible out on the edges. A new generation cheering in the stands, or at home, was seeing a different set of possibilities.

Mohi was asked, during last month's Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, how things had changed since 1999 when she dared sing our anthem in the only language that belongs solely to our country. It took a while, she said, but now it's what we do. "Now our kids know no different."