Opinion: Blacks Ferns must come to Whangārei for Rugby World Cup 2021

How cool would it be to see Northland Kauri captain Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate (centre) lead the haka for the Black Ferns in Northland for the Rugby World Cup next year? Photo / Photosport

COMMENT
This is a desperate plea to anyone inside World Rugby with power over the yet to be confirmed 2021 Rugby World Cup draw in New Zealand.

Your mission should you choose to accept it - do whatever you can to fix or rig the draw to ensure the Black Ferns will be one of the few teams to play their pool matches and possibly quarter-finals at Whangārei's Semenoff Stadium in late September and early October next year.

If you're an World Rugby official reading this, I know you may be feeling great levels of shock and anger at this petition to defraud the sanctity of your tournament in its first trip to the Southern Hemisphere.

Know that I empathise with the position my request puts you in, but understand that having the Black Ferns in Northland is bigger than all of us.

Arihiana Marino-Tauhinu, who won a Black Ferns contract last year, said on Thursday that playing in front of family and friends in the World Cup would be a dream come true. Photo / Photosport

Note: this message will not self-destruct, so I wouldn't advise keeping a copy lying around on you desk during your next World Rugby meeting.

In as much seriousness as I can muster, it seems the Black Ferns have a 50 per cent chance of coming north after the Rugby World Cup dates were confirmed by World Rugby on Tuesday.

The tournament's pool matches and quarter-finals will be shared between Whangārei's Semenoff Stadium and Auckland's Waitakere Stadium. Pool matches will be held across three days - September 18, September 23 and September 28 (Saturday, Thursday and Tuesday).

At least one quarter-final will also be played at Semenoff Stadium on Sunday, October 3. The semifinals, final and bronze-medal matches will be played at Eden Park in Auckland.

Charmaine Smith charges up the park against the Wallaroos in 2018 at Auckland's Eden Park. Photo / Photosport

For anyone in and around Northland's rugby community, it's a no-brainer why it's so important to have the nation's top women's rugby team in Northland.

First of all, it would mark a return for a number of Northland-raised Black Ferns, who made the tough decision to leave their whānau and move to Auckland to pursue their rugby dreams.

Of the 29 players contracted in early 2019, at least seven whakapapa to Northland: Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate, Aleisha-Pearl Nelson, Leilani Perese, Charmaine Smith, Eloise Blackwell, Harono Te Iringa and Arihiana Marino-Tauhinu.

Harono Te Iringa is another from Northland in the Black Ferns setup. Photo / File

Only Ngata-Aerengamate, who captained Northland's first Farah Palmer Cup team last year, is a registered Northland player with the remaining six affiliated to the Auckland or Counties Manukau provinces.

Speaking with Marino-Tauhinu, Nelson and Perese on Thursday, all expressed great interest in coming home to play in front of friends and family for what would be the first time for a lot of these players.

I can safely assume the rest of the Northland-raised players would echo their sentiment of how much it would mean to play on home turf.

However, the primary benefit seeing the Black Ferns in Northland would be the immense boost Northland's women's rugby player base would receive.

Aleisha-Pearl Nelson, who often returns to her whānau's farm north of Dargaville, tears through the Australian defence. Photo / Photosport

As a region, Northland is renowned for its natural talent, specifically in its sportswomen, evidenced by the fact almost a quarter of the Black Ferns hail from Northland.

Credit has to go to the Northland Rugby Union which finally put plans in place to take advantage of this talent by reinstating senior and age-group club competitions in 2019, as well as launching the Kauri who reached the semi-finals in the Farah Palmer Cup last year.

Suffice to say, there is a platform and a pathway on which to build Northland's women's rugby programme to realise its potential. Obviously, there are limitations on a region which lacks a university and is situated so close to the resource-rich Auckland.

However, to have the number one ranked women's team in the world in Northland would have wide-reaching benefits on the region's youth, girls and boys alike.

Should the Black Ferns play their games in Auckland for the umpteenth time, it would be such a waste of an opportunity for an already ground-breaking tournament to add another piece of history to its records.

Northland-raised Leilani Perese, now based in Auckland, said she always planned to move back home and play for the Kauri. Photo / Photosport

I think the potential benefits are best summed up by Black Ferns prop Perese, who said her inspiration to pursue women's rugby came when she was 8 years old, watching a world women's rugby team train in Whangārei.

"I remember them coming to the stadium and I was like, 'Man I want to do this, I want to play rugby and I want to play at the stadium'."

So for the World Rugby officials out there, if you don't do it for me, do it for the future of Northland women's rugby and the next generation of Black Ferns you could inspire.