New Black Ferns Director of Rugby Allan Bunting arrives at a critical juncture for women’s rugby in Aotearoa. Photo / Photosport
New Black Ferns Director of Rugby Allan Bunting arrives at a critical juncture for women’s rugby in Aotearoa. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
My first rugby coach was a legend of the Wellington women’s scene.
Marama Tauroa was a regular starter for the Wellington Pride and had played in the club competition since its inception. I remember her teaching me how to tackle ‘cheek to cheek’ and pass off both hands.
Shemust have done a good job because I made the Wellington secondary school girls team that year, which was coached by two more women, Gina Mitchell and Malama Asi, who took us all the way to a Hurricanes Championship.
All these women were my gateway into the game I love – but I never would have guessed it would be more than a decade before I would be coached by a woman again, or that my first representative experience would also be the last time a woman coached me at that level.
This is the story behind the headline that has seen an all-male coaching lineup for the Black Ferns announced. These women were all there in the coaching system 21 years ago but none progressed further. Looking across the game today, women are still greatly underrepresented in our coaching roles. Aupiki had two wāhine assistants move into head coach positions this year, but they were replaced as assistants by men.
This is no surprise when across the 13 provinces competing in the 2022 Farah Palmer Cup, only two second-tier sides had women head coaches. If you take into account assistants and skills coaches, seven more provinces had women in their team. Four provinces featured none.
The Black Ferns. Photo / Photosport
All but one of these women who are developing in the Farah Palmer Cup pipeline have played international rugby. They have won World Cups, in some cases, multiple times. They include a member of the World Rugby Hall of Fame and a former New Zealand Player of the Year. They have run community rugby and helped launch rugby programmes in other countries. They have had day jobs as teachers or run physiotherapy clinics. Every one of them has played the provincial rugby they are now trying to coach.
What all this experience is worth though is clearly still not valued by those making the appointments. The ‘best person for the job’ folks will argue but when it comes to these appointments, with all the coaching badges collated and time put in on the pitch, it becomes a personal decision on who you trust to take the lead.
Some might say it’s confidence or coaching style, not understanding the intersection of cultural nuances that will see these women lead differently. Some might say it’s technical aspects or experience, in their mind elevating achievements in the men’s game over that of women.
Last week, a strategy was launched by New Zealand Rugby to lay out the way forward for women and girls. Among the details was a 10-year target to increase the number of women from 9.3 per cent to 20 per cent of people in the coaching pathways.
We can be a lot more ambitious than that. We must be in order to retain the talent already pumping through the pipeline. The challenge is for folks to hold space and let women rise to the positions of leadership.
Our 10-year ambition should see a woman back as the head coach of the Black Ferns - ideally the best candidate due to her selection from the competitive field of Aupiki head coaches. These head coaches in turn would be pushed to be smarter by the next wave of talent that are leading in the Farah Palmer Cup. Supporting it all would be a ladder, designed to hold the full weight of talent climbing up.
