Black Ferns captain Ruahei Demant. Photo / Photosport
As Auckland Rugby celebrates increased participation in the women’s game, the captain of the Black Ferns has warned that little has changed since she first started playing in the City of Sails a decade ago.
In a press release to mark Auckland Rugby’s ‘Women in Rugby Week’, the union noted “player participation numbers in Auckland region soaring post-Rugby World Cup and concerted efforts to promote the women’s game”.
The association said there has been a 27 per cent increase in junior players from pre-Covid times, with a 127 per cent increase in secondary school girls. Player registrations are up 71 per cent from this time last year.
However, Black Ferns co-captain Ruahei Demant said the numbers indicating growth in the women’s game were “misleading” and failed to highlight bigger issues the region has with participation.
While Demant appreciates the legacy built off the back of winning last year’s home Rugby World Cup, she told the Herald that not a lot has changed since she first started playing in Auckland 10 years ago.
“Especially if you’re not actually involved in community-level rugby,” she explained. “Some clubs have actually had drop-offs this season.
“I think that kind of whole, you know, ‘the game’s growing’, blah blah blah, can be very misleading.”
When Demant first played senior club rugby for the Auckland Storm in 2013 at the age of 18, she said there were only about three senior women’s 15-a-side teams in the region. Today, there are eight senior women’s teams.
However, Demant believes the numbers don’t tell the full story and “retention is the biggest challenge”, explaining that schoolgirls often drop out before reaching the senior level.
The 28-year-old says there are a few reasons for low numbers, such as playing on a Sunday, players switching to play league and family and work commitments.
“There is a big drop-off from school grade rugby to club rugby to women’s premier rugby,” Demant said. “While the number of female rugby players in New Zealand is increasing, a massive majority of those players are under the age of 12.”
Demant said it’s “really hard” to solve this issue, but one way would be to “place responsibility back on the clubs”.
As an example, she cited men’s rules that insist clubs wanting to field a senior men’s side must also field another top team, such as a women’s team, men’s reserves or under-85s.
Demant says “placing mandatory obligations on each club to field an XVs [women’s] team” could fix the participation problem.
“I think [it would help] if the union could place responsibility back on the club that you have to have a women’s team.”
She added that this would be a good way to take the load off the unions as “the clubs are the ones who know the players”.
“It’s not hard to go out and find 15 girls – there’s how many boys’ teams? I bet each of them has heaps of cousins or sisters,” said Demant. “They [clubs] are the ones who know their communities, who have relationships with the schools in their communities.”
Demant said she would like to see a day when women “don’t have to travel past every other club to get to your club because they didn’t have a team”.
She hopes more responsibility on clubs and the professionalisation of the women’s game will hopefully create “more of a pathway” and “help with the retention of some players”.