Gregor Paul: The big problem with postponing women's Rugby World Cup

From left: Black Ferns Carla Hohepa, captain Les Elder, Ayesha Leti-I'iga and Kendra Cocksedge after beating Australia in 2019. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

OPINION:

There were two major rugby events scheduled for 2021. The World Cup in New Zealand and the British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa.

The first event, due to be hosted in September, in a country whose Covid-19 management has been the envy of the world, has been cancelled.

The second, due to be played in July and August, in a country which has been ravaged by a mutant strain of Covid and currently has travel warnings, is still on.

A Lions tour, it seems, is an event worth fighting for. A World Cup, featuring women, is not.

This, while the Six Nations ploughs ahead but the women's event remains on hold – due to start in April after a decision was taken in January to postpone.

We live in a world where event logistics have been challenged to an unprecedented degree. There is no uniformity in how Covid and all of its travel and mass gathering restrictions will impact and decisions are often more complex than they appear.

But the pattern is clear enough – that all the risks get weighed up, the numbers crunched, the details analysed and at the end, if the event involves men it gets the green light and if it involves women, it's a red light.

The optics on this are now undeniably bad and while rugby executives hate when they are accused of living in the Dark Ages, the evidence to think anything else is weighing heavily against them.

The justification that the men's international game must take precedent as it is the economic lifeblood of the game and generates the money for the entire rugby ecosystem is increasingly hard to make stick in the current environment.

The male game, without crowds in Europe, is barely making enough to cover its own costs and even if the Lions tour does go ahead somewhere in the world and generates millions of dollars, how much of that will flow into the women's game?

Women's rugby has previously never had any more than a faint sniff of the oily Lions rag and there is no reason to imagine it would be any different in 2021.

The Black Ferns in a group huddle after the match during the Womens International match between France Women and the Black Ferns. Photo / Getty Images.

Delaying the World Cup was, probably, the right decision given the additional costs and dramas that the likely managed quarantine requirements would have inflicted.

A cleaner set of logistics will give the World Cup greater equity in regard to qualification, more pre-tournament promotion and better bang for its buck.

But the whole business of postponement will become problematic, almost discriminatory, if, and almost certainly when, there is an abundance of international men's rugby played between September and November.

The Rugby Championship seems destined to once again be played in one venue. No one wants to go to South Africa and New Zealand's Government has indicated its border won't be open by then so managed quarantine requirements will be in play still.

It's not strictly a true apples with apples comparison given the relative, comparative scales of the Rugby Championship and World Cup, but the facts are likely to be that there will be men playing an international rugby tournament in this part of the world in September, but not women.

Just as probable is that come November, there will be an extensive test programme featuring the top male teams from both hemispheres, be it in the customary, scheduled format or in some re-arranged festival/tournament concept.

All sorts of justifications will be made for this being the case, but none will change the cold, hard fact that men were given the chance to play and women weren't.

Covid has impacted the men's game, not stopped it because executives and administrators have shown a willingness to adapt, to be resilient and to find ways to battle through difficult circumstances.

That same commitment and desire to survive has not extended to keeping women's rugby on the calendar.

Black Ferns winger Portia Woodman sprints away for a try, during the test match between the Black Ferns and England in 2017. Photo / Brett Phibbs.

It's been deemed an unfortunate casualty of Covid – dropped in the too hard basket or, more accurately, not important enough basket and for the second year in succession, elite women's rugby has effectively been wiped from the earth.

That's a travesty with potential damaging ramifications as pre-Covid, females were the only participation growth story rugby had.

The thousands of girls and women who have recently found the sport, have no top-end role modelling from which to be inspired.

Their landscape has been swept clean of heroes, their game has been boxed up and put in the attic and yet the real travesty in all this apparently will be the Lions tour not going ahead.