Alice Soper is a sports columnist for the Herald on Sunday. A former provincial rugby player and current club coach, she has a particular interest in telling stories of the emerging world of women's sports.
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The new women’s rugby calendar aligns Black Ferns sevens and XVs, allowing dual participation.
The shift enables top players to join England’s Premiership Women’s Rugby, but limits aspiring athletes’ opportunities.
The Aupiki schedule change clashes with Australian leagues, forcing players to choose and risking talent loss.
It’d been whispered about all year. The new calendar for high-performance women’s rugby in this country, rumoured to align with greater opportunities for growth. It’s now been released, and the community is abuzz with this new direction. But many are asking whether this is truly a step forwardor instead another misstep in the development of the women’s game.
The topline takeaway is that it appears we are copying the Canadians’ homework. The Black Ferns sevens and Black Ferns XVs schedules appear side by side on the calendar, suggesting these athletes will no longer have to pick a side in pursuit of pinnacle events.
The pooling of these players is as good for the budget as it is for the current crop of talent. It’s a return to the state of play of the early 2000s, when there was no delineation between athletes who played the short and long formats of the game.
The Canadians have used England’s competition, the Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), to give their players a proper domestic season. Until this calendar drop, Aupiki blocked the path for Black Ferns to do the same.
It took less than 24 hours after the announcement of the Aupiki midyear shift for the Harlequins to reveal that Liana Mikaele-Tu’u and Layla Sae would be joining three other Black Ferns in the English competition this season. Tellingly, in their case, their contracts were only until March, suggesting this overseas venture will not affect their eligibility for the Black Ferns Pacific Four Series.
The Canadian blueprint is all good news if you are a player in black, but things just got tougher for our aspiring athletes.
Black Ferns ace Liana Mikaele-Tu’u has signed to play for Harlequins. Photo / SmartFrame
The PWR has a limit on how many international caps a team can sign. These highly sought-after places are reserved now for those who have played for their country. Around 21% of Aupiki players had instead been making a professional career by switching codes and playing in either the NRWL or AFLW.
New Zealand Rugby had benefited from the dedication of these women to their own personal development. Their improvement helped temper the impact of making only one part of our playing pool, the Black Ferns, full-time professionals.
By moving the Aupiki window, NZ Rugby have now shut down the movement of these players. The competition now directly clashes with the Australian alternatives, leaving these athletes to make a choice. The rapid rollout of this change means those on multiyear contracts over the Ditch will miss out. The rest are weighing up their options. Either lose half to two-thirds of their income to play half as many matches, or stick in a competition that has delivered year-on-year growth.
The change in this calendar has the potential to turn the slow drip of players to Australia into a flood.
We have been told that one of the reasons we haven’t seen the introduction of a fifth team into Super Rugby Aupiki is that we don’t have the talent to carry it. Well, we are now effectively being asked to find another squad’s worth of players to fill in for the Aussie exodus next season. It’s been confirmed by NZ Rugby that it won’t be pulling in talent from overseas like the English do. With the two-internationals limit still firmly in place, we instead will be promoting a wave of Farah Palmer Cup players to fill the gap.
The calendar has been locked in, and so this change for next year is inevitable. Be prepared to see it play out when the Hurricanes Poua are even more woeful this season. Expect it to be notable in the stark contrast between contracted Black Ferns and the rest of their Aupiki teammates.
Don’t wonder why when the next best players continue to head to greener pastures overseas. Instead, ask whether our rickety high-performance ladder can survive such a kick. Or whether the top-heavy strategy from New Zealand Rugby will see the women’s game go tumbling over.
Alice Soper is a sports columnist for the Herald on Sunday. A former provincial rugby player and current club coach, she has a particular interest in telling stories of the emerging world of women’s sports.
