OPINION
England Red Roses captain Marlie Packer speaks the way she plays. She loves a direct line. So of course she provided an honest answer to the question “What do you think of the attendance at WXV” when she said, “The stadiums were empty – they weren’t what I was expecting.”
Packer was among the players who ran out to a record-breaking crowd at last year’s World Cup final. She was there when the English raised the bar higher at Twickenham, bringing in 58,498 fans. It’s no wonder she expected more.
What a difference a year makes. The conversations ahead of last year’s event centred around the hope we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves on the world stage. The largest stand-alone crowd the Black Ferns had mustered was just shy of 4000 at their Laurie O’Reilly test in August 2022. They had got to nearly 9000, but that was only at halftime as they played as curtain-raisers to the All Blacks. So those folks from last year would have been stoked with the turnout at Mount Smart Stadium.
The trouble is, we’ve popped the cork on women’s rugby fans’ appetites. We now expect nothing short of champagne rugby. As always, the athletes delivered but happiness is only real when shared, and there simply weren’t enough of us there to revel in it. So where was everyone? Had they emptied their pockets at the Fifa World Cup? Were they caught up in the men’s rugby and cricket World Cups? Or did they just not receive the invite?