Some possible Consequences
Tyla Nathan-Wong is switching from her Black Ferns’ 7s contract to join the National Rugby League in Australia. She goes with the blessing of NZR. She has adorned the BF squad for twelve years, but feels she now needs a new challenge.
Fortunately for Rugby Union, Australia is the only nation on earth where Rugby League stands higher in people’s affection. Elsewhere it struggles to survive.
While it may be sweetness and light in Aotearoa – the Ferns have an abundance of talent to replace TNW – the move is another indication of how the shape of team sports is changing.
In cricket, people worry about the survival of the oldest forms it has cherished for 150 years and more: tests and the County Championships, to name but two. There the Indian Premier League offers millions of dollars to players who till now have merely survived in the game financially.
A variation on TNW’s switch came only recently, when Cheyelle Robins-Reti, having lost her Black Ferns XV’s contract promptly switched her home and sport to join the same NRLW.
Nobody with the good of women’s sport at heart can question these two moves, but, as Chris Lendrum, General Manager of NZR states, there are so many new opportunities opening up for the most talented women in sport. If cricket can cream off the best male players so easily, how long will it be before women’s team sports will suffer the same trauma?
Ultra-rich Indian businessmen have no qualms about their approach. Spectators flock in their thousands to watch cricket matches of the shortest time-span yet permitted. By extension, some of us could imagine 20-minute games of rugby involving only the crème de la crème of female rugby players performing live to world-wide audiences.
That ghastly thought may not have entered the heads of the bright people at World Rugby who developed the revolutionary WXV concept. But it’s as good a way as any to avoid that possibility happening.
On two consecutive days we have been able to watch matches taking place in Kazakhstan and Madagascar, involving players from far-flung continents. That must be the most thrilling experience for all of them, whether they win or lose.
As the WXV spreads its wings to cover every corner of the globe, so the future of women’s rugby must surely be safe.
