The Wallaroos have set out this week on perhaps the biggest assignment in the history of this team.
In Australia there are four national representative rugby teams: the Wallabies, the ,en’s and women’s Aussie sevens teams and the Wallaroos. Three of these teams are professional and work full-time at their chosen sport – one does not!
Off the back of the successful, gold medal-winning women’s sevens campaign at the Rio Olympics, the uninitiated sports fan may look at the prospect of a trans-Tasman contest between the Women’s XVs teams and assume there is a correlation between the two forms of the game and therefore in the expected results for Australia. But those expectations, while not misplaced, may be premature and unfair to the players whose passion is for the XVs form of the game.
The Australian sevens program consists of a fully professional unit which was implemented for the purpose of getting to the Olympics for the historic debut of the sport and then being successful in that campaign.
Both teams made it to Rio and as we all know, the women reached the pinnacle, took the prize and created history in their sport.
The Wallabies are, of course, the cornerstone of what Australians know to be the game of rugby union.
But the Wallaroos – to put it bluntly – are playing catchup. This is not just within their own sport but within the broader landscape of Australian Women’s sport which has gone through a seismic shift over the past 15 months.
This is a team consisting of amateur players which basically has no game time (that is Test matches) except when a World Cup campaign looms every few years.
These are women who work full-time and train on their own for the most part, in an attempt to follow a fitness plan laid out for them by the team’s strength and conditioning coach and bearing the cost of pursuing this passion themselves.
While this has not been an unusual scenario in women’s sport, it is quickly being relegated to the past and has become an aspect of sport which has demanded to be addressed – as witnessed with the Matildas, the AFL women and the Southern Stars – to highlight just the main ones.
The system under which the Wallaroos operates must surely be the next in line for an overhaul.
First steps were taken in this direction in June as the team was blessed with an infusion of financial support through a naming rights deal with the Buildcorp Group. Chair Josephine Sukkar saw the need for a fairy godmother-like intervention and so kick-started the process in the hope of creating a pathway which would see Women’s XVs rugby in Australia start to grow and prosper.
The Buildcorp Wallaroos have headed across the ditch this week – a squad of 26 players with high hopes and great potential. But with 13 debutantes, coach Paul Verrell admits this tour is a time for assessing where the team is at and using that evaluation in preparation for the 2017 World Cup in Ireland next August.
“We haven’t played a Test since the last World Cup and with 13 debutantes coming into this side it’s a learning tour for us. We’ll see how these girls step up to that next level – we’re under no illusions about how hard it’s going to be playing New Zealand. It’ll be really good for us to set a platform and know where we sit leading into the World Cup next year,” said Verrell.
Having looked closely at the Black Ferns team, Verrell is quietly confident that the structures he and the staff have put in place – both in attack and defence – will serve them well in this two Test series over the next fortnight, but knows it will be a steep learning curve for some.
“Until you get into that next level of rugby, you really don’t know how these girls are going to react to it. I think we’re stronger than what we were in 2014 at the last World Cup and we’ve got a good mix of experienced players and younger players and I think they’ll feed off one another. I think our forwards will compete well and I think we’ve got enough pace in our backline to give us some opportunities to score points,” he said.
But like anything, the proof will come on match day when this young and relatively inexperienced team runs out onto the park to face the reality that is Test rugby. Verrell has looked to his experienced heads to help prepare the team.
“We’ve got a good leadership group of six girls and we’re looking to them to talk to the younger girls and let them know what they’re going to be up against when they play these Test matches. It’s a completely different level and pace of game so I think they’ve been really good on and off the field talking to the girls about their experiences and about what they need to bring to the game to be competitive.”
While this impending two Test series will act as a yard stick, there is no doubt the challenge beyond is looking like Everest when there are constant reports coming from the northern hemisphere about the time and effort UK and European Women’s teams are putting into the development of the women’s XVs game and particularly into their preparation for Dublin 2017.
England has engaged 48 players in various contract forms looking to defend its 2014 World Cup title. Neighbouring Wales and Scotland are not far behind in their long-term plans for development of the women’s game and Ireland, being the 2017 WRugby World Cup host, is also tightly focussed on its preparations for next August.
The crucial difference is that these teams play many Test matches per year. There is an ‘Autumn Series’ coming up for England and a recently announced Test match between Wales and Scotland in November.
In preparation for the 2017 World Cup – now just ten months away – there will be a flurry of matches played globally beginning this week through to the end of the year with 14 international teams playing 16 full Test matches across seven countries (two of which being the New Zealand tour matches Australia is currently involved in).
In the New Year, the Women’s RBS Six Nations tournament will see England, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy play the annual round-robin tournament through February and March.
So what is the Wallaroos’ future?
With overseas nations throwing the bulk of their resources at the Women’s game the evidence is clear that the Australian Women’s XVs team needs a strong plan for growth and development in the long-term and some crucial concentrated training and match time in the short-term.
“There is nothing better than getting experience playing Test matches and if we could play a few more regular games and get into a set number of Tests each year between World Cups I think that would help us out and would slowly bring us into a semi-professional level. If we could restructure time and we could have these girls two to three months or more prior to leading into the World Cup – in a semi-professional program – I think that would definitely benefit us,” said Verrell.
The reality is these women work and for Paul Verrell, asking them to commit to a full-on training and playing program means finding a way of financially supporting them through it.
“I think the expectations of the public after they’ve seen what the Sevens girls have done – with the understanding that they’re in a fully professional program – makes it difficult, because these girls are amateurs. It all comes down to money and can the girls get time off work. You talk about having more Test matches and more camps and things like that but at the end of the day, when their sole income is working for someone else, that’s very hard to do.”
One of Josephine Sukkar’s big hopes for the year to come has been to facilitate this need for real Test match game time and she has been working with the ARU to put this in place.
Verrell says that while it is not locked in yet, there are plans on the drawing board for a four-Test series next June involving Australia, New Zealand, Canada and England which will certainly give the coach some measure of where his team is at when lining up against the big guns of women’s world rugby.
With 2015 being acknowledged more and more as the year of women’s Sport, the impact for cricket, football, netball, AFL and Rugby sevens is now being felt in the most substantial of ways and the prospect is that Rugby XVs should be the next ‘cab off the rank’ to feel the love in a sports loving landscape.
Of more immediate concern is the kick-off point for the Wallaroos in this journey and it starts with the Test match series in New Zealand over the next week.
The warm-up game against Auckland Storm proved to be the litmus Test Verrell was hoping for with the Aussies claiming victory in a close one on Tuesday afternoon. Now, with that confidence booster, the Buildcorp Wallaroos will be gearing up for a true Test of their mettle against the Black Ferns on Saturday afternoon in front of a big kiwi crowd eager for a Bledisloe double-header spectacle.
Paul Verrell is realistic but also positive in his expectations.
“We realise this is going to be really tough over the next two weeks. It will be a challenge at Eden Park, even just running out is going to be a big shock to the girls on that ground and with that crowd – a lot of them aren’t used to that sort of thing too.”
“It’s a matter of getting that bit more experience for those girls who will fill the majority of spots for the World Cup – so it’s just a stepping stone. If we win three games – great, that’s what we’re trying to do – but at the same time we’ll make progressions and if there are some losses there then we just want to make sure we put in some good ground work for these girls and that we’re on the right path for the World Cup next year.”
Well, with Tuesday’s win – one down, two to go!
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
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