Mouthguards, shoulder pads, and headgears are not quite the typical apparel you’d expect to find in a teenage girl’s wardrobe.
The Illawarra region is embracing this emerging trend though, as girls pull up their socks and take to the rugby league field on the quest for a green-and-gold jersey.
Arriving at any of the suburban rugby league grounds around the country on a Saturday morning you can expect to have the smell of Deep Heat warm the insides of your nostrils, as soldiers preparing for battle are massaged and lathered in muscle-warming lotions.
As you pass the strapping table, towards a vacant square of grass on the hill, you’ll hear the sound of metal studs nervously tapping the floor inside the sheds.
Then as you find your spot on the hill and set up camp a dozen ten-year-olds will provide pre-game entertainment, amusing themselves in the in-goal area on the field, their fathers scooting off to the bar facilities.
In the Illawarra though, once your beer has been opened, your pullout chair assembled and your gut-buster sauced, the boys won’t play the first match of the day. Instead local girls take centre stage on the field in the Illawarra Women’s Open Age Competition.
Since commencing in 2010, the Illawarra women’s competition has become a significant feature of the Illawarra rugby league schedule.
Still in its infancy, the competition this year features five teams all vying for the prestigious Champions Trophy.
In four years though, the competition has been dominated by one club in particular: the undefeated Helensburgh Tiger-Lillies.
One of the side’s up-and-coming starlets is Emma Tonegato, an 18-year-old high school student at Bellambi’s Holy Spirit College.
Still to complete her HSC exams, Tonegato boasts a formidable portfolio, which features a New South Wales Women’s rugby league (NSWWRL) Championship title, Interstate Championship experience for NSW and Australian All-Stars selection.
Emma says that the camaraderie and mateship so often identified as facets of male-dominated sports are just as evident in the female variation of rugby league.
“We play by the same rules as the boys, and we have as much fun as the boys too,” she says.
“Even though it’s a traditionally male sport, we apply ourselves at training and in the match with as much passion as the boys.”
With the high level of heavy-contact being one of the features that makes rugby league a multi-million dollar profession, it is interesting to learn that as far as the core rules and laws of the game go, the women’s game is played by the same rules as the NRL superstars, without the big price tag attached.
Asked if the high level of contact scares her at all or if girls should be worried about playing, Emma shrugs, “sure, you get hurt sometimes, but that’s what happens when you sign up for a contact sport,” she says.
“If you put the hard work in at training and learn the ways to play carefully, injuries are minimised.”
Tonegato has been rewarded with national selection in the Australian Women’s rugby league Jillaroos team following an impressive performance in the Interstate Challenge for NSW against Queensland in April.
This week Emma travelled to the United Kingdom with her family and three of her Helensburgh team mates to play in the 2013 Women’s rugby league World Cup, the fourth event of its kind.
Individually, Emma has the uncanny ability to duck and weave her way through gaps in the opposition’s defence similar to the way Preston Campbell used to for the Penrith Panthers in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Small in stature, but giant in talent, Emma’s elusive pace and deceptive footwork made her an obvious selection in the Jillaroos squad, something she’s overwhelmingly proud of.
“To represent your country at a World Cup in any sport is an extremely proud moment,” Emma says, “but to do it in rugby league, a sport that we’re all brought up watching, that’s just amazing.”
While the Women’s rugby league World Cup might only have taken off in the 2000s, the women’s game began early in the 20th century, and has its roots firmly planted in suburban Sydney.
Katherine Haines, a doctoral candidate at Victoria University, is studying the history of women in the game and says that the introduction of women’s rugby league in the 1920s established the foundations for current representatives like Emma.
Haines has found that the new wave of interest currently being experienced by the Australian Women’s rugby league (AWRL) isn’t dissimilar to the show of support expressed in the early half of the 1900s.
“There was an attempt to set up a women’s rugby league initiative in Sydney in 1912,” Haines says.
“A young woman wrote to the NSWRL Secretary, Ted Larkin, requesting his assistance in forming a women’s league. It seems Larkin didn’t act on the request beyond sending the letter on to the Sun where it was published for the amusement of readers.”
Haines has found that-probably against the will of Ted Larkin the pioneers of the AWRL movement earned the right to play an exhibition match between the Sydney Metro Blues and the Sydney Reds at the Agricultural Showgrounds in Sydney in front of 25 000 people.
“Dally Messenger launched the Dally M Football at the match with a half-time goal kicking exhibition,” Haines has discovered.
“The star [of the match] was a young 15-year-old factory worker from Surry Hills called Maggie Maloney who played on the Blues wing and scored four tries.”
“The match was a huge success – most newspapers expressed the opinion that the match was much faster and skilful than anyone expected. The barracking apparently was ‘deafening’,” says Katherine.
“The crowd really enjoyed it.”
Despite the apparent optimism expressed in the newspapers of the day, Haines has found no further articles or information regarding the women’s game in NSW following the exhibition match.
Katherine believes that the game regressed and suffered defeat at the hands of male ignorance.
“Generally, the formation of the contemporary women’s football bodies mirrors this broader pattern: flourishing briefly at the start of the 1920s, then going underground for 50 years or more, then re-surfacing as organised bodies in the 1970s or later, which coincides with Second Wave feminism.”
President of the NSW WRL Julie Nicoll, who is working to implement an enduring women’s rugby league structure in NSW, says that she’s had to deal with the pessimistic attitude of stubborn men her whole career.
“The ‘dinosaurs’ as I refer to them as, are of the generation that believe women and girls should be ‘protected’,” Nicoll says, “and it is very confronting for them to see women being gladiatorial. It is not for everyone but for me it is about choice.”
It seems her attitude has rubbed off onto players like Emma, whom she will farewell with great pride in July.
“We also have to contend with the several pre-conceived ideas of what a female rugby league player should look or be like: solid build, gay and butch- this couldn’t be further from the truth. You only need to look at the players in the current Australian Jillaroo squad.”
It’s actually quite hard to find anyone in the Australian Jillaroos team who fit the “solid-build, gay and butch” stereotype Nicoll refers to.
While there are certain positions that require players to be of a masculine build, none of the players in the team are overtly male-like.
Like Emma, these ladies are students, community workers, and teachers who love the game of rugby league and have the ability to represent their country.
Despite the obvious passion these players exhibit on the field, there are still plenty of “dinosaurs” in rugby league circles who would prefer to see women cutting the oranges and saucing pies at the footy rather than playing the game.
Someone who can attest to the hostility towards females in rugby league is Luke Tonegato, brother of Emma, who experienced firsthand the archaic attitude within the sport as he watched the footy with his mates one day.
Luke recalls the time that he was singled out one afternoon by a middle-aged man who asked, “Your sister’s the one playing rugby league, yeah?”
Luke, expecting a compliment or congratulatory handshake, puffed out his chest and answered, “Yeah mate, why is that?”
Stone-faced, the man replied, “I don’t think girls should play footy,” before rejoining his white-haired possie of friends.
“I was speechless,” Luke says. In a testament to the changing times and the social acceptance of females in rugby league by ‘Gen Y-ers’ though, Luke was not embarrassed and laughed off the encounter.
To this day he refers to the story as a character-building barrier his sister has overcome on her journey as one Australia’s finest female rugby league players.
“I really didn’t expect it,” Luke says “but it just proves that there will always be people looking to bring you back a few pegs.”
Sitting on the hill at the footy, a pie in one hand, a beer in the other, watching players run full pace at one another into the unrelenting shoulders of their would-be captors, the beautiful nature of rugby league is as clear to see in the women’s fixtures as it is when the boys run out.
The pure ecstasy of scoring a try contrasted with the depressing low of letting the opposition score: the 80-minute rollercoaster isn’t a male-only ride.
Brushing aside her opposition, Emma bursts through the opposition’s defence to score yet another try.
Planting the ball down firmly under the posts, Emma shows that she- and the girls’ competition- is here to stay, even if the “dinosaurs” think otherwise.
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