The state of women's XVs rugby is not okay

From Train without a Station:

"Sukkar wanted something that was not financially feasible given the current climate. ... The ARU ... Given their dire financial state it would be irresponsible to look to set up another national competition ... at the same time. They just can’t afford to do everything. I don’t know if you are aware but the ARU are looking at cutting a Super Rugby team for financial reasons."

"... it appears there is an old boy’s mentality that leads to the ARU naming male coaches to the Wallaroos post. It’s the same old stuffy formula: male, pale and stale ..."

I watched my girls play for nsw country unfortunately it was only live streamed on line I guess another one of the stale male decisions.

....this is why the approach of AUS rugby is sooooo wrong....jump on the bandwagon and HOPE for the best....

But if the cost of maintaining that sponsorship is greater than the amount of the sponsorship, surely it's the best business decision to accept the loss of it.

How is it? What tangible benefit is a national competition going to have for this? It will be less visible than the NRC. I doubt there will be any broadcast interest given the low viewers for rugby in general (Saturday's test got the lowest viewers in as long as we can find numbers for). It unfortunately would not be anything like the AFLW. - No TV coverage - No paid top athletes from other sports - No backing of huge existing clubs

I think the important point is nobody should expect the ARU to set up a women's comp because the two are in very different positions regarding their popularity. If you took rugby, a much less popular sport and then reduced support further for a women's competition it would really not be anywhere near feasible.

Canada have had increased funding due to the Olympics which they have put mostly in to 7s. Soccer is a popular sport for girls so much so that FIFA hosted the Women's World Cup there and I don't think it was the first time they hosted it.

I am a female rugby coach and I also sit on the board of my rugby club and competition union. I have played for 13 years and have now coached for 3 years both here in Aus and in England where Womens Rugby in the XV format has grown and grown due to the RFU's increadible promotion of the game. All you have to do is Google the Red Roses to see how asparational they are about growing and supporting the game. 7's has grown off the back of Olympic promotion and there are now pathways for girls to continue in that sport when they can no longer play with the boys. XV is a more all inclusive version of the game we love. You basically cut a XV team in half when 7's is concered - there is no place for the forwards. Rugby in the XV format is all inclusive of any body type and any ability. In my team are beginners right through to a current Wallaroo. It is our feeling that the ARU is almost happy to just let this amazing game die to be replaced by our golden girl 7's - who are increadible role models dont get me wrong. Promote the game - then it will grow. My fear is that the ARU have left this a few years too late...... With respect to female coaches - there are a number of ex Wallaroos who would make outstanding elite level coaches if encouraged and given the support to. Perhaps some talent ID could go into setting up these women to persue this - but while there isnt much to actually persue (no NRC) is it currently worth it......?

I just watched some of the match and my point about safety is demonstrated by the mismatch you have pointed out. The woman named Latu is far too strong for the other women. It like the big kid in the U12s.

Caroline, Thanks for your response, I am glad that you now appear to be thinking about how this thing would eventually be self funding. However, I don't think that just throwing cash at national women's competition and praying that it covers its own costs is going to work. Times are tough right now, for example Channel Ten has just gone under administration which, tells you that that the broadcasting and advertising markets which sustain professional sport are seriously under the pump. And we just had a Wallabies game in Australia's second largest city which only drew 13,0000 people, that won't even cover costs, so you can see that unless sporting events are a really big deal or offer something different - like the Brisbane Tens did this year - attendance is unlikely to cover costs. And judging by how Josephine Sukkar from Buildcorp is approaching this issue, I don't think that she really thinks that a women's NRC is likely to be a profitable venture either. She runs a business and if the NRC, let alone a women's NRC, thing was going to draw the sort of attention needed to pay the bills she wouldn't be giving up the sponsorship rights. To the contrary she would be in a bidding war with other sponsors to keep Buildcorp's as the naming sponsor, because the rights would be bringing her too much business too give up. In fact if women's 15s had a serious chance of covering costs any time soon we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the women's NRC would be well funded by keen sponsors and the 2017 season would be starting in a month or so. So we are left with a problem, where there is not enough money in ARU coffers to meet all that people from different areas are demanding and any new, non-profitable venture that the ARU funds has to come at the expense of somebody else. Apart from a few genuine trogs who think that women should be nowhere near a rugby field unless is to cut up the oranges and whom we can all laugh at and pity, I reckon most of the disagreement that you are getting is coming people who are just worried about what this would mean for the rugby experiences that they currently cherish. And why shouldn't they worry about that? For example, don't Western Australian supporters - women and men - have just as much of to have a Super Rugby team to support as anybody else? Because if a women's NRC was going to be funded right now, it is only by breaking the hearts of a lot of Force fans that the ARU is going to pay for it. Why would that be fair? I'm no great supporter of the current ARU leadership, I think they have stuffed up too many things recently to reasonably expect to stay in the job, but I also think it is time that interest groups took stock of the realities of the current tough environment and stopped making demands that just can't be met right now. I am not just picking on you and Women's sport here, the Shute Shield mob are the worst in that respect. If people want to grow an area of rugby and want ARU assistance in some way, it is perfectly reasonable that the stakeholder exhaust every possibility for raising funds themselves and limit their requests from the ARU to what they absolutely can't access - most likely in kind provision of expertise and commercial services. The Force have certainly shown what can be done with their "Own the Force" campaign, so I would expect a bit more commercial creativity out of states with multiples of the population of Western Australia. That is the sort of thing that I am getting at about making the rugby more attractive to people who currently don't spend a lot on it, women being one group but I am sure others could be identified. If it was made more of an entertainment experience then rugby is tapping into people's entertainment budget, i.e. what they might spend on movies or a concert or whatever, rather than just what they have allocated for sport. To me that is the real way to get growth, find a way to genuinely tap a new market because the current one is exhausted and probably shrinking. That is the sort of thing an aspiring journalist should be exploring in articles like this. I studied journalism back in the day and did a bit of freelancing, and I always remember my lecturer, who had extremely high standards, saying "journalists aren't here to ask questions, they are here to find answers". That is what needs to happen in articles like this. The discussion that Bakkies and I have had about women's rugby in Canada is probably fairly fertile ground for that sort of story. Why is Canada being successful in Women's rugby, despite the apparent challenges they face of a lower profile sport and inclement weather? Does women's rugby in Canada have less competition? Has it been organised for longer than it has in Australia? Is the Canadian government helping them out? Are they just adopting better training techniques? How are their competitions structured to make them successful? Rather than just asking why can't Australia achieve what Canada has done and assuming that it is all to do with money, why not find out and tell us? It might show that for some reason it has been easier to get women's 15s going in Canada than Australia, but at the same time it might be an interesting insight into how we can do things better here to promote women's 15s here.