Mary's Wonder Women: The Wallaroos get their pay day

Before professional players and rugby and before women had organised teams the men from all grades had to balance jobs, career ‘s, family and friends. They managed and were only paid when they were chosen for national honours. They even had their photos taken and were chosen to speak to the media. Rugby is about the love of the game?

I hope you are right ?

Not really relevant to this then because the ARU has been focusing on growing the women’s game at lower levels.

Woohoo - Women’s rugby ??? is about to hit our TV screens ?? They’ll steal funds generated by the men’s game to kickstart a comp no one wants to watch. With a skill and power level inferior to the standard of a men’s game which at present, is an inferior level to what fans will accept. And people wonder why Trump was voted President ???

TWAS Maybe I should have been clearer.. I was not talking about profesionals specifically. I was more talking about amateurs of all ages.

Is it chicken and the egg? Look at rugby. Revenue came first, then professionalism.

Way to go Girls ! Now all we need to do is remove tackling and rucking etc from the women’s game. The last thing we want is butch and bruised young ladies waking up with a smashed nose and premature dimensia. A faster more athletic game is a safer and more appropriate activity. Aspiring to be the next Elysse Perry or Anna Kournikova should be the goal of our future generations

I think that’s a bit off. Do people choose what sport they play recreationally based on professional opportunities available? I didn’t consider the professional opportunities in rugby before going down to play local 3rd grade for the first time for example.

Sorry Mary, in all men’s sports this is driven by revenue, not time commitment. That’s why there are a number of Olympic sports that are basically amateur.

Yeah where I fundamentall disagree with Mary’s view is even with what she says she hopes women’s sport to achieve, revenue is not part of it. Mary I must ask, where do you expect the money to come from? In the case of rugby, the men’s game is barely scraping by.

Hey Mary, I know a friend who plays in the Ladies league, I've sent her a message with your email saying if she or anyone she knows would wanna have a chat to give you a buzz.

Your facts are wrong. This is the second time the men and womens sevens are concurrent. The first time was last year in Sydney. The crowds were big last year and probably will be again this year. The women are a great team.

If woman are not given similar opportunities to what is available playing AFL, league, soccer, cricket then you can expect them to snub rugby and play whatever other sport. If Rugby ignores Woman and they play other sports it will be detrimental to rugby in the long term. Why? Assuming the women eventually have a family and kids you can bet that whatever sport Mum played is more likely to be the sport that the kids play and the family watch and follow at Rugby's expense. I think we are moving in the right direction but there is a long way to go before we catch up with the AFL juggernaut.

Where is this tourney being held?

It is good that the Wallaroos are getting match payments, from what I understand there are about a thousand adult female rugby players, so as the top couple of percent of Aussie women 15s players they can genuinely consider themselves to be elite athletes. Hopefully bit will allow them more prep time off work to be more competitive against the other nations, to help raise the profile of the women's game. A dose of reality is required on the complaints about the Super W players not getting paid though. There will be about 150 of them, the top 15% or so of female players. To me that means they are good footballers, but not good enough to call themselves elite. As for the "extra commitments' they make, from what I can see they will be playing on the same weekends over a five week period that they would have played their club games, with a couple of interstate flights thrown in. There are plenty of amateur athletes who make a similar level of commitment and it is far more competitive for a male player to get an NRC contract, let alone a Super Rugby one. Even before you consider commercial viability, making Super W a professional comp wouldn't seem justified on equity grounds. It is also important to note that the Black Ferns remain amateur but are still the best in the World, so that shows that Women's rugby can grow organically without having money thrown at the players. It might be worth these "women's sport advocates" looking at how the Kiwi women achieved what they did, rather than just expecting RA to provide all the answers by throwing money at players.

Exactly you can only raise the interest by having super stars on the field every week. Australian rugby is being overtaken by the other major football codes. Every day they mention these codes, rugby is not mentioned in the same breath. We need to strengthen the games we have super rugby and the wallabies, sevens rugby is only getting the recognition it deserves and it’s only been recent because the women have skill for that game. The men need to start winning and it has to be Day in day out.

Slat as a grumpy old fella who used to think the only women's rugby comp that should be counted was who makes best aftermatch feed for the players, even I have to disagree with you, I go to club rugby every week during season, and even I will say that the games I have seen the women play the last couple of years has been a huge improvement. I think the time has come to recognise that if we want women comps at super level , and I think most think it a good idea, well I think the players have to have some compensation in monetary terms. You know sometimes it just not about the crowd they bring in (because if it was there would be very few state cricket players in Aus), but also how much value the sports gets in raising the profile of the sport!