No obligation to follow women's rugby

I think it’s great that women’s rugby is taking off.

Yes, I’m fully aware they don’t need my seal of approval, of course.

I’m just a sports fan who believes in the benefits of healthy recreation. But the fact it is becoming popular does not oblige me to become a follower.

I’m no couch potato, and as it is, there is so much rugby out there these days I am forced to prioritise and confine my interest to certain competitions.

The responsibility of following women’s rugby is neither mine nor that of male fans in general. It is the responsibility of those interested in the women’s game.

If we look at the internet and see who is actually writing about rugby, whether it be articles, blogs, letters or contributions to chat forums, it is overwhelmingly men. Where are the hordes of women on The Roar, for example?

Anyone can contribute. The site says so itself. But, unless I am missing something, we are not being inundated with articles submitted by ardent female rugby fanatics.

Even where women’s rugby itself is concerned, you are more likely to find men writing and chatting about it, than women.

On one chat forum I was asked why I didn’t include women’s results in my regular international round-ups. In fact, I didn’t cover juniors or sevens either.

Neither were there any women on that forum. But I set up a ‘women’s rugby’ thread just to keep them happy, and when the argument resurfaced a few months later, was able to point out that no one had contributed to that thread except me!

As a sports reporter during my youth I gave more attention to netball than any other winter code bar rugby. I’m talking about women’s netball and men’s rugby, of course. There was men’s netball, in fact, though few spectators at the games, and no apparent interest from the public.

Needless to add, they were not demanding the attention of female netball fans nor equal treatment from the national association.

The Wallaroos. (Image: ARU Media)

Conversely, both international netball and professional competition are sanctioned for women only and it is one of the few single-gender sports in New Zealand to be permitted by its governing body.

In the summer there was cricket and softball. The former was male-dominated, but female participation in the latter was roughly equal to male participation. I therefore gave both men’s and women’s softball competition the same amount of coverage.

Women’s rugby was just getting off the ground at the time, and no sooner had it done so than mainstream media snapped to attention and began providing it with seemingly more coverage than any other female sport.

This did not appear based on merit, and must have been viewed with bemusement by the netball community – one of the largest in New Zealand sports, and with a long and proud history.

Moreover, just who was the target audience for this seemingly disproportionate coverage – women themselves, or the wider, male-dominated rugby community? Does it follow, then, that the male-dominated sports media really only takes notice of women’s competition when it is a game they are interested in themselves?

It is difficult to find statistics on registered female rugby players, match attendances and estimated TV viewers. Those I have stumbled across compare to men’s rugby in developing ‘third tier’ nations such as Senegal, Denmark and Kazakhstan.

Even allowing for recent growth, they do not remotely come close to men’s. I wonder, also, what proportion of those attendances and TV viewing audiences are female? From the various crowd shots I’ve seen, I would doubt they are in the majority.

Women’s rugby sevens has made an impact. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

I’m glad women are taking to rugby and that the international governing body is giving it due attention.

But we wouldn’t want to end up like US soccer where gender discrimination lawsuits are rife and one is required to speak of the ‘Men’s World Cup’.

Enough of the emotional blackmail. Male rugby fans are under no more obligation to follow the women’s game than female netball fans are required to support men in that game. It’s a matter of choice.