Women’s rugby has to build on success
Black Ferns assistant coach Wesley Clarke hopes to see women’s rugby capitalise on the momentum they gathered following their World Cup win in August.
Clarke said it would be sad to see interest in the women’s game die down, especially after the quality of the Black Ferns’ 41-32 win over England in the final had been widely acknowledged.
‘‘A lot of people have been converted in the sense that the skilllevel was high. That is really pleasing,’’ he said. ‘‘One of our disappointments after the June series was that we did not feel like we had showed what the women’s game was capable of. To have played in such a classy World Cup final was really pleasing. It has got to stay at the fore-front of people’s minds.
‘‘I think that the Farah Palmer Cup is a great competition and I think potentially having another competition between the Farah Palmer Cup and test rugby would be nice. What that looks like might be some sort of Super Series over a number of weeks, but I am not sure.’’
He added that it would be ‘‘fantastic’’ if New Zealand put their hands up to host the Women’s World Cup for the first time.
Looking back on the World Cup, Clarke, who has been with the Black Ferns since 2015, put the success down to the team’s preparation, which ramped up after they lost to England at home in June.
‘‘A number of our Auckland based players recognised that they had not done enough contact work. So we had a couple of sessions against the Marist Rugby Club’s under 20s in Auckland. We did live lineouts, live mauls and live maul defence.’’
Once they got to Ireland, Clarke, fellow assistant Grant Keenan and head coach Glenn Moore put in long hours.
‘‘We did a lot of home work during the tournament. We would play our game and then as a coaching staff we would go and watch every other game live as well, because you see things better live, and then we watched footage at night.’’
That meant there was no panic when they went into halftime trailing by seven points.
‘‘We were very calm in the changing room,’’ Clarke said.
‘‘We knew certain things about them. We knew they were going to take Marlie Packer off at No 7 early in the second half; they did. We knew that they would probably change their entire front row at the 60-minute mark, they did that. We had a plan around our maul defence, we worked pretty hard on that.’’
Clarke, who is married to Black Ferns legend Farah Palmer, said he was still contemplating if he would stay on in the Black Ferns job, which is unpaid except for a daily allowance while in camp or on tour.
‘‘It is tough on the family. I have a busy wife and I have two young kids so it is definitely not easy. I have got a bit of thinking to do over that.’’
He is continuing with his coaching co-ordinator and first XV coaching jobs at Feilding High School and was back on the sidelines for the school on Saturday to watch his side qualify for the national co-ed top four tournament this week.