Paying top women is ‘tricky’ - NZR boss
Steve Tew would love to wave his magic wand and pay all of New Zealand’s top women’s rugby players what they are really worth.
But the New Zealand Rugby chief executive operates in the real world, not a fantasy one, and he admits there remains a major challenge coming up with a professional payment model that is sustainable, manageable and equitable for the women’s game.
The subject of payment for New Zealand’s top women’s XVs players became a hot topic in the wake of the Black Ferns’ latest World Cup triumph in Dublin, when they claimed their fifth global crown after beating England in the final.
It was also mentioned briefly during NZR’s Auckland news conference on Thursday to unveil the findings from its nine-month Respect and Responsibility Review.
One of the major findings by the panel was that opportunities for women in the sport are not as readily available as they should be.
NZR has pledged to address that among a long list of imperatives delivered by the review panel. But whether that should extend to female rugby players earning fulltime salaries to play at the top level remains a thorny issue that Tew admits his organisation is still wrestling with.
At present NZR fully contracts only sevens players in the women’s side of the game, though it did pay an ‘‘assembly fee’’ for the Black Ferns XVs players for their recent World Cup trip.
Where it gets tricky is that even if NZR could find the funds to finance a professional or semiprofessional national XVs side, there is simply not the match schedule available to justify the payments.
‘‘The thing to acknowledge of course is what a great job the team did over in Dublin. In our view it’s the best prepared team we’ve sent away, so we’re very proud we gave them the foundation to do it.
‘‘But in the end they had to get up and do the job, and they did it bloody well,’’ said after the Respect and Responsibility unveiling.
‘‘The reality is we’ve got an enormous growth in the game, but we’re losing a lot of girls before they get out of secondary school. So we’ve got to have a model that’s sustainable.
‘‘And how we contract players in the long-term is something we are looking closely at. We already contract the sevens and we certainly paid assembly fees for the Black Ferns. But how we contract for the future has to be woven into that.’’
Tew said there was no obvious solution at present given the circumstances.
‘‘We could contract a certain number of top XVs players, but what actually would they do because there isn’t a professional competition for them to play in. So it’s not as simple as that.
‘‘The Black Ferns winning the World Cup, and our women’s sevens side being top of the world, is a great opportunity for us to establish really clear pathway for female players, but also to try get some more support into the game because we’d acknowledge we haven’t got that as we’d like it to be.’’
Even the cash-rich Rugby Football Union of England has had a rethink on its pay model for the women’s XVs game, ending its fulltime contract system to concentrate on the sevens programme in the wake of the 2017 World Cup.
‘‘I don’t think anyone in sport has a good answer for this,’’ said Tew of fair payment in women’s sport. Tennis can’t give us a good answer, and golf can’t either. It’s tricky.
‘‘No one, and certainly not me, underestimates the sacrifices and effort and energy that our women put in to go to that World Cup. But there are a number of sports that simply can’t afford to pay people a full-time wage to be involved. I’ve got a daughter who rows and I know exactly what it’s like.
‘‘But will we get there? Does the Black Ferns’ success and profile and all the attention they’re now getting give us a hand? Yes it does and we’ll keep working hard to find the right answers.’’