Sydney snubs women’s sevens
THEY’VE received top billing at next weekend’s Sydney Sevens and were feted in this year’s Australia Day honours but Australia’s Olympic gold medal-winning ‘‘rugby pioneers’’ still play second fiddle to their male counterparts if tournament scheduling is anything to go by.
Most of the women’s 16 knockouts matches scheduled for day two of the tournament have been relegated to a training field across the road from Allianz Stadium, with seating for about 600 people, to allow the men’s pool stages to get underway in the main arena.
The challenges of combining the men’s and women’s world series events has meant the field, Kippax Oval, which is used during the week by the Waratahs, Swans and Roosters, was always going to be used for ‘‘overflow games’’.
But it was not until the women’s schedule was announced that it emerged it was they who would take the hit. Just six of the women’s games, including two semifinals and the final, will be played at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
Tournament organisers will erect a video screen and temporary stand at Kippax, which will seat about 600 people, with standing room for another 400 or so, while a capacity crowd of up to 45,000 will watch the men’s group stages play out inside Allianz Stadium. Fox Sports confirmed it would broadcast every game live across the three days.
It is understood the Australian Rugby Union wanted to schedule both tournaments over three days, which would have allowed all men’s and women’s games to be played on Allianz Stadium. But with the men’s world series in Wellington this weekend, player welfare concerns meant that was not possible.
A World Rugby spokesman said the women were moved off the main pitch because of ‘‘commercial arrangements’’. It is understood Sydney’s deal to host the men’s tournament, which was signed a year earlier than the women’s, stipulated that all games be played on the Allianz Stadium turf. The Sun-Herald