Blues, Chiefs show

The first 20 minutes of the historic match between the Blues and Chiefs women’s teams at Eden Park on Saturday had it all.

A brilliant piece of individual skill from the Blues 17-year-old first fiveeighth Patricia Maliepo, laying down a grubber then recovering it to score the first try of the match.

A response from Chiefs wing Langi Veainu, who put her head down and backed herself to make it to the left-hand corner, where Maliepo’s last-ditch tackle couldn’t stop her from scoring.

And a sign of the way the rest of the match would play out, when the Chiefs got a rolling maul going off a lineout and Kennedy Simon scored the second of what would be five tries in their 39-12 win.

As Blues captain Eloise Blackwell said afterwards: ‘‘Excitement levels were through the roof.

‘‘The first 20 was a bit of a whitewash in terms of what I can remember. It was just so fast and trying to transition this big rig around the field – that was quite difficult.

‘‘Little Patricia went over for our first try, followed by Sylvia, so two of our teenage girls, and it’s awesome for them.

‘‘They are teenagers competing against women – some almost twice their age – so for them to rise to the occasion and feel confident that they can do that, I think that is just awesome.’’

Chiefs captain Les Elder was sat beside Blackwell in the post-match press conference and said the game had been a showcase for what was possible.

‘‘That’s coming off a couple of trainings together and while we’ve been playing club rugby.

‘‘That’s the highest intensity game we’ve played all year, since the games against the Barbarians last year for our girls in black, and since the [Farah Palmer Cup] for the other girls, so to put on a product like that, with a few trainings and a couple of club games just shows what we could create if we were resourced.’’

But ‘‘if’’ remains the key word. Saturday’s game and the buildup to it has put a potential women’s Super Rugby competition in the spotlight, but it’s now up to New Zealand Rugby to seize the momentum it has generated.

This fixture was driven by the Blues and the Chiefs, not the governing body, which has only been tentatively hopeful about the prospect of launching a proper tournament as soon as next year, when the Black Ferns will defend their Rugby World Cup title on home soil.

World Rugby’s new WXV international competition is set to launch the year after that, with regional qualifiers taking place in a window in the first half of the year, and the three tiers of WXV competitions themselves taking place in a window in September and October.

That will make the introduction