Final whistle
Women’s Six Nations deserves respect in its own right, writes
A cheap tactic is to talk up the unique identity of the women’s Six Nations
If you had to pick one Six Nations game to watch this weekend, what would it be? Embittered fans of the women’s game ask themselves the question year on year and are faced with the same conundrum on Sunday, when all the opening-round fixtures have been spectacularly shoehorned into a two-hour lunchtime slot.
France and England kick off proceedings at 12.30pm, while Ireland and Wales open their campaigns against Scotland and Italy respectively half an hour later. It will be impossible to enjoy every game live in its entirety.
Since 2014, every Women’s Six Nations game has been streamed live in some form. This year, the championship will be brought to fans by different broadcasters in each home union and by the time broadcasting rights begin to be centralised from 2021, there is hope the historic pigeonholing of fixtures will be a thing of the past.
Those who will directly feel the repercussions of such dire scheduling are not so much the spectators themselves, but the 37,000 women and girls in this country who will take to a rugby pitch for their club or county on Sunday.
How can the Rugby Football Union, in the penultimate year of its four-year women and girls’ action plan, hope to deliver on engaging 100,000 new females in rugby by 2021 when girls cannot watch their idols?
The women’s championship could even be decided when England face France – the Red Roses’ nearest rivals – in Pau this weekend, which risks blunting everyone’s incentive to follow the rest of the tournament.
A cheap tactic in recent years has been to talk up the unique identity of the Women’s Six Nations. But for years it has become uncannily tethered to its big brother, inasmuch as its fledgling professionalism will allow.
In 2007, Spain were ousted from the competition and replaced by Italy, a team the Spaniards had not lost to in 12 years. Las Leonas are ranked above both Scotland and Ireland, but their readmission in the tournament would unsettle the status quo and, God forbid, result in the Women’s Seven Nations.
The bonus-points system forced upon the competition in 2017 – again in line with the men’s tournament – came at a time when the women’s game was nowhere near ready. The past three editions of the Women’s Six Nations have produced eight whitewashed scorelines (think back to England’s 80-0 drubbing of Scotland at Twickenham last year), against just one in the men’s tournament.
Winning bonus points have notably favoured high-scoring teams such as England and France, therefore increasing the gulf in competitiveness and decreasing its value as a viable advert for women’s sport.
Ben Morel, the Six Nations chief executive, has floated the idea of moving the women’s tournament to an entirely different time of year. “It’s definitely possible to change the window and that’s something we are looking into,” he said at the Six Nations launch, before talking up the introduction of a women’s player of the championship (the direct equivalent of which has existed in the men’s competition for years) and fudging an answer as to why Guinness has again failed to act as a main sponsor for this year’s women’s tournament.
Perhaps a pint of the black stuff isn’t very ladylike? Your guess is as good as mine.
Nor would the Irish brewer disclose how, if at all, it is financially supporting the women’s tournament in its cushty capacity as a partner.
It did, however, proudly declare it was recycling its 2019 “Sisters” advert for this year’s edition, starring England’s Harriet Millarmills and her sibling Bridget (the latter of whom, evidently unknown to Guinness, no longer plays international rugby for Scotland). Tournament oligarchs remain hell-bent on hyping the uniqueness they claim the Women’s Six Nations has, but here is the caveat: women’s sport has had enough of such cheerleading.
It is fast advancing into an era where high-profile tournaments deserve a main title sponsor, deserve not to be rammed into a two-hour time frame where they are left grappling for exposure and deserve financial backing that companies are happy to rave about.
How to watch round one of the 2020 Women’s Six Nations on Sunday:
France v England, (12.30pm, Sky Sports Mix)
Ireland v Scotland (1pm, RTE 2 and BBC Alba)
Wales v Italy (1pm, BBC Wales and Eurosport Italia)