Final whistle ‘I care’ campaign stands up to small-minded men
At a time when most of us are in need of endless virtual hugs, human warmth and solidarity, crass keyboard crusaders reached a new low last week in reaction to this year’s Women’s Six Nations being postponed.
When Sky Sports announced the news on its social media channels, the post was met with a deluge of sarky comments from men who apparently “don’t care” (despite having taken the time to comment in the first place).
In response, Bristol Bears player Stef Evans invited her followers to post a photo of themselves playing rugby with the hashtag, “I care”. Within hours, the movement took off globally and social media was – for the second time in recent months – flooded with empowering photos of female rugby players and fans from the women’s game, telling the world why they cared about their sport.
This is nothing new in women’s rugby, let alone women’s sport. Netball was shunned as a schoolgirl game before England won their historic Commonwealth gold medal in 2018. Female footballers were long deemed incapable of getting their dainty little heads around the offside rule. Such wayward perceptions have, to a large extent, been eradicated, but why does women’s rugby keep on being unfairly targeted and ridiculed by small-minded men?
For Evans, the founder of women’s rugby clothing brand Ruggette RFC, part of the answer lies in the simple fact that there are not always the metrics to back up the women’s game. It is fantastic that 28million women and girls play the game globally, but it should not be the only yardstick to keep prodding the sport in the right direction – increased exposure on TV and bespoke women’s rugby clothing are also needed. Evans has astutely tapped into the latter already: Ruggette was born after the tighthead prop was unable to find any “male” rugby shorts that fitted her properly.
“A lot of rhetoric about why women’s rugby isn’t invested in ties in with this perceived idea around the quality of the women’s
game –that’s usually one of the first things that gets cited,” says Evans. “I’m hoping that the ‘I care’ campaign can help highlight the fact that this idea of quality is completely irrelevant, it’s completely subjective.”
There is, of course, the milliondollar question. What do professional male players think about women’s rugby? Surely the Owen Farrells and Alun Wyn Joneses of this world would be happy to stand up for their sisters if they thought it would help silence the sexists? The reality is that some already are.
Sean O’brien jumped at the chance to watch some of his Irish female counterparts in action for Wasps Ladies against Loughborough Lightning on Dec 5, when fans were briefly allowed back into grounds to watch live sport. Ironically, the London Irish flanker later found himself at the centre of a social media storm and reproduced the e-ticket from the match. “I know lots of pro male players who are more than happy to support the ladies game and pay to watch them!” he angrily punched into Twitter when challenged by a man who did not believe that he had actually paid to watch women’s rugby.
At Telegraph Women’s Sport, we definitely care. It is the very reason why this paper launched a dedicated women’s sport section two years ago, to tell stories like the former Wasps and Wales international Nic Evans, whose genuine dementia fears do not deserve to be rubbished or compared with professional male players of her era.
It is why we scrutinise governing bodies when budgets in women’s sport – be it amateur or professional – are squeezed, or when World Rugby has one woman on its top board.
And yet, the “I care” movement is not about what professional male players think, or whether they would even pay to watch women’s rugby. While many in the elite women’s game would no doubt appreciate endless displays of public support from male allies like O’brien, they do not need their approval to take to the rugby pitch.
It is hard not to feel like women’s rugby is reaching a tipping point. What will be the next hashtag born out of resentment to these blundering keyboard warriors? September’s women’s World Cup in New Zealand would do nicely, but if they come out to play before then, women’s rugby will be lying in wait to bat them down again.
In hours the movement took off and social media was flooded with photos of female rugby players