THE CHASING GAME
There is no quick-fix for women’s rugby... it requires will, engagement and a conviction that it actually matters
PROGRESS can feel painfully relative in women’s sport, particularly in those codes where tradition and popularity have been sourced in men’s teams.
But two of the country’s big three field sports are enjoying good news stories, after recent controversies that threatened to turn disastrous.
And while rugby is now spiralling through its own horrors, the improvements wrought in ladies football and the national women’s soccer team show that recovery can happen, it can come about in a short space of time — but it requires honest engagement and hard work.
Victory for Meath over a rampantly dominant Dublin in the ladies All-Ireland final last month was one of the truly seismic shocks to register in Irish sport this year.
Beyond the immediate parameters of its competitive meaning, it created a new cast of identifiable stars for the women’s game, with Vikki Wall and Emma Duggan filling the headlines for days afterwards.
It is less than 12 months since the ladies football championship was the subject of handwringing on the radio phone-ins following the undoubted mess around a late change of venue in the CorkGalway All-Ireland semi-final.
That story rumbled for days and drew vociferous criticism on the Ladies Gaelic Football Association. Much of it was unfair and knee-jerk, but it all conspired in turning the story into a public relations quagmire for the sport.
Yet this year’s championship was illuminated by Meath’s remarkable victory, while the efforts of the organisation to promote their sport and their competition provide lessons that the GAA could usefully absorb.
Ireland’s 3-2 victory over Australia last week, meanwhile, ended a seven-game losing run and provided an important fillip to the regeneration work undertaken by Vera Pauw since her appointment.
The nature of the performance thrilled a crowd of almost 3,500 in Tallaght Stadium, and it came only a fortnight after the announcement of a significant sponsorship deal.
Broadcasters Sky were unveiled as the new sponsors of the women’s side, and so became the first stand-alone primary sponsor of the women’s international squad.
This is partly reflective of the improvements wrought in the FAI generally since the end of the wretched John Delaney era, but it also comes only four and a half years after that landmark press conference by players on the team detailing their terrible treatment on international duty.
Improvement is possible. Change can come. But it requires will. That, one suspects, is the most important lesson that powerful figures within the IRFU can absorb following the dismal failure of the women’s team to qualify for the World Cup.
Defeat to Scotland, following a blood-and-guts victory over Italy and an awful loss to Spain, preceded the sense of bereft players on the pitch in Parma following the Scottish result.
Defeat was inevitable given the poverty of Ireland’s performance, and the repeated shortcomings in fundamental aspects of the game points to stark coaching failures. However culpable Adam Griggs is found in his role as head coach — and he must bear responsibility for Ireland’s spiralling form — the difficulties endured by the Irish team ripple way, way beyond his sphere of influence. This is a failure with many fathers.
The appetite of the IRFU for meaningful engagement with the women’s game has long been doubted, and the exceptional achievements of a generation of players between 2013 and 2015 – when Ireland won a Grand Slam, reached a World Cup semi-final while beating New Zealand en route, and then won another Six Nations – perhaps gave a misleading view of the health of the women’s game.
This is a matter of resources, and not merely financial ones.
It is about playing depth, and providing young girls and women who want to play rugby at any level, with the opportunity to do so. This is what ladies football, camogie and soccer are working to do, and the IRFU need to follow suit.
The pathetic scenes posted from Donnybrook last month should have mortified the IRFU, after Connacht and Ulster players competing in the women’s interpros series were forced to change in a gazebo near a derelict area as rats ran around nearby.
It was subsequently reported that players were asked not to comment on the story, but silence cannot be maintained in a social media age. The disgusting footage recorded by one of the players was easily accessible online. Stories can’t be easily hushed up now. That only weeks later the national team fail to even qualify for a tournament whose last four they reached only seven years ago, and which Ireland hosted in 2017, should bring embarrassment of a different kind.
One wonders if it will.
The failings that were palpable in Ireland’s play for much of this year, through the Six Nations and then the recent qualifying tournament, has been irresistible for some critics of the women’s game. Their argument, such as it is, goes that the players aren’t good enough and there you have it. It’s not quite a vision for the future, is it?
There should, though, be an honest reckoning with Ireland’s decline of the past half-decade. The team have slipped alarmingly and are now way off contending for a Six Nations.
The greater resources enjoyed by England and their full-time squad, and semi-professional France are factors, but demanding that Ireland allow their players to turn professional is not the answer, either.
Money should instead be directed to deepening the pool of players in the country, as Eimear Considine pointed out in an interview in these pages earlier this year.
‘You have to be realistic. We are the lucky ones that have got to play rugby for the last 12 months, whereas club structures and provincial structures in the women’s game haven’t been there for the last year,’ she said.
‘You have to think how many girls have you lost to rugby in the last year from drop-outs or that mightn’t come back? You have to think realistically and from the bottom-up.
‘There’s no point trying to make a women’s team when there are no players coming through, and making us pro when there are no players coming through.’ A current Irish international might make such an argument, of course, but Considine’s argument is persuasive. And nor does it absolve the union of responsibility.
They are the ones who must provide the resources in terms of finance, yes, but also coaching expertise, facilities and administrative guidance, to get more girls and women playing the sport.
That is the long-term solution to a problem that can’t be easily solved. But it requires will and meaningful engagement, and a conviction throughout the organisation that women’s rugby matters.
Sports can develop and improve – and there are no shortage of local examples attesting to that.
Money should be directed to deepening the pool of players