LACK OF SIX NATIONS PRESENTS GOLDEN CHANCE FOR WOMEN’S GAME
AS THE 2021 Women’s Six Nations was finally postponed this week – not that it had ever had a scheduled timetable to postpone in the first place – it is perhaps pertinent to remind everyone how the last championship concluded. Especially for the Irish. Adam Griggs’ side beat Italy at home but the ever-changing Government restrictions offered them a comprehensive reminder of their place in Irish sport’s pecking order as they prepared to face France.
With France on the travel green list, it was reasonably understandable that the Irish may struggle to accommodate the updated requirements, particularly the necessity for a 14-day quarantine period, even if the Government’s attempts to impose this has been exposed as risible.
And in the context of the hundreds and thousands of air travellers who passed in and out of this country freely since the start of the pandemic, perhaps it also felt a tad unreasonable to hear how they arrived at their decision to deny a derogation to the women, as opposed to why they did so.
We were told that although amateur in status, they were not deemed either “elite” or “high-performance” athletes.
The French, fully professional, elite and high performing, then offered to travel to Dublin before, in a surreal twist, they had an outbreak of their own which promptly drew a line under the whole episode.
Still, it was nice to know where the Irish women’s rugby team stood; for example, somewhere below the junior players in camogie and ladies football but above their counterparts in basketball and hockey.
A change of year has changed little.
The 2021 event has bowed to the inevitable consequences of winter’s virulent surge and one could almost hear the accompaniment of a soft, plaintive violin as a variety of voices delivered the news with pathetically po-faced deference.
If it somehow felt that this was perhaps the worst thing that could happen to women’s rugby in general – and Irish women’s rugby in particular – then you clearly have not been paying attention. But what if it actually turns out to the best thing to happen the sport?
Only history can appoint itself that judge but at least the prosecution can begin plotting their case from this very moment. From crisis can be hewn opportunity.
Ignored
And while men still run the show, the females, ignored for so long, now have a broader voice. There are far more rugby women to ensure women’s rugby can make itself heard.
After all, a third of those who voted for World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont were female; even if Gus Pichot would have done more for the women’s game in our humble opinion.
Two Irish women are on the 10-person women’s advisory committee, including Longford’s Su Carty, under whose watch global participation by women grew from four per cent of the world’s playing population to 25pc in just seven years.
And the appointment yesterday of rugby’s most influential woman, Julie Paterson, as Six Nations director of rugby, is another crucial building block in shaping the future administration of their sport.
Given that an endless array of men in suits have been unable to
agree how the game should best be run since it went professional over 25 years ago, maybe it’s time the women were given a chance to knock a few heads together?
For now, with a World Cup to be held in New Zealand – the Antipodes remains a haven for sports events – this could be a transformative year for the women’s game even allowing any fallout from the sevens programme taking an Olympian hit.
And the Six Nations can begin its own process of transformation by divining strength from its separation from the men’s competition, rather than weakness.
As those in the media know, the Six Nations behemoth gobbles up everything in its wake – including the cannibalisation of its lesser constituent parts.
Guinness are halfway through a sponsorship believed to be worth some €55m per annum – but while they are title sponsors for the men, they only partner the women, who remain without their own sponsor.
Stepping out from the looming shadow of the men’s tournament might become a bridgehead towards attracting more investment and, indeed, a singular commitment from broadcasters who will no longer need to shoehorn matches into Sunday breakfast time and the like.
Instead of being over-reliant on others to run their game, this could be the perfect opportunity for the women’s tournament to establish itself as a core component in its own right, rather than being a peripheral add-on.
Maybe it’s time the women were given a chance to knock a few heads together?