Big steps towards fair pay and play

NZ Rugby is set to announce a major step towards more equal pay for the Black Ferns by expanding the organisation’s players’ collective agreement to include elite women’s XVs players.

NZ Rugby CEO Steve Tew would not say on Friday how many of New Zealand’s top women’s XVs players would be offered contracts, but said negotiations through the Players Association were well under way and an announcement would be made soon. The women’s sevens team was already included in the agreement.

News of the move came as NZ Rugby announced it had agreed to tender for an integrated tournament for the World Rugby sevens series in 2020-23. This will be the first time NZ Rugby has opted to tender for a World Rugby sevens tournament that includes women’s teams.

The final year of the current sevens tournament licence expires in 2019. The event was shifted to Hamilton this year following a long tenure in Wellington.

Tew said his organisation would prefer to stage the game over two days, not three. He cited feedback from the Kiwi players as proof. Recently NZ women’s representative Portia Woodman lamented the lack of a women’s tournament in her home country.

‘‘They (World Rugby) are very keen to have an increased programme for the women’s teams,’’ Tew said on Friday. ‘‘But the reality is that the moment you run an integrated tournament, you complicate the logistics considerably.

‘‘You either have to go to a three-day tournament, which in our view is not the best practice for the players because it prolongs the tournament, and if you want to treat the men and women on an equal footing as we would want to, then sharing the ground and getting the timetabling of the integrated tournament is complex.’’

Tew said World Rugby was looking at the format of tournaments, which would be part of the tender process.

Although Hong Kong and Dubai have three-day events, it is up to World Rugby to decide how long they should be.

Tew said he had no doubt Hamilton had the infrastructure to host an expanded tournament, and said ground space and facilities would not be an issue. To fit in the women’s games the format would have to be changed, possibly to three days, or two fields be used.

The men’s and women’s tournaments ran alongside each other for the Sydney leg of the sevens series recently, but it wasn’t without its share of complications: ‘‘There were still some issues people weren’t completely comfortable with,’’ Tew said.