‘Worthy of investing in’: but when will Chiefs and Blues women meet again?
THE next time the Blues women play the Chiefs women, the coaches and captains from the respective teams will appear one after the other to dissect the action for the media once the final whistle blows.
But this time around – the first time around – all four of them, Willie Walker and Eloise Blackwell for the Blues, Chad Shepherd and Les Elder for the Chiefs, took a seat together.
As it should have been, the attention was on the two senior Black Ferns – the last two players to captain the national women’s rugby team – who were overjoyed with what they had just been a part of.
The final scoreline read Chiefs 39, Blues 12, but this was a match about more than tries.
‘‘Just to be here today, playing a Super game on Eden Park, it’s pretty special,’’ Elder said. ‘‘It’s something that some of us girls who have been around for a long time have been wanting and pushing for, so to see that happen today was pretty cool.
‘‘To come out with the win . . . we made a goal that we didn’t just want to be in history, we wanted to create it, so I’m pretty proud of the effort the girls put out there tonight.’’
Blackwell said during the week that she ‘‘never imagined that this would actually come to fruition,’’ but watching the match – the first time any of New Zealand’s Super Rugby franchises had ever put a women’s team together – it was hard not to wonder how it had taken until May 2021 for it to happen.
While the Chiefs had been training for a few weeks, with some of their players making
lengthy journeys from around their region to take part, the Blues only came together last Sunday for a special week, which Blackwell described as ‘‘pretty surreal’’. ‘‘As Les said, this was such a special occasion and definitely long overdue, and you would have seen it – the calibre of players, and the match-ups across both sides.
‘‘There’s a lot of growth in our game and people are really getting behind us, so it was an awesome opportunity to showcase our abilities and put a stake in the ground and say that we are worthy of investing in, and that we can produce good rugby.’’
Blackwell and Elder both felt the contest was a clear step up from a Farah Palmer Cup match – and especially from the club rugby which is all they’ve had this year, aside from a couple of Black
Ferns’ camps.
Plenty of individuals got to show their skills as well, with Chiefs first-five eighths Hazel Tubic slotting a series of sideline conversion to finish with 14 points to her name, their wing Langi Veainu scoring their first try with a well-timed run to the left corner, and Blues’ teenagers Patricia Maliepo and Sylvia Brunt both dotting down in the first half.
But when will they get a chance to do so again? This year’s Farah
Palmer Cup is set to begin in midJuly, with Black Ferns test to potentially – and hopefully – follow, but will there be a semiprofessional, elite competition – a women’s Super Rugby – after that in early 2022?
The most recent word from NZ Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson, at the end of March, was that one could be up and running by then, finances depending – a hint that the continued wrangling over the $387.5 million Silver Lake investment deal is a factor.
Players from both the teams were part of a working group looking at the prospects.