Ignorance can be bliss no longer for Super Rugby Aupiki

They say ignorance is bliss, but when it comes to Super Rugby Aupiki, that just cannot afford to be the case any longer.

As the Blues pulled off a stunning comeback in yesterday’s final at Eden Park, to claim a maiden title and hand the Chiefs Manawa a second successive year of heartbreak, the irony, foolishness, even, of it all, could not be escaped.

At the same time as the trophy was being awarded in front of next to no-one in the stands, across town in Auckland, and across channels on TV, there were punters aplenty cheering on the Warriors.

If New Zealand Rugby’s decision to stage the Aupiki final in direct competition with the hottest sporting ticket in town was not already nonsensical enough, it was even more so when you consider that very rugby league club is going to be on the prowl, dangling hefty contract dollars the way of the top women’s rugby talent with the return of the Warriors women’s team to the NRLW next year.

Sky’s rationale was simple, wanting to front-end their night’s Super Rugby Pacific double-header to give eight and a half hours straight live rugby content.

But for all NZR’s talk of growing the women’s game, and doing the best thing by it, this 4.05pm Saturday kickoff was quite the slap in the face, stinging even more so for the fact that the final turned into quite the absorbing contest in torrential rain between two fiercely willing outfits, decided by a 78th minute try.

Blues chief executive Andrew Hore had tried to defend the scheduling of the decider by pointing out that the national body and host broadcaster set the time and date of it well in advance, often before the NRL’s is even released.

The NRL draw was unveiled in mid-November and Aupiki’s was early December. In fact, punters were in the dark right up until Monday afternoon, as to just where and when this supposed showpiece of the women’s game was going to be.

A Sunday afternoon slot simply had to be the way to go. Aupiki players are contracted Thursdays to Sundays, so it would present only minor logistical challenges, but ask any of them if they’d prefer to have the clearest air possible for their competition finale and you know the response, not least when you’d heard them laud the historic TikTok broadcast of this year’s decider, too.

Administrators have to be careful to avoid heads getting covered in sand, and loosen up all sorts of rigid and inflexible for a female game that has far from been the massive take-off many might have thought it would be on the back of the roaring success of a home World Cup in 2022.

Already we know there will be no expansion of the Aupiki competition until at least 2026, as NZR and Rugby Australia take their sweet time with getting together to make this thing something more like it could,andshould,be.

And you only have to look at the example of superstar Stacey Waaka signing with the Brisbane Broncos to see how much of an enormous risk that delay in expansion carries in 2025, with the return of the Warriors to the women’s sporting landscape.

The Aupiki players this year certainly appreciated the increased payments and the extra pre-season training time the beefed-up contracts allowed, in a season which expanded from five to seven weeks.

But guess what, just as there was the potential to build some momentum off an Aupiki cliffhanger, the country’s top players will now sit idol for a month, until the Black Ferns’ Pacific Four Series kicks off.

Out of sight, out of mind, just like they unfortunately seemed to be on Saturday.