The Black Ferns' World Cup year

A lot of gaps in our memory and our schedule

The 2025 schedule of the Black Ferns has been announced, laying out the pathway to their World Cup defence. And so far, it’s got me singing that old classic “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” cause team, she is looking gappy.

I’m trying to be chill about it, knowing that the Black Ferns love a late announcement. The teams we would most benefit from playing do still have a couple of slots left on their dance card. But for all the cute collab with the All Blacks on this schedule drop my initial take is - that’s it?

The sinking feeling I have, is related to the nagging thought I’ve been having for the past forever. I know we simply aren’t getting enough game time to keep pace with the growth globally. Heck, I was writing about it around this point in the last World Cup cycle. As I said back then, “I do not doubt for one second that we have the best athletes in New Zealand, but the equation is off and does not equal the effort being put in”.

This World Cup, we don’t have Covid sidelining our opposition while we play through our short seasons. In all that was written about the events of our last victory, that is the point that is most conspicuously absent. The headstart our rivals had with their relatively extensive game time, was ankle tapped by the global pandemic.

We seemed to have lost all this detail in the romance of Sir Wayne Smith’s white knighting. The event being delayed by a year gave the Black Ferns just what they needed, time. The 2019/2020 English Premiership season was declared null and void such was the level of disruption. The following season, Premiership matches and the Six Nations were delayed. I remember them changing rules to basically stop scrums in domestic competition in England. Viruses famously can only get you if you huddle together in groups of 16 so it made sense.

Camps replaced in person connection with internet ones. Remember those sad little zooms you had with your office teammates? That’s what international rugby teams were relegated too in the lead up to their World Cup year.

The Black Ferns had a couple of test postponed in 2021 too but by this stage the Farah Palmer Cup had reverted to it’s standard format (thanks, Jacinda). They had also just proved the concept of a women’s Super Rugby competition with the exhibition match held between the Chief Manawa and Blues that May.

The 2022 launch of the Aupiki competition was a complete disaster. With Covid bubbling away in the Taupō base, the whole thing consisted of just six games across the four teams. You could argue that the players involved were bonded by the mess of this experience, priming them for the events to come. This being the inaugural season meant there wasn’t a comparison point to mark it as a loss. These games were a new addition to the traditional schedule so a little boost rather than a massive disruption.

Looking at the amount of rugby women played around the world in 2022, it was a relatively even playing field. Whereas the fragmentation of our rivals seasons feeding into the World Cup year meant our short ones were enough.

Unless lightning strikes twice, the Black Ferns will come into the 2025 World Cup with significantly less time on the grass than their fiercest rivals. But even if we just compare our 2025 schedule with the playing opportunities on offer back in 2022, you will see we aren’t even keeping up with our past selves.

We haven’t had the Farah Palmer Cup 2025 season timings confirmed yet but I am not confident it will be moved up ahead next year’s World Cup. I’m coming to that conclusion for two reason. First, we historically haven’t shifted the window for a tournament played overseas. Both in 2014 and 2017, the FPC played right overtop of the World Cup window. And second, we didn’t shift the tournament this year for the Northern Tour and WXV.

This suggests that the Farah Palmer Cup has shifted in the minds of our high performance team. In 2022, we saw a few players make their final case for inclusion in the Rugby World Cup squad in this tournament. Chances are there will be no such lifeline for fringe players next year.

This is probably the correct reclassification of this amateur tournament. But as Aupiki continues to limp along in it’s truncated state, we have solved the quality problem but not the quantity one. For our top athletes, we have exchanged one handful of domestic games for another. All while knowing that continuity of play is crucial for success in our sport. That it takes time to get good timing. Still, that’s the one thing our union will not budge on. No more domestic game time anytime soon.

Okay, so instead you must impress in Aupiki and then what? Well, right now it’s a big ol’ playing gap between July and the first pool game of the Rugby World Cup in late August. And everyone is just, fine with this?

An evergreen comic from Gunshow

I am not fine team, I am anxious. I saw shoots of growth in our performances this year but I know we need more time. We need to put the work in on the field before we can harvest any fruits of our labour. This current plan will not defend a World Cup. This current plan may well see us knocked out before the final. I know that this current plan will not likely be our final plan but c’mon, give me a little more hope heading into the holiday season.

A Black Ferns trial series, another test for July and at least one more in August. They are all the things at the top of my Christmas wish list.

With you,
Alice