Throwing Women's Rugby to the Lions

Context is everything but does it support this tour?

No apologies but I’m going to get all high school debater on you. The Oxford Dictionary defines context as “the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.” It’s context therefore that we need to examine more fully with the announcement of the first women’s British & Irish Lions Tour to Aotearoa, New Zealand this week.

The setting for this announcement is against a backdrop of profound change. At the end of last year, after a nearly 30 year debate, the men’s international calendar was brought into some version of alignment. This timing of this decision overlapped with the first edition of the WXV, a landmark competition built for global participation and growth. For the first time, the women’s game had done something for itself. Something so good, the men will be seeking to replicate it with their version from 2026.

Underpinning this move was the idea that rugby needs to move beyond Britain and its former colonies, if it’s to truly thrive. The short term vision of the established men’s rugby nations has seen the game reach the limits of its reward. Diminishing returns are causing financial stress across the men’s game, with club collapse in England and New Zealand Rugby admitting it is unable to continue to fund a two tier domestic competition.

When was the last time in the men’s game that an amateur team came within one try of a World Cup final? For women, this happened in 2022 in the semi final between the uncontracted Canadians and the professional England side. This thing men’s rugby is currently wrestling with, the yawning chasm between established and emerging rugby nations, is not yet as pronounced in the women’s game.

We are still at the very beginning of our professional pathway. With the first generation of fully professional players currently out of the pitch playing against those fighting for the same. Within each country, these women and their supporters are doing everything they can to make their case for greater investment. World Rugby has been doing their part, helping to fund and establish more international opportunities for these teams with competitions like the WXV and its feeder tournaments such as the Pacific Four series.

I’ve gone high school debater on you, now I’ll do marketing 101. The Product Life Cycle is the framework that identifies a series of stages a product goes through on the market. Introduction, growth, maturity and decline, each phase requires a different strategy to maximise its return. Women’s rugby commercially is teetering somewhere between introduction and growth, whereas for the established nations, men’s rugby is sitting on the edge of maturity and decline.

With this basic understanding, it become more clear that the different parts of the game need different approaches for the positions they are in. There is much to learn from each other’s example, which is why the announcement of this Lions tour is so jarring for many.

This tour is insular, not expansive. Traditional, not progressive. It is taking women’s rugby down a developmental dead-end which will further chisel away at the edges between rugby’s haves and have nots. Rugby’s power hoarders, Britain and its favourite former colonies, negotiated the addition of this tour to save themselves from decline. They threw the wider rugby community out with the decision, securing a pause on the WXV to make room for their folly.

That’s the rugby context of this announcement, what about the wider societal setting?

The same week this tour was announced, details were leaked of the bill that the New Zealand’s Government is preparing to redefine the terms of our country’s foundational document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This is the document that allowed my ancestors the right to come and reside here in Aotearoa as a subject of the British Crown.

This move is inflammatory of our country’s colonial wounds. Racial tensions are rising and will likely be a defining feature of this political term. The next general election to be held will be at the end of 2026, on the eve of this Lion’s tour. This is the context that this emblematic team will be entering. I don’t know what effect this will have if any. What I do know is that the last time we had such a public debate about race, it was anchored around a different rugby tour.

So that is just a brief insight into the context surrounding this Lions tour announcement. All the details are not yet confirmed and so more may be done to acknowledge this setting. The introduction of a women’s side to the Lion’s franchise is already a break with traditional, they could go further yet and breakaway from the exclusivity of their male counterparts. They may yet do something, that will uplift us all.

With you,
Alice