Unpacking the 40% headline
What's behind this uptick in player registrations from 2022-2023
The press release hit my inbox this morning. New Zealand Rugby were projecting a 40% rise on participation rates for women and girls in rugby for the 2022 season. That number is huge, much bigger than any expected bump in participation that we would have anticipated from the hosting of the Rugby World Cup.
So I decided to dig in and figure out just what was going on with this rise.
There is a website that isn’t exactly front and centre of New Zealand Rugby’s home page. But here you can find information on registrations between 2008-2021. Not just on players either, there’s also data on referees and coaches which you can slice up by all types of demographics. Nerds like me can lose a good amount of daylight to this site so consider this your warning before visiting.
When looking at this data it shows that things were pretty steady until around 2014, when women’s rugby entered a period of sustained growth. Picking up at a rate of around 10% each year, until in 2019 we hit an all time high of 32,657 women and girls registered to play in New Zealand.
I moved back to Aotearoa that year from the English Premiership and I have to say this feels true to the on the ground experience. There were a raft of new faces in the Wellington club scene and from them, new Black Fern caps emerged. Women’s rugby was suddenly super visible. The Black Ferns had recently signed their first exclusive sponsor (love you Molenberg!). I saw women from our community, front and centre in club promotions. I walked passed a bar and couldn’t tell you which women’s rugby match was on TV.
All things were in motion, the momentum was building and we were ready to roll into the Rugby World Cup in 2021. And then Covid hit.
This was the time, I first spoke out publicly in a way that those outside my bubble heard. I found myself yelling on the 6 o’clock news, asking for some clarity on what was happening with our provincial competition. There were suspensions and cancellations of play everywhere. The uncertainty made it difficult for our clubs to recruit and the timeout made many old girls decide on retirement. So it’s not surprising when you look at the data that this coincided with a participation drop.
It was a rough time. But the women’s rugby did what we have always done. The stalwarts held tough, knowing we have weathered downturns before that were also out of our control. We pulled out our contact lists and invited everyone we knew and their cousin to come down and give rugby a go. We took heart that there appeared to be at least some attention being paid by the unions. Women remained on the posters and on the Sky schedule albeit with a reduced schedule.
Fast forward to November 2022 and this community had a front row seat to that magic moment at the Rugby World Cup. The tournament was marketed as a family reunion and it was our rugby family that came back together.
The numbers projected by New Zealand Rugby echo this. That 40% isn’t growth, it’s our wāhine coming home.
That’s not to say that this rebound in participation numbers shouldn’t be celebrated. We’ve come a long way to end up back where we were. But to look at this increase between 2022 and 2023 and ignore the wider context is missing the lesson we can learn here.
Such lessons are deeply important as work is still underway on the long awaited women and girls strategy. This is the document which will seek to lay out the roadmap for our actions going forward. In order for it to work, we need it to see the whole picture.
With you,
Alice