Herstory, history of Black Ferns on display in Kaitāia

Kaitāia’s Krystal Murray after scoring a try for the Black Ferns in last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup Final will feature in an exhibition at Te Ahu from next week - Herstory of Women's Rugby.

The Far North has provided many star players for the Black Ferns, and many will feature in a new exhibition focusing on the history of the Black Ferns - Herstory of Women’s Rugby - in Kaitāia from next week.

The Black Ferns are New Zealand’s premier women’s rugby team and the most dominant team in all of rugby with Rugby World Cup titles in 1998, 2002 2006, 2010 and 2017 and 2021 (played in 2022). They have one of the best winning percentages in international rugby, with victory in over 85 per cent of their tests.

But it wasn’t always that way and Herstory of Women’s Rugby will give the public the chance to see the backstory of the team, the challenges it has faced over the years, and what it took to make it so successful.

Far North Black Ferns Portia Woodman, Krystal Murray and Arihiana Marino-Tauhinu all appeared for the team in last year’s Rugby World Cup finals and they, and other Black Ferns from the region, will be part of the exhibition.

Until the 1980s, women’s participation in rugby was often assumed to exist largely on the sidelines and in club tearooms. Far from it, women were not only keen to play but did play with a modified game played as early as 1888.

Portia Woodman, from Kaikohe, is one of the stars of the Black Ferns. The team’s history is featured in a new exhibition at Te Ahu, in Kaitāia from Monday.

A few years later, while New Zealand was debating women’s right to vote, Nita Webbe was trying to establish the world’s first women’s professional rugby team. In 1915 the world’s first recorded game between women’s teams was played in New Zealand and determined efforts to set up women’s club games were attempted in the early 1920s.

Despite this enthusiasm, for over 130 years the women’s game in New Zealand was little recognised and faced successive waves of objections based on moral, religious, social and physiological grounds. Yet women and girls persisted with attempts to play and now dominate the growth of rugby. This exhibition gathers the strands of the story so far, celebrating past and present legends of rugby.

It includes an in-depth history covering over 130 years of women’s experiences playing the game.

It is presented in three sections covering:

■ Pioneering years (1888-1980)

■ 1980-2000 the beginning of regular competitions

■ 2000-2021 covering Rugby World Cups, the Sevens and Black Ferns.

More than 70 photos from 1915 to 2021 are featured, along with film footage including the first interprovincial game in 1980.

There’s also interviews with past and present rugby legends including; Vicky Dombroski, first and only woman to have coached the Black Ferns, and manager when the team won the 1998 Rugby World Cup.

Others include Dr Farah Palmer, three times World Cup-winning captain and current NZ Rugby board member; Selica Winiata, winner of the fans try-of-the-year in 2013 and second on the all-time tryscoring list for New Zealand, and Sarah Hirini, current captain of the Black Ferns Sevens.

Herstory of Women’s Rugby is at Te Ahu, in Kaitāia from August 28 to September 30 with free entry. It’s open Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 4.30pm and on Saturdays from 9am to 1pm.