If it's good enough for the All Blacks ...

The New Zealand All Blacks celebrate Ma'a Nonus try during the Bledisloe Cup. Photo / Getty Images

Bet you watched the game last night. Of course you did. It was the Bledisloe Cup, for goodness sake.

You've probably already dissected the game play and replayed that try in your head. That try, the conversion, the ridiculous calls by the ref.

Do you think anyone's giving even half as much thought to the netball? It's slightly embarrassing that we've spent more time this week talking about an annual transtasman rugby match than a fierce netball contest fought out by the 16 best teams that we only get to watch every four years.

No prizes for guessing the problem here. Type "women's sport" into Google and the first page of results brings up at least three different links to articles about the battle women face in getting their athleticism recognised.

The articles will run you through pretty much this argument: women's sport gets little-to-no media coverage, so it attracts little-to-no sponsorship, which means the players can't live off what they earn from the sport, so they work day jobs, which means they can't spend all day training, so they don't reach their peak athletic potential, so the audience prefers the more professional male sports, which means the media coverage focuses on male sports, so women's sport gets little-to-no media coverage, and we start the circular argument again.

Try explaining that to a girl who wants to grow up to be an All Black. She might be faster and smarter and run better lines than any of the boys but she'll never be the rugby hero each of them could be.

Steer her away from rugby. Tell her to play netball instead. At least she'll be paid a professional's wage for being the best in her field. It's the premiere women's code in the country. But prepare her early for the fact she'll still earn less than the rugby playing lads.

Tell her she's lucky she's playing sport in this century instead of a few decades back. If she was around pre-1967, the lads wouldn't even have let her run a marathon.

So, things are on the up. Wimbledon has set the standard for equalising male and female sport. Sure, it took the tournament 130 years to finally do it, but in 2007 it agreed to give the female champion the same prize packet as the male champion. Let's keep the momentum going.

Parliament, next time the netball team wants to announce its squad for the World Cup, how about you let them announce it from the Beehive the same way you're letting the All Blacks announce their World Cup squad at the end of this month?

And parents, how about you grab your kids and watch tonight's netball final, the same way you make a night of watching every All Blacks game? That way, we can teach the little ones to enjoy the top sport of each gender equally.