OPINION:
Still coming down from your Ruby Tui high? It’s pretty cool, eh? I figure the red swatch in my hair will last another week before I have to decide whether to let it go or redo the colour.
Hmm. What would Ruby do?
Did not think I would hear
Simon Wilson: Coming down from the Ruby Tui high
Ruby Tui celebrating the win. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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She’d be good as a radio host on NewstalkZB. Imagine it, all the wit and quickfire daring of a Mike Hosking or a Heather du Plessis Allan, but she’d also bring, you know, being Ruby Tui.
They say girls everywhere want to be her. Why stop at girls? Don’t we all want to be Ruby Tui? Don’t we all recognise that she is the best of us? I know it’s foolishly romantic, but what’s wrong with that?
It’s not fair to single her out, I know that. Stacey Fluhler is also the best of us, sprinting down the touchline, grinning from ear to ear as she zooms in on the tryline. She didn’t get the Jeff Wilson memo, clearly. He used to look happy when he scored a try, until he got told off for it by a panel of troglodytes at rugby HQ.
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My favourite photo is the one taken just after Fluhler scored. She’s stretched out in mid-air, the English players running past, Kendra Cocksedge a-woopin’ and a-hollerin’ in behind.
Most players execute this move by diving into the turf with the ball. Fluhler has planted the ball with one gangly arm and now she’s flying. She’s just flying.
And we were flying too. Well, I was.
Did not think I’d see a thrilling game of rugby that included six tries from rolling mauls, but somehow that happened too. Did not think I’d see a team with the courage and the brains to jump against the lineout throw 5m out.
Joanah Ngan-Woo did that. Joanah Ngan-Woo is the best of us, and so is Krystal Murray, who lifted her up, from the front, and so is Alana Bremner, behind her in the lineout, who got her down safely.
So are they all. So are they all.
There’s all this talk now about whether the Rugby Union can build on this. Of course it can. More games for Super Rugby Aupiki and expansion across the Tasman and into the Pacific. More money for the players. A lot more grassroots work, with schools and clubs.
It’s not that hard. Most entrepreneurs, events managers and sports marketers would give up beer for a year if it meant they could look after women’s rugby. The Rugby Union just has to do the mahi.
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But what about the rest of us? When we come down from our Ruby Tui high, what are we going to do?
Remind ourselves what fun it is to be better sports fans? More singing, less drinking, more poi?
A dairy owner I know, near Eden Park, talked of her pleasure at the different kind of crowd coming into her shop. She didn’t get abused or frightened.
Remind ourselves how awful it is when tackling goes wrong? From top to bottom in the game, time for a learn-from-what-happened-to-Portia moment. Let’s support them doubling down on safer techniques.
Will the whole city be engaged? There was a RWC booth throughout in Te Komititanga Square at the bottom of Queen St. They even put up a stage there for a public meet-and-greet on the Sunday after the game. But that stage could have been there all the way through, with all the entertainment you can think of.
There’s never going to be another major sports fixture without fan zones, is there, Auckland Council?
Will we find it easier to share the pleasure of the great inclusive diversity of women’s sport?
And is there any chance rugby and rugby schools will abandon the idea the best players should be playing in the “best” schools?
The best rugby being played on the planet right now features players who did not get “elite” treatment. Who grew up in Kaitaia and Kaikohe, went to school in Feilding and Greymouth, came up from Southland and down from Kaitaia. Ordinary kids, Māori kids, doing extraordinary things. The best of us.
Are we on the cusp of something here? Hope so. But we’ll know things have really changed when:
- The All Blacks play a curtain raiser at Eden Park ahead of a Black Ferns game.
- The Rugby Union has at least 50 per cent women on its board, and at least 50 per cent Māori and Pasifika too.
- Commentators have stopped saying “It didn’t look that bad” about high tackles. Guys, it’s not about whether it looked bad, it’s about eliminating dangerous techniques.
- Gay men playing rugby find it as easy to be out as gay women do.
- All schools let anyone who wants wear a splash of red in their hair.
- Hollie Davidson referees a men’s RWC final. She was really good.
