The women’s version of the Ranfurly Shield, the JJ Stewart Trophy has finally been prised from Canterbury’s hands. Many players continue to make their case for inclusion in next year’s World Cup squad. Despite all these storylines, the one that’s caught most people’s attention is that of the scorelines.
The opening round had four out of six matches won by more than 20 points. There were three more blowouts in round two and again in round three – which has many asking if our current competition format is up to scratch.
Such a pattern, however, is not out of place with the results of the past couple of years. The majority of these lopsided matches come from the Championship division, which typically features two teams chasing each other in a race to the top while the other teams continue to grow the rugby of their region.
If a province makes it into the Premiership, they tend to find it hard to stick around. In their first season playing up, they find they are fighting to avoid relegation back down. This pattern suggests there are not one but two development gaps that need to be closed for the health of our domestic competition.
The women’s provincial competition had its first Premiership and Championship split in 2017. Having been rebranded as the Farah Palmer Cup the year before, the competition had grown to 11 provinces and thus outgrown its previous format of six assigned pool matches and playoff series. The initial split was six teams in the Premiership and five in the Championship with two crossover matches played between the divisions. This format then repeated in 2018.
In both these seasons much was made of the blowouts in these crossovers – which were promptly dumped as soon as Northland rejoined the competition in 2019.
These big scores however were almost universally posted by high ranking Premiership sides over the lowest ranked Championship teams. People forget about the first round draw in 2017 between Bay of Plenty and Auckland. An early preview of what could have been the relegation match of the season. Then there’s the world famous victory in my hometown of Wellington.
My province were the Championship winners of 2018 and the only side to beat premiership winners, Canterbury, that year.
Therefore these crossovers, when they focused on what is the mid-range rankings of the full list of provinces, worked well. Reintroducing them may help insulate sides from yo-yoing between Premiership and Championship divisions by offering more regular challenging competition. We could innovate and grow the game further with new crossovers for the top of the table Premiership sides.
The Farah Palmer Cup is now well placed in the international calendar to offer matches to our Oceania rugby neighbours in the lead up to the WXV.
But what of our minnows? Those provinces still finding their feet against their more established competition. They could also be offered a chance to grow themselves and the game if we built a relationship with Heartland Rugby. Taranaki Whio could play a match against the Thames Valley Vixens while Tasman give Southland a run.
It’s a cliche of the after-match speech that the scoreline didn’t reflect the rugby played. The same is true of the scorelines recorded so far in this year’s Farah Palmer Cup.
They only show part of the competition that needs revision. But in order to reach the potential of this domestic tournament, we need to look at women’s rugby in this part of the world as a whole.
