Gregor Paul: The 'living hell' female rugby players continue to endure

Ruby Tui of the Black Ferns sings the national anthem ahead of the International Women's test match between the New Zealand Black Ferns and Japan. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

OPINION:

In the male world of rugby, it's the athlete who is more powerful than the administrator.

It hasn't always been thus. Back in the amateur days the committee men controlled everything, took every perk imaginable and had a fervent belief the game was theirs to do with what they wished.

It was a rotten time for the athlete. They made enormous sacrifices to train and play, put jobs on hold in some cases, lost money in others and there they were, filling stadia, driving sponsorship yet seeing others get rich and the best they could hope for was that someone with a blazer and tie would pick up the occasional bar tab for them.

The administrator, on the other hand, lived like royalty throughout the amateur era – enjoying the best seats in every rugby house, free lunches, car parking, and best of all, it came with a plus one.

Professionalism rebalanced everything – gave the athletes a voice and transformed the economics of the sport by creating a financial system that had the players at the heart of it and a global marketplace which meant those with talent could name their price.

Pacific Four Series, World Rugby, Semenoff Stadium, Whangarei, Black Ferns perform a haka pre-match. 18 June 2022 Northern Advocate photograph by Michael Cunningham.

The administrator was stripped of power and effectively charged with delivering for the athlete: of generating money, not for themselves to secretly use as they liked, but to pay for labour and retain it.

In the men's game, the athletes are recognised as the superstars not just by the public, but by the financial mechanics which sees the top players earn more than the top administrators.

This new way makes far better sense. If fans have to spend $100 on a match ticket, the pain is eased somewhat by knowing most of it is going towards the people entertaining them and not those who have nabbed the best seats in the house without paying and are struggling to see what's going on through their nosebags.

Any doubt about who holds the power in the male game was removed last year when the administration tried to force through a deal with US fund manager Silver Lake which tried to cut player payments without their consent.

It was an act of rebellion by the suits which alluded to them having sat round the NZR table, talking themselves into an angry state that they had lost control of the sport to the very group they used to dominate, manipulate and exploit throughout the amateur era.

It was an aggressive play, but ultimately doomed because contractually and legally, everything in New Zealand is set up to recognise that the athletes are the primary asset.

But so too, when it comes to the male game, is the system designed to be collaborative between athlete and administrator and the intent of their relationship is not for one group to dominate or control the other, but to work in partnership towards agreed and aligned goals.

That's why, in time, the Rugby Players' Association's commitment to rebuff that initial Silver Lake proposal will come to be seen as critical in preserving equilibrium between athlete and administrator and not dragging the game back to a dark period when committee men ran the sport like early industrial-age factory owners, brazenly ignoring that their lifestyles were built on the sweat, toil and hardship of their respective labour forces who earned next to nowt.

Wayne Smith during a training session at Linwood Rugby Club. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

But while the male game has been able to make the athlete stronger than the administrator, what is about to become apparent in the next six weeks, is that this is not the case in women's rugby.

The women's game faces multiple challenges in trying to build the profile of the sport and with it, the same financial ecosystem and relationships that drive their male counterparts into business class seats, five-star hotels and million-dollar contracts.

The biggest one of all, however, and the key to women enjoying a brighter and more rewarding rugby future in this country, is finding a way for the athlete to usurp the administrator as the most powerful force in the system.

That the administrator holds all the power is beyond doubt and will be witnessed during the forthcoming World Cup when the various teams arrive here having travelled economy class and the World Rugby cluster of officials do so having sat at the front of the plane in business class.

It will be apparent too when the World Rugby brigade take up residence in a central Auckland four-and-a-half star hotel and the athletes rough it in inferior accommodation.

The bad old days of administrators living the high life while the athletes battle for a decent night's kip in beds that were most definitely not turned down with the customary chocolate awaiting, may be over for the men, but they are the living hell that female rugby players continue to endure.

But the question of how the revolution can take place - how female athletes can storm the Bastille the way their male counterparts did - is harder to answer.

For the male players, the path to usurping the administrator was obvious: they had to blow up amateurism, because everyone could see, by looking at mature professional codes such as football and the NFL, that the athlete was all powerful in sports where there were competitive labour markets.

The breakthrough for the men was the arrival of rebel competitions which forced the establishment to make the transition to professionalism.

Women's rugby has already taken tentative steps towards professionalism and yet the athletes are heading into this World Cup as second-class citizens, still being told they should be grateful that the sport has made as much progress as it has in gender equality.

So, maybe the key to change lies with driving a gender revolution within the administration first, because it is still mostly males who are responsible for running the women's game and hence the idea of sending female players around the world in seat 46B sits all too easily on their conscience.

It's still too easy for male administrators to say that women's rugby is a cost burden and therefore must come with strict budgetary pressure – the burden of which almost always falls on the high-performance aspects.

No male administrator ever thinks to calculate what sort of savings could be made if they travelled economy to do their jobs and stayed in the sorts of places Trip Advisor hasn't quite made its mind up about yet, and then transferred that spare money to the budget assigned to look after the female athletes.

Rugby has a defined hierarchy where the male athlete sits at the top, the male administrator next and at the bottom of the heap, the female athlete and if the sport is going to have any credible claim at having shifted the dial towards gender equality, this has to be the last World Cup where the suits enjoy considerably better basic conditions than the players.