Women’s rugby. Everything to win in New Zealand

It’s a long journey the France national football team made, on September 22nd, from Paris to Auckland in New Zealand. He led the staff and 28 selected from the tri-color delegation in the Southern Hemisphere archipelago, Rugby Land, where the ninth edition of the Women’s World Cup takes place this fall. The competition created in 1991 (October 8 to November 12), and scheduled for 2021, has been postponed by a year due to the pandemic. First staged in New Zealand, it was announced as All Records. She beat one in the opening match on October 8. In addition to a highly convincing victory for the Blues (40-5), this France and South Africa at the legendary Eden Park in Auckland also achieved a popular success with over 40,000 spectators, a presence never reached in a women’s rugby match. 1). In a country where the women’s national team, the Black Ferns, have won the world title five times, most recently in Ireland in 2017, that madness has led to an irresistible rise in discipline.

The women’s long way

Sportingly, New Zealand, England and France advance to the top three candidates. France, which has finished third in the World Cup six times, wants to break the glass ceiling. The competition between the 12 qualifying nations remains fragile, but women’s rugby, if not so many high-profile teams, is already disturbing the certainties of an increasingly weak battalion of skeptics.

“Rugby is forbidden for female athletes and girls for obvious physiological reasons,” Colonel Marso Crispin, delegate general for Olympic preparation and national director of Physical Education and Sports, said in 1969. I also urge you not to help the women’s rugby teams. Discipline has eradicated this prehistoric vision and Blue advocates for other causes.

This Saturday, October 15th, at 9am (French time), their confrontation against England, eternal European rival (2), is broadcast live on TF1. The channel will broadcast all the matches of the fifteenth women’s tournament and the fourteen most beautiful posters for the World Cup. The morning audience will be an intense follow-up metric, as was the case with the meetings of the French during the Six Nations Championships on France TV. Certain successes. In the media, this step was taken even if votes were raised to emphasize a balance that is still fragile and necessarily tied to results.

Women’s handball has gained notoriety and a large audience in France, thanks to its performances at the Olympic Games and at major international events. Basketball players linked the European successes of the clubs (Claremont, Borg, etc.) and the success of the selection. French footballers, even if they have never set foot in a major international final, benefit from the aura of the successes of Olympique Lyonnais or Paris Saint-Germain. The World Cup, in 2019, also boosted media coverage.

French rugby, despite their success in the Six Nations Championship, the World Cup in France in 2014, the title of best player in the world was awarded to Jesse Termoliere in 2017, and above all the Olympic silver medal in the last seven Olympic rugby tournaments. year in Tokyo, they have not yet, wrongly, reached the same stage of recognition.

Rugby, like the rest of the women’s collegiate teams, shines through with its national selections. As in other sports, the economic model of its clubs suffers from a lack of financial enthusiasm. We know the chorus.

“Finally we mediate”

Few semi-pro players make a decent living from their activity, thanks in particular to the federation-backed contract, since 2018, for elite rugby union teams and the Sevens. The French championship, whose formula is changing regularly – next season at the age of 12 having swung from 8 to 16 clubs – is looking to make an appearance. Few of the top 14 men’s clubs are actively promoting a women’s division at the highest level. However, the number of licensees increases regularly once the structures are established. They are more than 30 thousand players today in France.

At first, there weren’t many of us and there, we were covered in the media. “Women’s rugby is growing,” international (70 games) Jesse Tremoliere said in an interview with France Inter in March. The 29-year-old Auvergne’s back gauges the role of mentor to Les Bleues. “I put myself in the shoes of a little girl of 6 or 7. It’s a bit complicated sometimes in families. We keep hearing comments like ‘Rugby is not for girls, it’s dangerous, it’s violent.’ So we have to show them a good picture of Women’s rugby. We have a role to play in that.” There is a lot to gain in New Zealand.