Update on Women’s and Girls’ rugby strategic plan in Canterbury

Source: Wikimedia Commons / Victor Paul 

The plan, published in early April last year, outlines key focuses, priorities, and principles aimed at transforming women’s and girls’ rugby at all levels of the game.  

The 10-year strategy was developed over a year through consulting the rugby community, featuring 1500 hours of feedback provided by more than 2,200 people, according to New Zealand Rugby. 

In 2022, when the plan was being created, it found that 3% of rugby board chairs and 5.7% of referees are female, that there is an average annual retention of 40% of players, and that 87.5% of those female players are under 18. 

The plan also identified five strategy Focus Areas: culture, system, participation, performance, and transitions. 

Canterbury Rugby’s Community Rugby Manager Fiona Smith said the plan is still in the early stages of being implemented in Waitaha Canterbury, but that she’s hoping to see the benefits. 

“It probably gave us all really good direction on where we should focus our effort”, Smith said. 

For example, Smith said the strategy identified that rugby can be “really hard” to enter later in life.  

“Our model had been built on playing since you were five. We didn’t, in a lot of cases, have safe entry points for girls and women who start playing at older ages,” she continued. 

“So we have looked at the way our grades are structured and made sure that at three or four points between the age of five and fifty, there [are] places that new people can come into the game.” 

Furthermore, Smith said the plan clarified that women’s rugby shouldn’t aim to look exactly like men’s to be successful. 

“We shouldn’t try and make it look exactly like men’s rugby, and in a few cases I think that had actually been holding the system back a bit, by trying to copy it.” 

“To get together a team from scratch in a sport where you name 22 players on a Saturday is a lot of people. With 10-a-side it was achievable for more clubs to start something, and the majority of those have now grown into 15-a-side teams,” said Smith. 

“So we don’t have to play the same times, the same formats, the same number of players – those kinds of things.”  

While the plan only came out last year, Smith said New Zealand Rugby also produced a subsequent action plan for unions to work through. 

“I think in the long term it is positive, it will just take time. Different parts of the country are at really different stages, depending on the population base, what the initial uptake in girls and women’s rugby has been like, how that’s gone for the people involved.” 

“So yeah, it’s a long-term plan.”