2018 Black Ferns
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@siam Although I think comparing it with U14s is a bit of an exaggeration, it's interesting to read your comment about the kicking. I'm still not sure why kicking is still a problem. There have been discussions about letting women play with a smaller ball, but I don't think that's the right approach. In the past, the ball size was brought up when they were discussing the then terrible passing skills, but those skills have improved immensely without changing the ball size. You'd expect that improvement should be possible with kicking as well.
Obviously, for physiological reasons, you can't expect most female kickers to kick as far as male kickers, but that doesn't apply to technique. Unless there are other physiological reasons that non-experts don't know about. In many professional sports there are experts who look at exactly that physiological level to improve athletes' skills, pace and strength. There's no money for such things for women's rugby, but it makes me wonder ... It might also have to do with it not getting enough attention from coaches.
Also, the current generation of female players didn't all start playing rugby as little children, like many male rugby players did. Some have only been playing rugby for a few years. There's a lot of catching up to do! It will be interesting to see whether the growth in girls rugby at primary school age, if they can keep those girls in rugby throughout their teenage years, will lead to continued progress and improvement in, say, 15 years from now.
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@stargazer yeah the kicking one is strange because I wonder about coaching efforts and use of resources in getting them up to speed in some "low hanging fruit" skills.
Contrast those skills on display with women cricketers, not much more historical advantage, and their throwing catching and especially reverse sweeping and the women cricketers only really lack the power of males.
I do like your point about watching female sports without a comparison in mind but that'll fall short when financial viability trumps diversity politics.
I'd happily wager that provincial under 16 teams would beat the black ferns, as an objective statement.
Going to the marketplace with a charitable outlook as a unique selling point ain't going to cut it for long
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What is the actual difference between a double header and a curtain raiser?
Because I think there is zero difference besides marketing.Womens rugby is rubbish, almost unwatchable crap. I am sure they have skills and work hard, so what? Lots of sports people have skills and work hard.
I chuckled when you used the word prejudiced when describing people who didn't like womens rugby, because of course if you dont like it must have not seen it.... lol.. it couldn't possibly because when people watch it they just decide it is crap.I think most first XV's in NZ would beat the Black ferns. But so what? It is about bums on seats and eyes on screens, if one day the black ferns can financially stand on their own 2 feet then great. All power to them, but they cannot. because the product they produce is just not very good relative to other options.
But we could go full virtue signal and just get rid of womens rugby and let them compete with men, I mean gender is a social construct now so.... I wonder how many of the black ferns would get pro contracts.....?
zero
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@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
What exactly is the need for a reason? Were people queued up outside and large delays ensued? or is he just virtue signalling over a non issue?
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@baron-silas-greenback said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
What exactly is the need for a reason? Were people queued up outside and large delays ensued? or is he just virtue signalling over a non issue?
This is the small thing about the whole game I support. If you are going to have and advertise a game, don't open the gates on kick off. (I'm assuming minutes is only a few minutes)
If I received a kick in the head and started to enjoy this rugby and I had planned to go to this game, I would have turned up 20-30 mins beforehand to be part of the build-up/grab a beer and a pie
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@hooroo said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@baron-silas-greenback said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
What exactly is the need for a reason? Were people queued up outside and large delays ensued? or is he just virtue signalling over a non issue?
This is the small thing about the whole game I support. If you are going to have and advertise a game, don't open the gates on kick off. (I'm assuming minutes is only a few minutes)
If I received a kick in the head and started to enjoy this rugby and I had planned to go to this game, I would have turned up 20-30 mins beforehand to be part of the build-up/grab a beer and a pie
Has anyone actually complained? Shown they were inconvenienced and couldn't get a beer and pie before the kick off?
I bet not. You just have a virtue signalling tweet showing how woke someone is. -
@baron-silas-greenback said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@hooroo said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@baron-silas-greenback said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
What exactly is the need for a reason? Were people queued up outside and large delays ensued? or is he just virtue signalling over a non issue?
This is the small thing about the whole game I support. If you are going to have and advertise a game, don't open the gates on kick off. (I'm assuming minutes is only a few minutes)
If I received a kick in the head and started to enjoy this rugby and I had planned to go to this game, I would have turned up 20-30 mins beforehand to be part of the build-up/grab a beer and a pie
Has anyone actually complained? Shown they were inconvenienced and couldn't get a beer and pie before the kick off?
I bet not. You just have a virtue signalling tweet showing how woke someone is.I'm assuming so as how would he have known gate opening times. It's not something you would generally monitor?
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I tried to watch it but within 5 minutes my wife was bored out of her mind and demanded we change the channel. She's so sexist.
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@no-quarter Good on her.
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@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@no-quarter Good on her.
Tongue-in-cheek comment
In seriousness I think the Black Ferns will really struggle to attract large audiences given the saturated coverage of the men's game and the fact people don't have a lot of time to invest these days. None of that is due to any sexism or prejudice, just the reality of the situation. Sky and NZR must bleed money covering them as well - playing them at the same time as the men's helps cut costs but there's no way they make a profit. -
@no-quarter said in 2018 Black Ferns:
I tried to watch it but within 5 minutes my wife was bored out of her mind and demanded we change the channel. She's so sexist.
That's what my mum did!
So I ran into the garden shed, poured pink weed killer over my hair, traipsed back into the lounge, screamed "sexist" profanities at her and finished off with "you have no idea how much oppression women have faced from the likes of you!!"
And immediately went online to shame her.
(then quietly asked if she'd made tea for me)
But at least I stopped sexism and made the world a better place.
You're all very welcome
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@bones The Wallaroos have actually improved a lot in the last couple of years. They lost 67-3 to the Black Ferns at Eden Park before Bledisloe 3 in 2016. I believe their new Super W comp (Aussie Super rugby based female sides playing in a domestic comp) has helped.
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@kiwimurph And that's exactly why NZ franchises need to join the Super-W competition as well. To stay ahead of the rest. There was talk of 4 teams (Crusaders-W would be a combined South Island squad) earlier this year, but it has become very quiet on that front, so I'm not so confident it's going to happen in 2019.
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If you compare rugby with RL, the Kiwi Ferns used to be stronger than the Jillaroos, winning the first 3 WCs, but since than it is Aust that has dominated in the last 2 WCs.
I don't think that Aust has the crossover of players between sevens and XVs like NZ because they would have a decent backline with the injection of some of their stars.
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@bovidae That fast fullback, Mahalia Murphy, comes from Aussie 7s. Maybe some of the Aussie 7s squad made themselves unavailable, just like Goss, Woodman and Brazier. Sharni Williams and Shannon Parry, for example, were in the Wallaroos World Cup squad last year, but not in this test squad.
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@siam said in 2018 Black Ferns:
@stargazer yeah the kicking one is strange because I wonder about coaching efforts and use of resources in getting them up to speed in some "low hanging fruit" skills.
Contrast those skills on display with women cricketers, not much more historical advantage, and their throwing catching and especially reverse sweeping and the women cricketers only really lack the power of males.
I do like your point about watching female sports without a comparison in mind but that'll fall short when financial viability trumps diversity politics.
I'd happily wager that provincial under 16 teams would beat the black ferns, as an objective statement.
Going to the marketplace with a charitable outlook as a unique selling point ain't going to cut it for long
Good schoolboy Under 15s would beat them. HBHS would I reckon.
Our school fielded an U15 front row a while back that was heavier than the ABs that year. They would have murdered a women's team.
The women would be a lot more organised and determined, and far fitter, but otherwise physically it would be all the boys by miles.
There's examples of U15 boys soccer teams beating international women, and that is in a sport where the level of physicality is much lower.
I am happy to watch women's rugby, but there's no pretending its close to men's.
Then again, I watch large amounts of rubbish Under 55 and Under 65 kgs, so it's way better than that.
