2018 Black Ferns
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@gunner said in 2018 Black Ferns:
Plenty of penalties in this game.
Assume Woodman is injured since she isn’t out there?
No, she chose not to play XVs and instead have a rest after a long 7s season. She'll probably play NPC in a few weeks. There are a few other 7s players who made the same choice, for example, Sarah Goss and Kelly Brazier.
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@stargazer said in 2018 Black Ferns:
The Wallaroos' kicker is the LH prop. Just imagine Joe Moody doing the goalkicking for the ABs.
Was a bloke Kjestrup (spelling maybe a letter or two out) used to kick goals for King Country in the 70s. Toe poker.
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@crazy-horse It wasn't a curtain raiser though. It was a double-header and advertised as such.
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I watched it. I like watching high level women's rugby and I love seeing how far they've developed. I'm all for it and it's refreshing to see smiles on a rugby field. I got all the family to watch despite jeers from 72 year old mother. I've met and played with several women's BBL cricketers and their skills are impressive.
Here goes though....
It's pretty much well resourced under 14s though innit?
I'm shocked at the kicking skills and Techniques. Can't even coordinate a drop and a leg swing. Surely practice at 1 hour a day for 3 months would result in the abortion line kicking on display.
This gets me thinking about what sort of product this is and how does it sustain itself?
No crowd either.
I hope it's financially viable (that is vital for all sports despite diversity undertones) and I hope it works but can't see a place in the market for it.
In summary I support the venture but struggle to see how it'll actually work - not dissimilar to a universal basic income I guess
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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
