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Do the Hurricanes Poua want our support or not
Rugby, at its best in New Zealand, has always been a uniting force.
It’s taken people of different shapes, sizes, backgrounds, incomes, suburbs, towns and islands and brought them together.
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Be they players, fans, administrators, referees or media, they’ve been bonded by a common love for the game and its ability to bring the best out in everyone.
I’ve lived in cities, I’ve lived in towns. I’ve lived in the North Island and I’ve lived in the South Island.
Everywhere I’ve been, rugby has been at the heart of the community.
I think back, particularly, to the decade I spent in what we now call a Heartland Championship union. A place beyond the professional rugby realm, where the rugby club was the literal lifeblood of the town.
This isn’t misty-eyed nostalgia or idealism, this is the reality of grassroots rugby and its place in society.
When I think about what I love most about rugby, it’s this.
I live in Hurricanes country, where the franchise’s chief executive, Avan Lee, is furiously putting out fires, not necessarily of his own making.
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I won’t go through the haka performed by the franchise’s Super Rugby Aupiki team or translate its meaning.
I won’t dissect the subsequent comments of Hurricanes Poua captain Leilani Perese either.
But I will note that, in media commitments in the last day or two, Lee has said the Hurricanes’ purpose is “to unite and excite’’ and the Poua have not unified anyone.
Women’s rugby in New Zealand is an interesting one.
I’m not sure New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has done enough to capitalise on the groundswell of support enjoyed by the Black Ferns, on their way to the 2022 Rugby World Cup title.
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It appeared as if the nation was ready to embrace the female game like never before and Super Rugby Aupiki was the result.
For whatever reason, the competition has not flourished. Whatever connection there was between the players and the public appears to have waned.
Governing bodies, from NZR on down, are struggling to pay for an addition to the professional rugby scene that doesn’t generate revenue.
Players wanted to be paid. Some weren’t always eager to play. Others went to rugby league in Australia, without relinquishing their ties to rugby back here.
There was a sense of entitlement about it all.
Now, I’ve argued long and loud that more should be done by administrators to foster female rugby. That if the game is to grow, then women’s rugby is an obvious avenue.
I wanted us to be more inclusive and less focused on everything being about the All Blacks all the time.
That might help create a prosperous national men’s team, but it doesn’t do much for the part of the rugby pyramid that I hold most dear.
I believed a legitimate pathway for female players had to be a priority.
I also think I wasn’t alone there.
The Hurricanes Poua haka, which Lee says will not be performed again, is divisive and insulting. It speaks of a level of privilege and grievance that is out of step with the majority of New Zealand society.
Worst of all, it has the potential to turn people off a competition and players in desperate need of our support.
I’ve lived long enough to see times, notably the Springbok tour of 1981, when rugby divided the nation. I’m saddened to see a group of players attempting to do that again.
If anyone exudes entitlement, Mr Bidwell, it is not brown women rugby players who feel understandably upset by the government’s move to discourage the use of Te Reo Māori. It is you. Even if you support the government language initiative, and even if you find the Poua haka distasteful, at least try to hear the genuine pain to which the players are lending voice. But I guess that would mean actually listening to women rather than mansplaining to them how they should behave.
What a load of rubbish,& what a sad reflection on society.The number of thin skinned,whiners we have in this country never ceases to amaze me.Good on the Young Woman for her stance,& putting it out there.As for all the people threatening to never watch Hurricanes again,grow up get a life.There are far more important issues in this country that need addressing.Just to all those supporters abanding the Hurricanes,well come & watch either The Chiefs or Crusaders to real class
We all know what side of the fence this guy would have been on during the 81 tour. It’s stunning to think after all this time there are still people who lament how rugby was divided by that tour. The rugby community was largely on the wrong side of history during apartheid, and sadly many of the instincts that led them there are echoed in this ignorant drivel. Suggesting that politics and sport are mutually exclusive is like saying we should keep politics out of life. The boycott campaign against Apartheid went a long way to making SAs isolation untenable. It didn’t sow division in our game, it exposed a silent complicity with a monstrous injustice and it eventually led to the sports actual unification. At least now, when one part of our society is relentlessly under attack by opportunists, grifters and ghouls there are people within the rugby community who aren’t afraid to stand up to it. David Seymour and his Atlas cabal of money goblins are the people sowing division, it’s just that some of us see it for what it is.
Whenever Ben Smith says x I just assume y is the truth. The whining sheep continues to whine.
🔥 nz feels way better than it did before and i didn’t even vote for these guys.
Typical of today’s aggressive society, will reap what you sow. Rugby is loosing support rapidly in most areas. I look at the thousands that are being turned away trying to get in to watch these matches in women's competition. Still keep it up money to burn.
I admire the Hurricanes Poua for standing by their morals and proudly saying what they think.
It seems they don’t want money from people who voted for the current Government. They might get their wish; I admire they are putting their morals over the dollar. It does not seem that the Hurricanes management thinks the same way.
It looks like another round of the ‘Should sport and politics mix, and to what degree’.
Nah. Good on them. I thought it was brilliant. You cant have it both ways. We embrace the Maori name for the comp and the teams. Lets not now be superficial and refuse their defence of what they believe in wrt their culture. After, did we not applaud Webber and TJ for their stands on issues they were passionate about.