Following the gold medal win by our Australian Women’s 7s team at the Rio Olympic Games, I hope two things are happening. Firstly, I hope the squad (players, coaches and support staff) are having the times of their lives in the Olympic village and soaking up the experience as best they can. Secondly, I hope the ARU are in absolute action stations working out how they can build a strong legacy for the game from this success.
Opportunities such as this don’t come around too often. The ARU probably really missed the boat on ‘future proofing’ the game following our 1999 Rugby World Cup success. We know they flittered away the opportunities after hosting the 2003 World Cup as well.
The Women’s team’s success allows them a whole new opportunity and one where the opportunity is immediate and critical. Let’s take a look at some of the areas of focus:
High Performance Success
Ok first and foremost, we want more of that. Coach Tim Walsh is signed on for another two years which takes us through to the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) at which Women’s 7s will feature for the first time. The drive to be the first team to win an Olympic Women’s 7s Gold and a Commonwealth one, must surely be strong within the team.
Looking at the squad, it’s a good blend of experience and youth. Co-captains Shannon Parry and Sharni Williams are 27 and 28 respectively and, along with Nicole Beck (28) and Gemma Etheridge (29) are at the upper end of the age span, but could all be still performing in about 18 months time. Amy Turner at 32 is perhaps the one squad member most under question, but who knows given the right preparations?
The core group from Rio though – I’m talking Charlotte Caslick (21), Chloe Dalton (23), Emma Tonegato (21), Alica Quirk (24), Emilee Cherry (23), Evania Pelite (21) and Ellia Green (23) can be the nucleus of this squad for some years to come and area all players to build a team around.
Throughout this year’s World Series coach Walsh took the opportunity to blood a number of young players who have come through the development system in Womens 7s. Players such as Brooke Walker, Dominique du Toit, Demi Hayes, Georgina Friedrichs, Shenae Ciesoilka and Mahalia Murphy. All of these players will remain a core component of the ongoing success of the Australian team and are strong chances of GC2018 selection.
So the basic summary is, let Walsh continue to do what he’s done from a squad management and development perspective. Let the talent identification program continue as we look for potential players in all corners of the Australian sporting landscape. Make this team the national women’s team that is the envy of all other women’s sporting teams.
Raising their profile
If anyone doubted the value of the rugby at the Olympics needs to look at the reaction to this win. We won the World Series this year and did it as impressively as we won the Olympics. Arguably in tougher competitions.
Those who had followed the season were pretty confident of this team taking home the gold. Success wasn’t unexpected but once it happened it captured the nation’s imagination. Australians love a winner for sure, but it helps if that win is at an event as high profile as the Olympics.
Take Sally Pearson. She won Gold at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, and we simply approved, it’s only the Com Games after all. She won Gold at the World Champs a year later and it probably passed by most people. She won Gold at the 2012 Olympic Games and she’s our new darling of the track. She’s got media profile, she’s got sponsors, she’s got her got her own god damn web site.
She’s not alone either. Natalie Cook, the Oarsome Foursome, Michael Diamond, Dean Lukin and every swimmer ever. All successful athletes that achieved ‘overnight success’ on the back of Olympic glory. Make no mistake it will happen with the Australian 7s team. Firstly as individual athletes – I can see Nike already designing campaigns around Charlotte Caslick and Ellia Green.
The other squad members are sure to pick up sponsors as well – boot, apparel, supplements – who knows? But it will happen. They’ll find themselves on morning radio and prime time TV. They will have increased speaking engagements and be magazine fodder. The nation will know some of these players far more than they knew them a month ago.
The ARU have a, call it an opportunity or perhaps it’s an obligation, to ensure it happens. As former Rebels and Force scrumhalf Mick Snowden suggested in the below tweet, this team can be as significant for Australian Rugby as that 1999 RWC team.
I’d argue that the female @Aussie7s team is the greatest public advertisement for our game as a whole since the 99′ RWC winners. #Olympics
— Mick Snowden (@MickSnowden) August 9, 2016
Think of that for a minute. That was a remarkable team that approached the game differently, set the standards and changed the face of rugby as we knew it. Everyone changed because of them. They were also full of absolute legends, both on and off the field – Eales, Horan, Kefu, Kearns, Larkham, Gregan, Burke, Herbert, Tune. I could go on. If the ARU manage this right then the names Caslick, Dalton, Green, Tonegato et al should be just as significant in a decade’s time.
It would seem the ARU are on the case because CEO Bill Pulver has already been in the media twice since the medal win. The first was to announce (re-announce?) the establishment of a national women’s sevens series to launch next year structured around Universities. Details are still a little sketchy but teams will be made up of members of the Aussie 7s squad as marquee players plus other players already in the development pathway. There’s no mention as yet around television rights or sponsorships but the Rio result should assist in making a case for both. A TV deal is almost a must for this and should be specifically structured for free to air so every girl in Australia can watch it if she wants (and their brothers!).
The second media call was Pulver announcing (re-announcing?) his desire for the Sydney Sevens event to have a women’s competition included within it. Again, this has been discussed in the past but it seems more likely than ever now. World Rugby head honcho Brett Gosper (an Australian and son of former IOC Member Kevan Gosper) would full well know the unique opportunity he has to showcase the Olympic champions in front of their home ground and what it could do for the sport in a flagging rugby market. So we can safely assume that the ARU is somewhat on the way. But this needs to go much further than the rehashing of a couple of old press releases. The ARU need to get strategic here and work out how they are going to use this team to drive continued growth and success of the sport.
Grass Roots Growth
Earlier this year the ARU released their 5 year Strategic Plan in which they set some pretty specific targets. Two of which were:
- Increase female participation rate to 15% of all participants across three formats
- Olympic (2016 & 2020) and Commonwealth Games (2018) Medals for men’s and women’s Sevens teams
Now the Australian Women’s team have already helped them achieve that second one, and I dare say they have probably helped the ARU to be well on the way to that first one too. The game of rugby, via 7s, has reached a level of national awareness this last week I’d suggest that far surpasses our previous two men’s World Cup wins. All on the back of these 12 women (and wider squad). There have been newspaper articles, and anecdotal evidence on-line, that indicates that these women have inspired a new generation of girls to play the game. My own five year old insisted on playing Rookies 2 Reds and thinks she’s another Charlotte Caslick (note the below picture is not my daughter but someone else’s with the same idea!). If that that type of fervor can be harnessed by the ARU and the states, then 15% in 5 years should be an absolute doddle.
Miss Olive goes to green and gold day at school dressed as her favourite Olympian @CharlieCaslick pic.twitter.com/dO6nvSjqWD — Martin Mullin (@MullinMartin) August 11, 2016
The development pathways already exist in some states. Queensland in particular have a well established Women’s 7s Academy program, through which a number of the gold medal winners came. There has, however, remained an historical gap for girls to participate in the sport from the early teens to open age groups. Perhaps 7s can help alleviate that.
The QRU have already been proactive in identifying 7s opportunities and a listing on their web page that has 15 Queensland-based events alone over the next couple of months for any schools or players wishing to get involved. Talk about striking while the iron is hot.
What they all need to do now is make sure the gold medal winning team are marshalled and taken out across the country and used as the face of the game. In 1991 Tim Horan and Jason Little toured across Queensland with the RWC and a similar tour should be considered, across the country, with our Olympic champions. With squad members having legitimate links to regional areas such as Batlow, Wollongong, Toowoomba, Roma and Wagga Wagga these areas should be a priority as a means to make the development pathway a real one to all aspiring local children.
Show them the Money
Which brings us to what the women get out of this. Make no mistake – this is the most successful team in Australian rugby at the moment. Who knows where it stands from a profile perspective, but I bet there are pockets of the country where Charlotte Caslick or Ellia Green are more recognisable than David Pocock or Michael Hooper. This all despite the fact that the team has struggled to gain any limelight before the Olympics, even within the halls of the ARU!
If you’ve seen footage of the players, either before or after the Olympics, then you’ve seen how incredibly impressive they are as individuals. Humble, personable and genuine. And they are winners. They are a marketers dream. As I mentioned, the sponsors will be out to get them individually, and the ARU will be out to use them as a team. So compensation needs to come.
The team as a whole has only gone professional a couple of years ago, and the ability for the team to train together full-time has been a key component of their success. But it needs to go further. The ARU, if they do it right, will make money from this team whether it be sponsorships, participation numbers or, hopefully, TV rights. The players deserve their share. From what I understand they are not even on an equal footing with the men’s team at the moment (who do, admittedly, play twice the number of world series tournaments), but from a revenue generating perspective the women now outflank the men. Think about the merchandising opportunities alone!
Increased revenue (for the governing bodies) should flow back to the players, particularly if the players are going to be involved in more rugby (the national championship) and their imagery used extensively (including by the states). The Australian Sports Commission generally provides funding to National Sporting Bodies based on their Olympic success so you can bet that the Women’s program will get a healthy injection on the back of World Series and Rio success, which will be plowed into new high performance development programs. The men will be less likely to get this input (from the ASC at least) and, as for many sports, will have to drive improvement without such cash injection.
Women’s sport seems to be going through somewhat of a boom at the moment. The Women’s Big Bash League (cricket) is extremely popular and features on free to air TV. Netball Australia has launched a re-jigged national comp, AFL is launching their own women’s league and rugby league is holding a Women’s World Cup at the same time as next year’s Men’s version. The AFL have already come out and declared the Aussie 7s players as targets for recruitment and it would be diabolical if we lost any of them. Acknowledging their perilous financial status, the ARU needs to find ways to, simply put, pay them what they are worth.
These women, by nature of their success, their personality and their stories are perhaps the best ambassadors we have for the game at the moment and they deserve to be paid appropriately. You can be sure that the Rugby Union Players Association (RUPA) will be on the case and ensuring that the players get everything they deserve in terms of remuneration.
The ARU have a rare window of opportunity at the moment. The golden glow should remain for a little while post-Rio and you can bet the team will be paraded around at upcoming Rugby Championship matches. If the Sydney Sevens women’s leg eventuates, and the national tournament can gain appropriate broadcast and corporate support, then the time is right for the game to grow on the back of this momentum which should get another boost with a home Commonwealth Games in less than two years time.
Let’s just hope the ARU, the states and all stakeholders can steer the ship in the right direction to take full advantage of all that could come their way.
