DSPN - Devlin Sports Podcast Network
ENGLAND IS FLYING! CAN NZ CATCH UP? | WOMEN'S RUGBY
14 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the current state of women's rugby in New Zealand?
This is the DSPN. DSPN, we are talking women's rugby. Hannah Porter joining us from New Zealand Rugby. Hannah, what do the Black Ferns need to be able to do to beat England?
Yeah, they're pretty impressive, right? They've been dominant now for kind of up to eight years. They are an impressive group. They've got a good coaching management team and they've got some really good players. I think we're tracking well for the next World Cup. And that's certainly our intention, is how do we get our very best team to front up at our pinnacle events.
The years in between, whilst we would love to win every Test match we play in, certainly those years are looking at development and how we get ready to win when it matters. So I'm looking forward to the game at Twickenham in about four months' time to see where we're at, obviously with a new management team outside and some new players coming in. But they've created a big old beast.
They've created a great domestic competition. But what I would say is that their athletes are getting a little bit older and really looking to see who they bring through as their next group of athletes because that will determine certainly what happens at the next World Cup.
You mentioned the professional game up there. We've got Opikistone, which we're going to talk about in a sec. I've heard some conflicting reports about the standard of their game up there. And yes, there is a lot more of it. And that's obviously very beneficial. And we see a lot of the Black Ferns going up there to play.
But where would you place it in terms of quality as opposed to what our players are getting back here?
Yeah, interesting question. I think they're two different products, right? They've got a professional game up there, which is run by the clubs. So a different model, which sees at least three quarters of the players not getting paid anything for a 24-week competition, which means they have to work outside of hours. They train at night times. They turn up on a Saturday and play.
So whilst they play a lot of rugby... I suppose the benefit of Super Rugby Ōpiki and Super Rugby W down here is we've got a slightly different model which allows our players this year to be full-time through the model and get the support that they need kind of over the period of the campaign.
What that means down here is it's taken a little bit longer to grow and certainly our ambition is to grow that competition but with two different models. They've been able to grow really quickly and to be able to attract some of the best players in the world to come up to England and play in that competition. In regards to the quality, different style of rugby.
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Chapter 2: How can New Zealand Rugby improve the pipeline from high school to senior women's rugby?
Are those two things mutually exclusive? Where do you land on this? Because obviously its biggest market, its biggest player base, and most successful international team, yeah, it's going great. Does that mean it's good for everyone else though?
Yeah, I think it's certainly flown on since the World Cup up in the UK. You saw sellout stadiums for both France and Ireland, which they've never had before. So I think there's definitely a swell in Europe in regards to women's rugby at the moment. And we're working really hard down here.
We're working really hard to ensure that we've got a really good domestic product and actually the start of a global series to know our test matches three years in advance is something we've never had. So we're really excited, obviously. Being able to plan for those and having a pretty amazing opportunity next year with the Lions for the first time ever down in New Zealand.
Yeah, glad you brought that up. Obviously, it's the first time this has ever happened. A unique women's rugby tour in the professional era here to New Zealand. First question would be, and again, it's something that a lot of people have talked about, just a bit of concern over the team that's coming. Is it just going to be England in red jerseys?
I don't think so. Look, there's no argument that England will have a very strong group within the Lions. But there are also some really good players, some individual good players from those other nations. So... Whilst the majority, you're probably right, will come from the Red Roses, I think you will see a good sprinkling of players from other countries.
And I actually think they'll get starting spots. I actually think you'll find that there will be a good mix when it comes to their starting 15.
And looking at the tour schedule, you've obviously got the three test matches, including one down in the new stadium in Christchurch, which I'm sure we're all very excited about. But the other tour games are against selections rather than domestic sides.
Was that the plan all along, or is this just something that you've come to as a result of the circumstances of the professional player base at the moment?
It was certainly lengthy discussions with the Lions about what those other two games would look like. They impressed on us that they needed to be of a really high standard to give a five-test match kind of series that were all to the standard that they wanted or were expecting. I think the reality is when you take our Black Ferns out of our Super Rugby OPIC-y teams, it does weaken those groups.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does New Zealand face in competing with England's club-dominated model?
And it's in that teenage space and not actually only just with the females, but across the men's game as well. Lots of competing sports at the moment and lots of competing sports doing a really good job in that teenage space. So we've got some work to do there to actually fill out the pipeline to actually bring them through.
And understanding that the women's game is not as linear as the men's game. We do see other people coming in from other sports late into the game and and adding some real value into women's rugby. So just making sure we don't shut off the door to them and how do we actually expose those really good athletes that potentially are doing other things and bring them into rugby at some stage.
Those lines and something that definitely is in your remit is the sevens. Not such a great result for the Black Ferns sevens over the weekend. Can't believe we picked this week to talk about it because it feels like they win every other week. What is the future of the sevens program? How much of it hinges on its inclusion in the Olympics? And therefore, what's the future of this team?
Look, certainly one of the biggest drivers in the shifts we've seen in that sevens game has been from the Olympics. The inclusion of that, the growth of it across world rugby and I suppose to the model that we've got and remembering we're in the first year of the new model. So I think the new model has been really successful. It's been really tough on those teams.
So top eight teams is never an easy game. um through the through the series through the year and then obviously we've gone into the championship which which goes out to the 12 team model where the championship becomes really interesting is next year when it's olympic qualification so top four teams will make it through the championship and then you've actually got to go into a pretty long process
um as to how you get into the olympics from there so therefore it becomes really important next year um the blackburn sevens are the most competitive team that i've ever been in and around uh they will be hurting from um the last couple of weekends um but some good lessons going into to both next year and then into the year after into the olympics um i know they're pretty motivated to come back and um
Fix up a few things, but the last couple of weekends aside, they've had a really impressive season. They've kind of unearthed some new talent and they've got a whole lot of talent coming back from pregnancy over the next 12 months. So they'll be in a really good space. Again, if we talk about meaningful moments in the Olympics as one of those, they'll be in a really good space for that.
In regards to where World Rugby wants to take sevens in the future, I think they've got a little bit of a hard date on LA28 to work through that and see, I suppose, what the next iteration looks like for them. All right, team, listen up. Financial markets go up and down, but your money doesn't have to follow the same ride.
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Chapter 4: What changes are being made to Super Rugby Aupiki and why?
It feels like it's been a long time coming to the start date of this Super ABI picky. Look, the global calendar dictated what we did in our domestic game, and we're really thankful that that has settled. We've got a regional window now and a global window. In that regional window,
Pac4, so the competition that the Black Ferns play with Canada, USA and Australia, that shifted forward to match the Six Nation dates. So everyone in the women's game is playing regional tournaments through those dates. What that did to Super Rugby O-Picky and Super W was it squeezed the window right down to kind of six weeks from competition. when you could start it to when you could finish it.
So it didn't allow for any growth in that window. And there were a whole lot of reasons why the shift into where it now sits made sense. One, it provides a 15-week clear window that we can, that our ambition is certainly to grow that competition. So it provides that opportunity for us too. It takes a little bit of clear air away from the men's game.
Obviously with Super Rugby Pacific finishing up over the next couple of weeks and MPC not starting, for the next month or so. It allows our Sevens players to come back and play in that competition if they so wish to do that. So we will hopefully have the very best players in our country playing within that competition and making it a really good product that we can actually commercialise.
So lots of positives. It's obviously a change from what we've had previously, but I think what we'll see over the next couple of years is that it grows into its own product and we're really excited about what that could look like.
Just, yeah, on that, it doesn't really feel particularly ideal though, does it, that you have Braxton Sorensen-McGee, Georgia Miller and the Sevens players not really assured of whether they're going to be actually playing in this or not.
Where is New Zealand rugby at on perhaps flipping the balance of this because it feels like the Sevens players are committed to this format that takes them overseas and away from people that want to see them play live. Is there any sort of strategy about turning that around and having them more in the public eye here in New Zealand?
Great question for the players, Jamie. They're... They love playing sevens, right? So they love that competition. They love that team. They want to do the very best. And us as New Zealand really want to support that team to be the best that they can as well. They're really important to New Zealand rugby. In regards to our best stars playing in this country, we've got eight.
Black Ferns-Evans players in this Super Rugby. I pick Braxton being one of them. And you also have to balance. If you have a look at Georgia, for example, you've got to balance the fact that she's not had an off-season for two years now, going straight into Women's World Cup last year. So...
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Chapter 5: What impact does the upcoming Lions Tour have on New Zealand women's rugby?
My bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am going to go over for that one. I think it's going to be a pretty special occasion to be at.
Nice one. Well, Hannah, thank you very much for your time. That's a wrap on Women's Rugby. Plenty to chew on there. Really interesting to get a handle on where the Women's International Game is at. That's DSPN for today.
See you soon.