by Wang Shao IngIt’s been sometime since my last post and for good reason. I write now off the back of a very busy first quarter and Singapore’s 12th outing to the Hong Kong Women’s Rugby 7s 2010. The women’s competition ended with a repeat of last year’s final between Chinese and the Australians with the latter emerging worthy winners of a game in the Hong Kong Stadium before crowds some of us can only dream of.
One has never really been to “the Sevens” unless one has been to Hong Kong. Since I first stepped into the Hong Kong Stadium in 2001, I, along with thousands have been entertained by Waseli Serevi, thrilled by Karl Tenana, witnessed the exhilarating partnership of Simon Amor and Ben Gollings. To see close up the beauty of the game in its abbreviated format, every year 40,000 people must be wondering when the rest of the world might catch on.
Well, at last they may - in 2016.And with such a mammoth event for the game of rugby, I am celebrating but not reveling, jumping but not leaping.
With the entry of rugby 7s in the Olympics, rugby calendars for women this side of the earth were thrown into disarray. The traditional 15s season for Asian countries must now give way to the Asian Sevens Series which will be played across venues all over Asia between July to November. This year the Singapore Women’s 15s Senior Team have not been able to secure and will not play any international fixture.
Make no mistake, I like sevens. I have played it for the past ten years, nine for my country. The skills required for the sevens game have augmented my armory and my memories from the sevens tours and tournaments will last me a lifetime. But it was the full format rugby union fifteens that led me to fall in love with rugby union– the idea that regardless of size or speed there was a place for everyone on the team, that a game of unbelievable physicality would be allowed to go on for eighty minutes, that there would be a pitch littered with twenty-nine others, each with a special role and specific skills.
The Olympic decision will have a profound impact on rugby union for women in this region. Unlike our counterparts in Europe & America, there is no Six Nations, no FIRA European Championships, no Nations Cup. No consistent senior women’s 15s competition that grips the hearts and minds of rugby loving female fanatics.
Unlike the men, rugby union is not played by girls in pre-schools, secondary schools and tertiary institutions. Development of the game for women in Asia starts with sevens and evidence suggests it may very well end there. With the hype and increased funding that inevitably comes with the inclusion of an Olympic sport, what happens to that young girl who’s built for the front row who does not have the blistering pace of a winger?
In the last two years, China and Thailand who once had representative 15s sides have been absent in the annual Asian 15s Championships organized by the Asian Rugby Football Union since 2007, presumably preferring to focus on sevens and have reaped the rewards. Both countries qualified from Asia for the Rugby World Cup 7s in 2009 with China taking the Bowl title.
The trend suggests that new Asian entrants to the sevens scene (e.g. Iran, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, India) may never see a full representative 15s side. What’s more, since the spots for Asia for the at the Women’s Rugby World Cup have been reduced from two to one, no one can see any other Asian country take the place of Kazakhstan in the next few years at the pinnacle tournament of the women’s 15s game. (Why Kazakhstan is grouped with Asia is subject for a whole other article!)
Why should national sporting bodies from Asia support or fund a team with no worldwide or regional competition? What is a regional title compared to Olympic glory?
Charlie Skarbek will certainly prove to be right in 2016, a new age has begun, but are we really, a world in Union?
article written for womens-rugby.com
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