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Women play rugby in front of 34,000 fans at Eden Park aka a good event for NZ to host (Image: Hagen Hopkins/Getty)
Women play rugby in front of 34,000 fans at Eden Park aka a good event for NZ to host (Image: Hagen Hopkins/Getty)

SportsOctober 9, 2022

Turns out people do enjoy watching women play rugby

Women play rugby in front of 34,000 fans at Eden Park aka a good event for NZ to host (Image: Hagen Hopkins/Getty)
Women play rugby in front of 34,000 fans at Eden Park aka a good event for NZ to host (Image: Hagen Hopkins/Getty)

The Rugby World Cup opening day on Saturday showed that people will happily watch women play sport when it’s marketed and staged properly, writes Mad Chapman.

Chalk it up to being fresh out of isolation with Covid but I nearly cried watching Hinewehi Mohi perform the national anthem at Eden Park last night. It was the beauty of Mohi, who first sang the Māori anthem 23 years ago, having tens of thousands of New Zealanders singing alongside her. But it was also something else because here’s an incomplete list of other times I found myself welling up yesterday:

  • Walking out of our front gate with my partner, who has no interest in rugby but was excited about a fun day out at Eden Park
  • Getting on the train to Kingsland and seeing it filled with people, young and old, on their way to the rugby
  • Walking around the stadium to our gate and hearing the Fiji anthem and the huge cheer after it
  • Getting to our seats and watching the stadium fill up and knowing the only reason any one was there was to watch women play sport
  • The haka

Wow, the haka. I’d seen the Black Ferns perform haka on TV a number of times and it was always great, but have the Black Ferns ever performed with 34,000 supporters behind them lending their voices to the challenge? It was electrifying. Three leaders and formation changes? The All Blacks have never. Genuinely one of the best haka I’ve seen on that ground. With the Australian team approaching and the Black Ferns answering with their own advance, it felt like a genuine back and forth, and one that wouldn’t have been quite so goosebump-inducing without the roars from the crowd and the poi twirling in the stands.

The game itself was a decent display of rugby, particularly for those who were watching the sport for the first time in their lives. The Black Ferns’ seeming inability to catch a pass in the first half was frustrating, but not in a way that showed throughout the stadium, which was filled with families and groups of friends just having fun. Then as the comeback gathered momentum – thanks to simultaneous yellow cards to Australia – it became the best type of match, one with plenty of point-scoring and not too much stoppage. Perhaps the two most recognisable names on the field, Portia Woodman and Ruby Tui, didn’t disappoint with five tries between them.

As the fans wandered out after the 41-17 victory, I felt no need to be a little bit on guard, as I would typically be after a rugby match when the streets are filled with drunk, often angry, fans. Last night everyone strolled through the streets of Sandringham, largely sober and enjoying the perfectly still night. 

Walking with the crowd and catching the train back home I found myself wanting to cry again. I’ve watched women play rugby to a crowd of 20. I’ve watched the best basketball players in the country play in an empty arena. I’ve watched Valerie Adams throw the shot put at what could be mistaken for a local club meet. I’ve become so used to watching women play sport in near silence that to see and hear the crowd at Eden Park last night, there entirely for women playing sport, felt like a turning point for all sport in Aotearoa. 

Fans twirl poi that was handed out on opening day (Image: Hannah Peters/Getty)

And it felt particularly momentous given how little effort has been made by local parties to boost both the event and our home team. World Rugby puts on the Rugby World Cup and its footprint can be seen in the billboards and social media ads. Meanwhile Sanitarium, an official partner of New Zealand Rugby, released a new batch of Weet-Bix Stat Attack cards last month which included All Blacks who no longer play, as well as the All Blacks coach, but not a single Black Fern.

This is what the sport has been dealing with from the beginning.

People will continue to argue fruitlessly about the commercial value of women’s sport (as if men’s sport didn’t require huge investment early on) but what yesterday’s opening day showed is there are people who will happily spend all day watching women play sport when it’s a) been advertised to them, and b) presented as one would expect from an elite sporting event. Halfway through the second match of the day (Fiji-England), my partner turned to me and said, “do I like sports now?” She wouldn’t have been the only one there asking that question. 

The crowd of 34,000 wasn’t an All Blacks crowd being served women’s rugby before the test they actually paid to see. It wasn’t even a “women’s sports” crowd of dedicated followers. It was families and friends who saw the opportunity for a fun, very cheap day and night out and got far more than their money’s worth in entertainment. I’d be surprised if anyone left Eden Park last night feeling that the event under-delivered, and I hope that, like me, many booked their tickets for the grand final (also at Eden Park next month) when they got home.

This tournament was always going to be a make or break moment for women’s rugby in Aotearoa. And despite, in my view, an embarrassing lack of investment from local parties in the lead-up, the opening day was everything you would want from a women’s sporting event. All of the good rugby and tension and entertainment, and a lot less of the anger and drunken debauchery.

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Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

If there was one disappointment on the night, it was still seeing empty seats (despite the crowd being the biggest by far for a women’s sporting event in New Zealand history).

That extraordinary haka was better than it’s ever been because it always is when fans are on your side. Next month’s final – assuming the team tidies up the basics – will be another level entirely and I will almost certainly cry seeing what’s possible with a bit of investment in women athletes. You wouldn’t want to miss it.

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Scotland’s Siobhan Cattigan receives treatment for a head injury during the Guinness Women’s Six Nations match at Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow, April 24, 2021. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
Scotland’s Siobhan Cattigan receives treatment for a head injury during the Guinness Women’s Six Nations match at Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow, April 24, 2021. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)

SportsOctober 9, 2022

Remembering Siobhan, the Scottish rugby player who won’t be taking the field

Scotland’s Siobhan Cattigan receives treatment for a head injury during the Guinness Women’s Six Nations match at Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow, April 24, 2021. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
Scotland’s Siobhan Cattigan receives treatment for a head injury during the Guinness Women’s Six Nations match at Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow, April 24, 2021. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)

She should have been part of Scotland’s lineup against Wales this afternoon, Instead Siobhan Cattigan’s parents are mourning a daughter lost to them, they believe, because of the head injuries she sustained as a player.

When Scotland meets Wales in today’s feature game of the World Cup, one lifetime rugby fan’s thoughts will turn not to the 30 women who will take the field to start the match, but one that isn’t.

Neil Cattigan’s daughter Siobhan, a Scotland back-rower, died suddenly in September last year. He believes the 26-year-old’s death was the direct result of head injuries suffered while playing rugby and, more pointedly, the failure to manage the after-effects of these injuries properly.

The anger and sorrow as he talks about Siobhan’s final weeks and days is palpable, even on the phone from Scotland, where he and wife Morven live and mourn.

“It’s very difficult,” he says, breaking down as he tries to get the words out. “She should be there. If due diligence had been carried out, she would be.”

The harrowing final months of Siobhan’s life were covered poignantly in the Sunday Times, but whereas the Scotland team that meets Wales tomorrow has been able to pick up the pieces and move on, Neil Cattigan cannot.

While limited to what he can say as he has filed a lawsuit against World Rugby and the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) for what they claim is failure to follow head injury protocols, Cattigan is still haunted by what he describes as his own failures.

“I’m a father. My main job as a father is to protect my family. I failed.”

He said the lawsuit is not about money – any funds would go towards a foundation in Siobhan’s name – but to get to the truth about why the SRU failed in their duty of care.

“They fixed her broken bones but turned their backs on her broken brain,” Cattigan says. “She was so badly let down. The protocols are not fit for purpose; concussion affects females entirely differently from males so the protocols need to change before anyone else suffers.”

Cattigan claims it was not until six weeks had passed after Siobhan died that they learned about the link between concussions, “head knocks” and sub-concussions causing neurological damage.

“We are in no doubt led to the decline in Siobhan’s physical and mental wellbeing. We didn’t know because we believe the data and research has been deliberately suppressed,” Cattigan says.

“She has been playing rugby since she was six, has suffered several concussions playing for Scotland,  but it’s only recently that I have learned about the dangers also of sub-concussions; that females generally take 30 percent longer to recover and that their necks are 28% weaker; and that females make up only eight percent of concussion data.

“The difficulty is trying to get people to be honest with us – that includes doctors, coaches and rugby’s hierarchy – to help us understand what happened to Siobhan, which is truly devastating.

“They messed up with Siobhan. They got it wrong.”

Scotland lay down a shirt to pay tribute to teammate Siobhan Cattigan during the Scotland v Colombia Rugby World Cup qualifying match on February 25, 2022 in Dubai. (Photo by Christopher Pike – World Rugby/World Rugby via Getty Images)

In the time before she passed, they say, it became obvious that Siobhan’s brain was broken.

Cattigan said: “She had gone from loving life, being full of fun and joy with everything to live for, as she repeatedly said, to being broken because she didn’t know what she was dealing with. It terrified her.”

The Cattigans say their daughter succumbed to an impulse because her brain had changed. Mum Morven told the Sunday Times that  the only thing she could compare Siobhan’s decline to was dementia patients.

“I couldn’t think of anything that would change a personality so massively, something that completely alters you as a person. Siobhan was crumbling before our eyes and something catastrophic had happened in her brain.”

The change in personality and outlook was rapid and, Neil Cattigan says, the treatment she received was mere lip service.

What the family do not want is for their daughter to be forgotten or, as Cattigan puts it, edited out of history.

It feels like the SRU have tried to erase Siobhan again. She was not mentioned in their “Road to NZ” promotion despite her having played a big part in getting the team to where they are.

In part to redress that, The family have launched the #rememberSiobhan hashtag, which has already garnered some high-profile shares on social media from former All Blacks and Black Ferns.

SRU did not respond to this story for comment about how they intended marking Siobhan’s contribution and death while at the World Cup. They did release a statement in August when her story first got global attention, addressing some of the Cattigans’ concerns.

“We fully acknowledge the seriousness of what the family [has] shared. However, there are details and assertions about how our people are said to have acted that we do not recognise or accept. Respecting medical confidentiality, and with reference [to the legal claim], we are not in a position to communicate further on any details of Siobhan’s care at this time.”

In the statement SRU said their offer of support for the family “remained open”, but the Cattigans described the national body’s response to their daughter’s death and the subsequent publicity as “a circus”.

They say that invitations to teammates to attend Siobhan’s funeral were not passed on and then there was the interview with head of Scotland’s players’ association Bill Mitchell, where he appeared to speak on behalf of the players when he said: “We cannot and will not challenge what the Cattigans believe [but] what we can do is put forward our understanding of how this squad experience playing for Scotland, and the support they receive … the healthcare they receive is excellent, the pastoral care is excellent, and they [the squad] are upset at the inference that can be drawn that it was less than that.”

Within hours, many Scotland players had released their own statement on Twitter, saying: “We were unaware of this… article being published,” it read, “or the statements attributed to the team in this article. We are grieving our friend and teammate, our thoughts are with Siobhan’s family.”

“It’s a circus, and we don’t want Siobhan to be part of a circus,” Neil Cattigan says. “She was so much more than that.”

For Cattigan, the World Cup is both a beautiful thing and a horrible reminder of what he has lost.

“Hopefully I won’t wake up tomorrow, but I probably will,” he says.

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer
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