It’s time to get behind elite women’s sport

Alana Bremner had never seen anything like it before.

Nine days out from the start of the Black Ferns’ Rugby World Cup campaign, 21 members of their 32-strong squad were wanted for media interviews at the team hotel in downtown Auckland.

It was a sign of how the home tournament has led to an increase in interest in the Black Ferns, who had amuch smaller profile when they won the last World Cup in Ireland in 2017.

But Sport New Zealand wants to see engagement with elite women’s sport lift across the board and has launched a new campaign to try to make that happen.

The ‘It’s Time’ initiative comes ahead of the start of the Rugby World Cup next Saturday and with football’s World Cup coming to New Zealand and Australia next July and August.

Bremner and the Black Ferns played in front of a meagre crowd of just over 3000 in Christchurch as recently as last month, but a glance at what tickets remain available suggests more than 30,000 are expected to flock to Eden Park in Auckland next Saturday, where a triple-header is set to culminate in them taking on Australia’s Wallaroos.

The loose forward said it was great to see the New Zealand public getting behind the team and the New Zealand media showing great interest in covering their exploits.

‘‘It’s going to be surreal and probably very emotional, but it’s going to be a special time, so I’m really looking forward to it.’’

The challenge is to make that level of support a regular occurrence, with research commissioned by Sport NZ showing awareness of female athletes to be significantly lower than that of comparable male athletes, especially in team sports.

That research showed only one in three New Zealanders regularly watches women’s sport and more than half (53%) don’t expect to engage in more women’s sport over the next 12 months.