Palmer goes into battle for women's game

If there's anyone on the planet who should be concerned about the state of New Zealand women's rugby, it should be Manawatu's Farah Palmer.

New Zealand have won all three official World Cups and Palmer played in all of them, the last two, in 2002 and 2006 as captain.

So she was hardly pleased when the New Zealand Rugby Union announced close to Christmas that it had scrapped the national competition for financial reasons.

She said that was justified on the basis of the World Cup side leaving for England two weeks after the competition was to start.

Since then, Canada's tour to New Zealand has been cancelled, with finances playing a part.

A meeting has been mooted with NZRU chief executive Steve Tew and Palmer would like to be part of it. She is on the International Rugby Board's women's advisory panel which meets irregularly.

"Everyone looks to us as the world leaders but our development programme is nowhere near as good as others'," Palmer said. "The NZRU has said provincial unions can do it if they want, but they are struggling to keep men's rugby going.

"We want to keep it going in the meantime because there might be renewed interest after the [2011] World Cup."

She remembers when the national second division was dumped for reasons of cost, women's rugby disappeared in Counties-Manukau, North Harbour, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Tasman. There's none in Taranaki and Whanganui and Northland can't find opponents. When Palmer was in Hamilton, there were eight teams.

Manawatu would have been pushing to fund a division one team this year but are mooting a competition with Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa-Bush and Wellington. A forum is being held at 6pm today at FMG Stadium on the subject.

"My concern is that I've already heard players are going to rugby league or netball. Next year if they do get the NPC going, players will have gone to other sports. A lot of them are passionate about rugby; they're all competitive and athletic, which is why they play rugby."

- © Fairfax NZ News