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Download AudioRugby is experiencing a golden age in Tairawhiti – among the wāhine.
Ngāti Porou East Coast Women’s Rugby is this year fielding four teams and picking up new players all the time.
It comes as the men’s team is struggling after winning the Meads Cup in 2012.
Organiser Shyla Taiapa says her husband was part of that team, and it inspired her to strap on the boots for the 2013 season.
The women’s game went dormant for a few years until she scraped together a sevens team for a curtain-raiser at a Heartland fixture in 2018, and the competition has been growing ever since.
“The wāhine are the backbone of the men’s competition. The wāhine is the ringawera, we’re the gate people taking the money, we’re the ones tidying up afterwards and also the coaches for our babies,” she says.
Shyla Taiapa says it’s awesome to see up to 100 women playing rugby every weekend, and they’re also conscious they’re role models for their whānau to be physically active and healthy.
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