NZ Rugby mulls World Cup bonus for Black Ferns

The Black Ferns were crowned champions after beating England 34-31 at the Rugby World Cup final.
Photo: Photosport / Alan Lee

The Black Ferns could soon be receiving a monetary bonus for their Rugby World Cup win on Saturday night, with New Zealand Rugby saying it wants to “do the right thing”.

Aotearoa is still revelling in the team’s victory, beating England 34-31 in one of New Zealand’s great sporting moments.

New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson wouldn’t commit to a figure but told Morning Report NZ Rugby were working through whether the team would receive anything.

“We would like to be in a position to do something pretty soon.”

The All Blacks players received $150,000 bonuses after their World Cup win in 2015.

The organisation wanted to “do the right thing”, Robinson said.

NZ Rugby was investing $40 million across provincial unions, he said, with a focus on improving women’s and girl’s rugby.

“We know there’s always expectation to do more and to do better and faster but we feel like we’re in a good space and now just have to … capture this momentum and move forward really quickly.”

There were almost 70 full contracted players across women’s 15s and sevens and about 115 players across Super Rugby with part time contracts, Robinson said.

However, many of the Black Ferns will go back to day jobs in the next few weeks.

Some of the professional women’s rugby contract retainers are between $35,000 and $70,000, with some Black Ferns earning between $60,000 and $130,000.

All Black Ferns sevens players were fully contracted with a tiered system for the 15s team.

Top All Blacks players reportedly earn around $1 million a year.

“We want to do more in the space and we want to move as quickly as we can,” Robinson said.

“This is a question of looking to grow this area of the game while balancing the needs of the athletes, of coaches, of the people that can support the high performance environments and whilst there’s obviously huge appetite to work with urgency around this, we want to get it right.”

There were plans to initiate much of this work before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he said.

NZ Rugby wasn’t able to invest like it wanted to in high performance or contracts during that time.

“To be fair, a lot of that was out of our hands,” he said.

“We saw the impact of that towards the end of last year on the tour the Black Ferns went on where clearly, especially England and France have moved ahead with professional domestic competitions and the ability to have more international rugby through that time, and we weren’t able to.”

The organisation needed to make sure the next wave of talent coming through were looked after well, he said.

“I think we’re a long way from pay parity at the moment,” former Black Ferns captain and now New Zealand Rugby board member Farah Palmer told Morning Report.

“We’re getting there, it’s not at the level of the men’s game yet but we’re definitely getting there.”

There were All Blacks on significant contracts and NZ Rugby wanted to make sure there was parity for the amount of games played and the commitment needed, Palmer said.

It was important the whole system of women’s rugby was look at, she said.

“We are committed, we’re not dropping the ball after this Rugby World Cup, we’re going to keep going.”

“We’ve definitely realised that we can capture some crowds and supporters that we haven’t captured before so we want to learn from that, we’re going to take some time to regather and review what we can learn from it.”

Initial audience figures show more than 1.3 million New Zealanders watched the final.

This was the turning point for women’s rugby, Sports Minister Grant Robertson said.

“There’s massive commercial opportunities I think for women’s rugby that now need to be taken up.”

It was important to make sure elite players had more games and there was a pipeline for players, he said.

“This is such an opportunity for us and as a country we need to grasp it. I know New Zealand rugby get that and they’re not alone in having a responsibility to be able to take this forward, we all do in our communities…” he said.