New Zealand women's rugby league has never been stronger

The Spinoff

9 hours ago

This year marks 30 years of the Kiwi Ferns and the return of the Warriors NRLW side. But to ensure the strength of the women's game continues at an elite level, we must safeguard grassroots footy.
A recent rousing 12-6 win over the North Queensland Cowboys saw 19-year-old prop Ivana Lauiti'iti make a storming debut, alongside teammate Tyra Wetere on the wing. Lauiti'iti's try, a defiant carry shrugging off four or five defenders, made the difference where it counted. But the precision of her hit on Cowboys fullback Jakiya Whitfeld, around the 67-minute mark, was instinctive, familiar even. The daughter of Warriors immortal, Ali Lauiti'iti, Ivana had little to say in a post-match interview. She didn't need to. Women's rugby league is surging with a ferocity of momentum that speaks for itself, with 2025 marking 30 years of the Kiwi Ferns. But the current propulsion did not occur in a vacuum – this was an operation decades in the making.
The first matches in women's rugby league were played in the 1960s and 1970s. Organised and sustained competitions emerged in the 1980s, with engagement peaking and falling in the 1990s, before gaining popularity again more recently. Ryan Bodman's work (Rugby League in New Zealand: A People's History) reveals, in incredible detail, that women's enthusiasm for the game can be traced to the early 20th century. Parnell managed to enlist 60-odd women to play a match in 1921. The rules were modified, and games were the equivalent of a practice run. But across the country – in Christchurch, Wellington, Onehunga and elsewhere – interest spread, with appeals made to established men's outfits for a women's competition and arranged fixtures.
Women in New Zealand had already undertaken heavy labour during the war. They had survived influenza. The push to play league was more difficult to repudiate on these grounds. Still, many of rugby league's governing bodies voiced concerns about women playing a rough-and-tumble contact sport given that, at this time, femininity was synonymous with fragility. On this basis, administrators refused to allow a formal comp. Some 40 years later, and tired of waiting, women took to the field for themselves.
In the interim years, 'lady leaguies' didn't wait for an invitation to get involved. The working-class ethos entrenched in the code found traction with Māori and Pasifika values. Rugby league involved the whole family, the aiga, the whānau. Women – mothers, sisters, nanas, daughters, aunts – were at the heart of the operation.
Initially, women's engagement in league echoed social, gendered expectations. Halftime oranges, fundraising, jersey washing, catering, cleaning, childcare, the social club, medical aides and so on fell to women. With the schoolboy's game however, many women took on administrative, committee-based and even coaching roles. This became a platform to tackle further responsibility at the club level and beyond, with women taking presidential roles as early as the late 1960s. The on-field expansion, though much slower, found genesis in this decade, but it wasn't until the 1970s that it really took hold. These innovators espoused a 'get on with it' attitude that became impossible to ignore.
The emergence of domestic competitions for women in the 1970s laid the groundwork for the development of the international game. League strongholds across the motu began to field women's sides that demonstrated as much nous with the Steeden as the men. Warriors NRLW manager Nadene Conlon has suggested the women's game may have been less technical, but there was more ball movement – so much so that in 1976, Manurewa sent their women's side across the Tasman in what might be considered the first clashes of a historic grudge between New Zealand and Australia.
But the longevity of these competitions were not always sustained, and it wasn't until the 1980s, with the swell in popularity of the Winfield Cup, that the women's game found consistent footing. At the turn of the decade, the domestic game began to grow its wings and concurrently, birthed the Kiwi Ferns.
Between 1992 and 1994 the Auckland women's competition grew from four teams to 24 teams. The time was ripe for a representative side and in 1995, the first national women's representative team was announced. In a Sky New Zealand-produced documentary on the Kiwi Ferns, inaugural president of the New Zealand Women's Rugby League Federation Christine Panapa recalled an initial, no-fuss attitude to the naming of the team (New Zealand women's rugby league), before her and NZRL chairman Gerald Ryan landed on the Kiwi Ferns in 1998.
Captained by Juanita Hall and coached by Janie Thompson, the 23-strong squad took off on a 21-day tour of Australia. But to get the team there was 'a full-time job', Panapa said. Winger Lynley Tierney said there was only a two-week turnaround from being named in the side to the tour, and they had to fundraise $2,000 each through raffles. If they didn't sell the tickets, they paid themselves.
In the same vein, Tierney said her boots fell apart at nationals, and she had to sell her vacuum for another pair. Since its inception, rugby league has run on the smell of an oily rag, but the women's game was a different beast altogether. There was no available funding: the players fundraised plane tickets, accommodation and catering – all the essential provisions for a rep footy side – to get across the ditch. But it paid off. The team won all seven matches, cementing themselves as the unofficial world champions – a title that endured for almost 20 years.
The triumph of that first Kiwi Ferns side isn't limited to their impact on the growth of the game, visibility of women in sport, or professional development pathways. This team established a legacy of dominance for the franchise. They scored 204 points across seven fixtures and conceded only 30 points. Not every match was a blowout, either. Nor was the tour without struggle. The 1995 Kiwi Ferns overcame injury, halftime deficits and a punishing playing schedule to claim that title.
More importantly, they concretised the jersey with a hard-won wairua. Today, to wear that jersey is to honour all the women whose blistered hands the game has passed through. The first official Women's Rugby League World Cup in 2000 solidified the Kiwi Ferns kaupapa with a searing grand final victory over Great Britain, 24-6.
In the 2008 World Cup, only the final of the women's competition was shown on TV, and not one of the women's world cup matches in 2013 was broadcast. But by 2017, every game of the Women's Rugby League World Cup was broadcast. Last year saw a 112% increase in player registration from 2022 for the domestic women's code. Around 30% of players in the NRLW claim New Zealand heritage.
In 2023, the entire Kiwi Ferns squad was comprised of professional NRLW players. A collective bargaining agreement was reached in that same year between the NRL and the Rugby League Players Association, the terms of which are set for five years. This is the first time in women's rugby league that such an agreement has been negotiated. The salary cap is set at $1.38m for 2025, with a $45,825 minimum wage per player. These figures will increase to $1.66m and $55,472 respectively for the 2027 season. Crucially, provisions relating to pregnancy, parental care responsibilities and private health insurance are also included.
With the expansion of the NRLW to 10 teams, and the financial opportunities that arise with professional development, it is inevitable that the local game will feel the pressure. But in order to maintain and develop the pool of world-class talent at the representative level, there is a need to future-proof the local game. This protection, ensuring local clubs can continue to produce elite players, alongside more generous sponsorship and broadcasting, must happen concurrently to the incentivisation of the NRLW.
The fervour of the women's game in New Zealand owes that much to the inaugural 1995 Kiwi Ferns team. From Nadene Conlon, Laura Waretini and Luisa Avaiki, to Honey Bill Williams (Honey Hireme-Smiler), Krystal Rota, Apii Nicholls and Mele Hufanga – there is an irreplaceable whakapapa to protect and celebrate. But to grow that legacy, to keep the wairua so intrinsic to that jersey intact, and the histories of blood, mud, sweat and tears etched into it, we have to protect that which makes it singularly special – grassroots footy.