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Women's NRL

T-Boon

Coach
Messages
15,322
Every body agrees that the WNRL should have a draft and free agency right?

First thing I would be doing is ringing that trans gender girl that the AFL rejected and inviting her to enter the draft. She will not have the same advantages in RL and this is one way we get a leg up on AFL for equality points. She has a pretty big profile now in the equality sphere.
 
Messages
14,507
Every body agrees that the WNRL should have a draft and free agency right?

First thing I would be doing is ringing that trans gender girl that the AFL rejected and inviting her to enter the draft. She will not have the same advantages in RL and this is one way we get a leg up on AFL for equality points. She has a pretty big profile now in the equality sphere.

Why not?

RL embraces all people.
 

T-Boon

Coach
Messages
15,322
The whole double header thing means they play in front of a crowd of 2000 and people have to pay for a standard NRL ticket or even a finals ticket to get in.

That’ll keep the new families out who just want to bring their daughters to a first ever match.

Promote it as free entry for anyone who turns up prior to kick off in the girls game (or maybe even up to half time).

As we know typical RL/sports fans turn up about 5 minutes before kick off in the main game and under 20s or reserves is generally played in front of a few hundred at best.

Anyone willing to turn up prior to kick off (or maybe up to half time in the girls game) to support its progress should get in free and get a free mens game at the end as well. They will be paying for food if they stay that long so everyone wins except Peter Fitzsimmons.
 
Messages
14,139
Whatever teams they have they need to allow and even encourage players from all over the world to take part. Even if the money involved isn't huge they could surely invite the best players from England, France and Canada to come over for six weeks to play. There isn't a big enough talent pool that they can limit it to just players in Sydney, SE Qld, Newcastle and Auckland. I'm sure the NRL won't do anything to encourage this but they should. If it's just players from the same player pools it won't do much for the game as a whole. The Commonwealth Nines has a women's section so there will be players on show in February who could be drafted in, on top of the ones we saw in the WC.
 

The Great Dane

First Grade
Messages
7,785
Every body agrees that the WNRL should have a draft and free agency right?

First thing I would be doing is ringing that trans gender girl that the AFL rejected and inviting her to enter the draft. She will not have the same advantages in RL and this is one way we get a leg up on AFL for equality points. She has a pretty big profile now in the equality sphere.

Yeah nah.

Look don’t get me wrong but it’s a very bad idea, you want to put a 6 foot tall 100 kilogram person with more than double the muscle density of any of the other women playing on to the same field as relatively average women, it’s just asking for trouble in sport as physical as ours.

I don’t care about the fact that she’s a trans women, I really don’t, but it’s simply not fair or more importantly safe to put someone with such a large inherent physical advantage into a game like ours.

If you don’t agree with me then that’s fine, but I implore you to go watch a Fallon Fox fight...
 
Last edited:

T-Boon

Coach
Messages
15,322
If you don’t agree with me then that’s fine, but I implore you to go watch a Fallon Fox fight...

I don't necessarily agree with you but I am not about to deny that the issues you raise aren't fully valid and possibly tip the scales in favour of not doing it. I just have a feeling her advantages aren't going to mean much in league.

I am NOT going to watch a Fallon Fox fight or any other womens fight.
 

Shorty

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
15,555
This is great news and honestly has the chance to strengthen rugby league as a whole.

Definitely needs to be set up right though.
@beave I agree! My mate plays men's netball apparently it's pretty cool.
 

OldPanther

Coach
Messages
13,404
I don't necessarily agree with you but I am not about to deny that the issues you raise aren't fully valid and possibly tip the scales in favour of not doing it. I just have a feeling her advantages aren't going to mean much in league.

I am NOT going to watch a Fallon Fox fight or any other womens fight.

The advantages would be amplified in league.
 

Jatz15

Juniors
Messages
45
Yeah nah.

Look don’t get me wrong but it’s a very bad idea, you want to put a 6 foot tall 100 kilogram person with more than double the muscle density of any of the other women playing on to the same field as relatively average women, it’s just asking for trouble in sport as physical as ours.

I don’t care about the fact that she’s a trans women, I really don’t, but it’s simply not fair or more importantly safe to put someone with such a large inherent physical advantage into a game like ours.

If you don’t agree with me then that’s fine, but I implore you to go watch a Fallon Fox fight...
Hannah does not now have twice the muscle density of a natural born women. She posted an article recently where she told a story about being approached by some of the female players in the comp she plays in who said, 'We dont mean to be rude, but you really arent very strong are you'. The answer is, no, she is not very strong, and now she has less testosterone than a natural women, no amount of training is going to make her strong, as its the testosterone that causes muscle to respond to loading.

People look at her size and masculine appearance and infer a strength that would befit that size in a man, this is not the reality however.

Fallon Fox got TKOd by a (not highly ranked) female featherweight.
 

Jatz15

Juniors
Messages
45
Every body agrees that the WNRL should have a draft and free agency right?

First thing I would be doing is ringing that trans gender girl that the AFL rejected and inviting her to enter the draft. She will not have the same advantages in RL and this is one way we get a leg up on AFL for equality points. She has a pretty big profile now in the equality sphere.
It is a moot point I think. She is already committed to the next season of AFL in Canberra. She will then be looked at for the next draft. As the reasoning of the AFL seemed to be more along the lines that it was not long enough on testosterone suppressors for the 2017 draft, she is highly likely to be deemed eligible for the next draft.

Not being drafted is more likely to be due to not being good enough, than being transgender. She will struggle to meet the aerobic capacity requirements of AFLW, and by all reports, is slow. By 2019, most teams will have gone past needing a large, lumbering, slow, not very strong or very fit ruckwomen.

Cannot really see a role for that in RL either.
 

The Great Dane

First Grade
Messages
7,785
Hannah does not now have twice the muscle density of a natural born women. She posted an article recently where she told a story about being approached by some of the female players in the comp she plays in who said, 'We dont mean to be rude, but you really arent very strong are you'. The answer is, no, she is not very strong, and now she has less testosterone than a natural women, no amount of training is going to make her strong, as its the testosterone that causes muscle to respond to loading.

People look at her size and masculine appearance and infer a strength that would befit that size in a man, this is not the reality however.

Her anecdotes are all well and good, but her muscle density and size are biological facts, and unless she was on puberty blockers before she hit puberty (which isn't the case) their is no getting around those facts.

Sure with the testosterone blockers and estrogen her muscles might be smaller then expected in your average adult biological male, and with them she may find it hard to build muscle as easily as your average male may expect, however the density wouldn't be effected by those drugs this late in the game.

Fallon Fox got TKOd by a (not highly ranked) female featherweight.

Have you watched Fallon Foxs fights?

I've watched a few including the one she lost, and frankly the only reason that Evans-Smith was able to beat Fox was because Fox is a terrible fighter, she has basically only very basic martial arts skill and was relying on brute strength to be able to out muscle her opponents to ground them and then wail on her opponents like a silverback would a man, on a couple of occasions she won by wailing on them for a time then putting her opponents in relatively simple submissions once they were so battered that they didn't really know what was happening.

Evans-Smith managed to counter (most) of Foxs' attempts to ground and wail her, and with all due respect to Evans-Smith either she got some of the fluky of flukiest hits on Fox of all time or Fox threw the fight, most people would say the latter as the timing of Foxs' loss was to coincidental as it was at the height of the outrage surrounding her career and conveniently was able to come out after the fight and say 'look I can be beaten, I'm not that dangerous', personally I don't have an opinion on whether or not she threw the match, however I can understand the suspicion.
Surely you also know that the potential of Fox throwing the fight wasn't the only controversy surrounding the fight (with the ref missing the bell and all), and you also know that after the fight when there was talk of a rematch Evans-Smith said that she wouldn't fight Fox again and that Fox should be banned from fighting against women!

Watching Fallon Foxs fights is a terrible experience cause it's not watching a fair fight, it's watching a person be beaten half to death with not a lot they can do to stop it, frankly it's f##king disgusting, and maybe those experiences have slightly tainted my opinions on trans women participating in female contact sports (I don't really have a problem with them competing in non-contact sports despite the inherent advantages that they have in most of those as well, mainly cause the risk of serious injury and death isn't raised for their opponents), but for very good reason, and I can't see Hannah Mouncey participating in the AFLW or a women's RL comp being much different frankly..
 

Jatz15

Juniors
Messages
45
Her anecdotes are all well and good, but her muscle density and size are biological facts, and unless she was on puberty blockers before she hit puberty (which isn't the case) their is no getting around those facts.

Sure with the testosterone blockers and estrogen her muscles might be smaller then expected in your average adult biological male, and with them she may find it hard to build muscle as easily as your average male may expect, however the density wouldn't be effected by those drugs this late in the game.



Have you watched Fallon Foxs fights?

I've watched a few including the one she lost, and frankly the only reason that Evans-Smith was able to beat Fox was because Fox is a terrible fighter, she has basically only very basic martial arts skill and was relying on brute strength to be able to out muscle her opponents to ground them and then wail on her opponents like a silverback would a man, on a couple of occasions she won by wailing on them for a time then putting her opponents in relatively simple submissions once they were so battered that they didn't really know what was happening.

Evans-Smith managed to counter (most) of Foxs' attempts to ground and wail her, and with all due respect to Evans-Smith either she got some of the fluky of flukiest hits on Fox of all time or Fox threw the fight, most people would say the latter as the timing of Foxs' loss was to coincidental as it was at the height of the outrage surrounding her career and conveniently was able to come out after the fight and say 'look I can be beaten, I'm not that dangerous', personally I don't have an opinion on whether or not she threw the match, however I can understand the suspicion.
Surely you also know that the potential of Fox throwing the fight wasn't the only controversy surrounding the fight (with the ref missing the bell and all), and you also know that after the fight when there was talk of a rematch Evans-Smith said that she wouldn't fight Fox again and that Fox should be banned from fighting against women!

Watching Fallon Foxs fights is a terrible experience cause it's not watching a fair fight, it's watching a person be beaten half to death with not a lot they can do to stop it, frankly it's f##king disgusting, and maybe those experiences have slightly tainted my opinions on trans women participating in female contact sports (I don't really have a problem with them competing in non-contact sports despite the inherent advantages that they have in most of those as well, mainly cause the risk of serious injury and death isn't raised for their opponents), but for very good reason, and I can't see Hannah Mouncey participating in the AFLW or a women's RL comp being much different frankly..
It is commonly said, and commonly believed, on the basis of nothing that I can find, that puberty sets your musculature in stone. The idea that if you go through puberty as a man, you get 'male muscle', and if you then transition, you are a female with 'male muscle' is very appealing as it accords with the standard idea of the sexes.

It is however untrue. There is little innate difference between muscle in men and women. The large differences that do exist are almost entirely due to testosterone, and the response to testosterone is dynamic. The changes to male muscle that occur as a consequence of testosterone, are almost entirely undone if testosterone is removed for a significant length of time.

Here is a brief summary I wrote about a scientific journal on the topic.

'In summary, post puberty, males have larger diameter muscle fibres, with a higher proportion of fast twitch types, producing greater forces and contraction rates, but faster fatigue. If testosterone is removed, fibre diameter decreases, and fast twitch fibre proportion falls, force and contraction rates decrease and fatigue resistance increases. In other words, most of the difference is hormonal, and if you remove the testosterone exposure from male muscle, it starts to look and behave increasingly like female muscle'.

In short, muscle density and size in men post puberty relates to the testosterone exposure of puberty, and is not an irreversible product of puberty. The condition of male muscle post puberty depends on the continued exposure of the muscle to testosterone.

I know nothing about Fallon Fox other than her notoriety.

I would note that generally there seems to be a rough equivalency between athletic performance as a man, and as a woman, ie, if you are in the top 10% of 400m runners as a man, but not the top 5%, you tend to fall about the same place amongst women after transition. Hannah was a strong, but slow man, she is now a strong but slow woman.

Article is here if you wish to read it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4285578/
 

siv

First Grade
Messages
6,563
Promote it as free entry for anyone who turns up prior to kick off in the girls game (or maybe even up to half time).

As we know typical RL/sports fans turn up about 5 minutes before kick off in the main game and under 20s or reserves is generally played in front of a few hundred at best.

Anyone willing to turn up prior to kick off (or maybe up to half time in the girls game) to support its progress should get in free and get a free mens game at the end as well. They will be paying for food if they stay that long so everyone wins except Peter Fitzsimmons.

You need to understand where the NRL is heading here

RG and NYC both have been killed off

You can also only play 2 games on game day

It will now by NRL and W-NRL

If they need extra money for the W-NRL clubs it will come from grassroots
 

Stallion

First Grade
Messages
7,467
You need to understand where the NRL is heading here

RG and NYC both have been killed off

You can also only play 2 games on game day

It will now by NRL and W-NRL

If they need extra money for the W-NRL clubs it will come from grassroots

I have a hunch the women's game will rate well! Maybe that will gain extra revenue? Along with feminine commercial products wanting a piece of the positive exposure in a growing market previously untapped by rugby-league.
 

Springs09

Juniors
Messages
1,903
Every body agrees that the WNRL should have a draft and free agency right?

First thing I would be doing is ringing that trans gender girl that the AFL rejected and inviting her to enter the draft. She will not have the same advantages in RL and this is one way we get a leg up on AFL for equality points. She has a pretty big profile now in the equality sphere.

Oh sweet! Where do I sign up for the WNRL draft?
 

Springs09

Juniors
Messages
1,903
I don't necessarily agree with you but I am not about to deny that the issues you raise aren't fully valid and possibly tip the scales in favour of not doing it. I just have a feeling her advantages aren't going to mean much in league.

I am NOT going to watch a Fallon Fox fight or any other womens fight.

Their advantages would mean more in league...

It's probably only second behind fighting sports where physicality means so much.
 

Springs09

Juniors
Messages
1,903
It is commonly said, and commonly believed, on the basis of nothing that I can find, that puberty sets your musculature in stone. The idea that if you go through puberty as a man, you get 'male muscle', and if you then transition, you are a female with 'male muscle' is very appealing as it accords with the standard idea of the sexes.

It is however untrue. There is little innate difference between muscle in men and women. The large differences that do exist are almost entirely due to testosterone, and the response to testosterone is dynamic. The changes to male muscle that occur as a consequence of testosterone, are almost entirely undone if testosterone is removed for a significant length of time.

Here is a brief summary I wrote about a scientific journal on the topic.

'In summary, post puberty, males have larger diameter muscle fibres, with a higher proportion of fast twitch types, producing greater forces and contraction rates, but faster fatigue. If testosterone is removed, fibre diameter decreases, and fast twitch fibre proportion falls, force and contraction rates decrease and fatigue resistance increases. In other words, most of the difference is hormonal, and if you remove the testosterone exposure from male muscle, it starts to look and behave increasingly like female muscle'.

In short, muscle density and size in men post puberty relates to the testosterone exposure of puberty, and is not an irreversible product of puberty. The condition of male muscle post puberty depends on the continued exposure of the muscle to testosterone.

I know nothing about Fallon Fox other than her notoriety.

I would note that generally there seems to be a rough equivalency between athletic performance as a man, and as a woman, ie, if you are in the top 10% of 400m runners as a man, but not the top 5%, you tend to fall about the same place amongst women after transition. Hannah was a strong, but slow man, she is now a strong but slow woman.

Article is here if you wish to read it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4285578/

Muscle density isn't the problem, it's bone density.

A Jillaroo would potentially be killed in any game of U18s, and it's not because 18-year-old boys have big muscles.

Transwomen should not be competing in sports like this.
 

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