The ex-ARL boss never pushed the women’s rugby league because doctors told him not to. Now, following the success of the NRLW, he regrets it.
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‘Why didn’t we do this 30 years ago?’ Quayle’s regret over women’s game
Chief Sports Writer
March 4, 2022 — 4.00am
John Quayle eased back into his lounge chair on Sunday, remote in one hand, a glass of chardonnay possibly in the other, and settled in for an afternoon of rugby league.
In another life, as boss of the NSWRL and then ARL, he would’ve scoffed at the notion of women playing the game, let alone sitting down to watch three consecutive matches in one afternoon, all of it live on Channel Nine and Fox Sports.
Yet here he was, watching Titans lock
Destiny Brill snap up the ball at dummy half, charge at the line, attract four St George Illawarra defenders, wrestle her arms free before getting an offload to
Shannon Moto, who dived over for the try.
“I thought of Beetson,” Quayle said, referring to the Eastern Suburbs legend
Arthur Beetson, who was one of Quayle’s great mates before his death in 2011.
Quayle then revealed a deep regret: “Why didn’t we do this 30 years ago?”
He didn’t do it because the medical advice from the doctors of the day was clear: women shouldn’t tackle each other.
“It was the late 80s, early 90s,” Quayle explained. “The medical advice was we were not ready for women to play a physical contact sport like this. There were concerns that the game could be sued, all that sort of stuff. They could play Mini or Mod league, but girls had to stop playing at 12 years of age. When I flicked it on [last Sunday] to see how it was presented, at the ground and on TV, it was just incredible. But the thing that impressed me most was the skill. There was no wrestle … As a former administrator, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Why didn’t we do this 30 years ago?’”
The NRLW is underway, eliciting the usual spectrum of emotions whenever women play traditional male sports, especially the football codes. Debates about equal pay, or just more pay, dominate discussion. The outright hostility demonstrated by one side, and the lack of perspective on the other, helps nobody.
They are also moot points in many respects because the last time I looked nobody was standing in my lounge-room, pointing a shotgun at me, insisting I watch women’s rugby league. Is someone in yours? Call the police.
The opening round of the NRLW was a mixed bag: incredible skill, brutal physicality, exciting tries scored, thrilling climaxes, and often slow and sloppy play. I drifted in and out of watching, sometimes entertained, sometimes not, much like I do with some NRL matches.
But whether you or I enjoy the NRLW is irrelevant. Our perceptions doesn’t make it less valid to those who do and, especially, to those who play it. The NRL is investing in the competition because it has no choice: the gates have flown back in women’s sport with rugby league competing with the AFL, rugby union, football and cricket in the race for the hearts and minds of the kiddies and the credit card details of the mums and dads who buy tickets and merchandise.
Plenty of people, mostly men, blather about the women’s game being a waste of money but the $5 million the NRL spends annually on the elite competition is a drop in the ocean for a code that’s secured $2 billion in broadcast funding over the next five years.
Rugby Australia didn’t quite cash in on the women’s sevens team winning gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but the AFLW has quickly established national dominance like its male equivalent. The NRL is conscious of this and doesn’t want to be left behind, although it’s taken a prudent, cautious approach to building its competition.
There have been distinct gains since the NRLW’s first season in 2017. It is the game’s fast-growing demographic with participation at all levels growing from 10,000 players to 35,000. There are presently 1500 female coaches and 500 referees.
Meanwhile, on TV, the audience is also growing. The women’s annual State of Origin attracts nearly one million viewers. On Sunday, about 204,000 watched Parramatta’s thrilling victory over Newcastle when
Maddie Studdon kicked the winning field goal – up nine per cent on 2020 (the NRLW competition was cancelled last year).
Which brings us to
Abbi Church, 23, who came on late in the match for the Eels and represents the type of commitment young women are making to play the sport at an elite level. She grew up in Werombi, near Camden, supported South Sydney like her dad but longed to play the game. She played touch and OzTag until Group 6 introduced a women’s comp three years ago.
Around the same time, she became a paramedic and over the past two years has been on the frontline in Sydney’s west as COVID-19 ripped through the suburbs. She squeezed in training between exhausting 16-hour shifts.
After the Eels included her in their squad this season, Church decided to work part-time.
“I’ve had to sacrifice a few things to make it work – but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity,” she said. “I was working four 12-hour shifts a week but recently dropped to part-time – just two shifts – because with my job I can’t just finish and then run to training. I’ve had to sacrifice that but a lot of women in the game have. They come to training from work, or finish training, get a quick sleep then work a night shift.”
Church laughs when I tell her about the medical advice offered to Quayle 30 years ago. “We’re not biologically the same as men, nobody is saying that,” she said. “But the way the game’s evolved, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be out there, running around, hitting each other.”
Nick Politis is the most passionate Roosters man that ever lived and there the chairman was in Newcastle on Sunday, showing up in the dressing room after the club’s NRLW team had suffered a heavy defeat to the Broncos.
“All the players’ eyes lit up,” said one official. “They felt like they were part of the club.”
Women have supported and followed rugby league for decades, although the behaviour of some male players in recent years has turned many away from the game.
The advancement of the women’s game can only help heal some of those wounds. Is that a bad thing?
As John Quayle suggests, perhaps rugby league should have done it sooner.
