Southland women's rugby officials target Farah Palmer Cup

Tuesday, 11 June 2019

Sipa Saili on the run during the Southland women's club rugby game against Pioneer in Invercargill on Sunday. Saili's team will take on Blues in the Southland final on Sunday.

Thirteen of the 14 Mitre 10 Cup provinces will this year line teams up in the New Zealand premier domestic women's rugby competition - the odd one out being Southland.

But those driving women's rugby in the province are on a mission, they have set the goal to have a Southland team ready to play in the Farah Palmer Cup in 2020.

The revival of a women's club competition last year was a starting point.

This year another step has been taken.

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For the first time in many years, Southland will field a senior women's representative 15-a-side team, with a five-game campaign put together.

Southland will play games against Otago B, Canterbury B, North Otago, and Farah Palmer Cup team Tasman.

Rugby Southland women's development officer and high-performance coordinator Mere Baker was excited they had been able to put together an intense two-month schedule.

Baker has been in the role for six weeks and said it was a matter of building on what previous women's development officer Scott Eade had already established.

Baker is from Riverton but played her rugby for Canterbury before stepping into the coaching ranks.

She coached professionally in the United States as part of an Olympic development programme and also coached in Australia, Europe, and at a club in Japan.

While Southland has not been able to field a representative 15-a-side team for many years Baker said the province had a strong history of producing good women's players.

She would love to see those players back in the province wearing the maroon jersey.

The coaching group overseeing the Southland women's team this year includes Stags centurion Jason Rutledge, Barry Smith, and Sean Cairns, with Vinnie Yeo managing the team.

The four were last year in charge of the Southland under-48kg age-group team and have decided to remain together to take on the challenge of the Southland women's team.

Baker was expecting some clarification in the next couple of weeks from New Zealand Rugby around what was required to field a team in the Farah Palmer Cup competition next year.

However, she said a key was to show they are competitive throughout the five games this season.

'The game against Tasman will be good for us. They play in the Farah Palmer Cup and it will show us where we are at.'

A women's academy has also been set up to help in the development of about 30 players in Southland.

Baker said it was a logistically challenging given the players were based throughout Southland, but each of the players will be handed strength and conditioning programmes and their progress will be monitored.

It will be a big day on Sunday for Southland women's rugby with the club finals to be played at Rugby Park.

All up three games will be played at Rugby Park, starting with the play-off for fifth between Pioneer and Woodlands at 12pm.

Wakatipu and Excelsior-Eastern will square-off for third at 1pm before the grand final between Blues and Marist at 2pm.

Baker said both teams possessed exciting backlines and she was predicting a thrilling final.

Blues went through the round-robin unbeaten, while Marist's only blip was a 49-17 loss to Blues in week one of the competition.

The Southland squad will be named following the finals.