Whitney Hansen will get her chance with Black Ferns

Whitney Hansen
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

New Zealand Rugby’s adamant it’s got the right people on the coaching staff of the world champion Black Ferns, despite no women making the line-up.

An all male staff has been appointed to lead the national women’s side, with Tony Christie, Steve Jackson and Mike Delany named to join head coach Allan Bunting.

With former Black Ferns assistant coach Whitney Hansen having taken up a role with Aupiki side Matatū, NZR’s Hannah Porter says they need to develop greater depth among female coaches.

“We think we’ve got a really experienced team especially with a short runway into the next World Cup, only two and a half years to go.

“We need the best people to be coaching our national team and we need to give the players the best chance to go on and succeed on the world stage and history would suggest that both on the fifteens and sevens stage we do that really well.”

However Porter does know they’ve got some areas to improve.

“We need to focus on the pathway at the same time of growing our coaches .

“Women’s rugby in this country is still relatively young in terms of the professional opportunities that have been available to particularly our coaches but also our staff in the women’s game.”

With Whitney Hansen not available and only two women head coaches in Super Rugby Aupiki, Victoria Grant at the Hurricanes Poua and Crystal Kaua at the Chiefs Manawa, Porter says it’s obvious there is a lack of experience at that level.

“We only had the people to choose from that applied for the role, so out of the applicants we certainly think we’ve got the strongest group available.

“However we certainly realise there’s some growth and development that we need to be better with at supporting our females in this country particularly at the coaching space.”

Allan Bunting with the Black Ferns Sevens
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

While Hansen has taken up the new role of Matatū Head of Rugby, Porter expects to see her back in black sometime soon.

“Absolutely, we’ll be staying close to Whitney and her development and helping her over the next (World Cup) cycle.

Porter says they will have apprenticeship type roles coming into the Black Ferns over the next couple of years.

“We want to make sure that we are giving people experiences of coming into the national programme and not just waiting until they’ve been through their development pathway to get that experience.”

Porter admits the aim is to have more women coaching across the board.

“The ultimate goal would be that we’ve got a group of men and women that love coaching the game no matter if it’s men’s or women’s rugby, at a development level where they can step into any of those environments.

“I’d go a step further to say wouldn’t it be great if we had a female in the All Blacks campaign at some point.”