OCEANIA Women’s Rugby director Cathy Wong has revealed the participation of Fijian women in rugby programs increased tremendously in just three years from 7500 to 13,633 participants.
She made these comments during an Oceania Sevens Rugby Championship press conference at the Grand Pacific Hotel, earlier this week.
“This is a huge growth as far as women development in rugby. At this point I would like to highlight the achievement of one of our member unions that is the Fiji Rugby Union (FRU). In 2015 FRU registered 7500 girls in to the “Get in to Rugby program”. This number went up to 13,000 in 2016, to date we have 13,633 girls registered into the program.
She said this indicated the popularity of women’s rugby had increased also their participation and contribution to their respective unions were being recognised and implemented.
“Our aim is to grow the game of rugby both for men and women,” Wong said.
“World Rugby aims to be global leaders in sport, where women are involved in rugby have equity both on and off the field. This is reflected in the World Rugby plan, the Oceania Rugby plan and in the Fiji Rugby Union (FRU) plan.
She said Oceania Rugby strived in providing more opportunities in training on and off the field.
“That’s training in leadership, in management, coaching, strength and conditioning, training in sports science and sports medicine. Their data shows that the percentage of females participating in these programs was just five per cent.
“People say why only 5 per cent before we had nothing so that is a growth from 0 per cent to 5 per cent is a huge growth as far as training and preparing women in terms of leadership on and off the field.
They want to show the world that rugby is a global game of equal opportunities for both men and women. At present Fiji has 16 active women’s clubs and FRU has registered 35 schools that now have women’s sevens teams.
