Ah, that wonderful time between Christmas and New Year where you do nothing but eat cheese, watch TV, lounge around, and also, watch the Big Game! For those of you who aren't aware, the Big Game is between Harlequins and another team, which has been a tradition started in 2008 at the English Rugby HQ - Twickenham.
The women's premiership match between Harlequins and Wasps attracted over 9,000 fans, a world record for a competitive women's club game. The game ended 29-5 to the premiership winners, Quins, but brilliant performances came from both sides.
As amazing as this game was, there were several talking points which stemmed from the event. All which I will run through below.
Hospitality for men's fans only. As an event branded as a 'double header', the inclusiveness for women's fans was definitely not there. It logically just doesn't make any sense, why host for one set of fans, but not the other? You would be making money off of the women's hospitality!
Lunch is served at the same time as the women's KO. Now this is one of the weirdest decisions made by whoever planned this. I understand that yes, they need to eat. But couldn't they have arranged it an hour or even half an hour before the game kicked off? It just doesn't make sense either.
The Harlequins women clearly playing in men's kit. As spectators, we could see the sizing was off with the shirts, they were baggy and not tight to the body as they should have been. They weren't match fit shirts, and therefore the Quins players were exposed to the risk of being held by their shirts. Not only this, but the women were playing with no names on the back, whereas the men had their names on. This is poor from both Quins and adidas. I'll insert a picture of both compared.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE:
The first set of shirts to the left of this writing are the women's shirts, poorly laid out, clearly too big and without names on them.
The second set of shirts are the men's shirts, nicely laid out in the changing rooms, shirts that are going to fit the men and also named shirts!
If these shirts are 'unisex' I have to question, why? Because in all honesty I can't exactly see Joe Marler fitting into one of Vickii Cornborough's shirts.
How hard is it to actually make a duel header, duel?
BT Sport are a lot to blame for the outrage after this set of rugby games too. Pete Tong, a DJ, came onto the pitch shortly after the end of the women's match. They were labelling this 'pre match entertainment' but why do you need that as a build up if you're already had one brilliant game of rugby beforehand?
All in all, the AP15's game was a brilliant one, both teams playing their hearts out. Applauds have to go to both teams for going out with such passion and pride.
Let's just hope it's a different story for Big Game 14.
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