What HAS David Nucifora ever done for Irish rugby...
Softly softly PR positive articles that wash over the women's game just won't cut it
Yesterday the Irish Times released an article where John O’Sullivan interviewed David Nucifora in a frustratingly gentle fluff piece.
Nucifora, who is leaving the IRFU after a decade at the helm as High Performance Director, is a former player capped twice with Australia, and former coach with both Brumbies and Blues. Nucifora joined in 2014, a little over a year after the Irish women won their first grand slam.
Taking over at the top of the women’s game, the women would sink to historical low after historical low during Nucifora’s reign. Failing to qualify for the world cup, wooden spoons, and claims of a total lack of trust from players.
The article in the Irish Times this weekend appeared to laud the many successes of his tenure, Six Nations titles, Grand slams, European cups, Sevens titles and Olympic qualifications. What it sought to wash over was that all the success, bar the women’s 7’s was with men’s rugby.
The article delved briefly into the women’s 15’s game and the lack of success, but it was utterly infuriating to read Nucifora speak about it, almost as though he was an outsider looking in, even interviewing for the job. In truth, he was it’s authoritarian ruler, and one that seemingly didn’t value the women’s game as much as the men’s.
In the Irish Times article, he spoke of the approaches needed to fix the women’s 15’s game - increasing playing numbers, promoting rugby in schools, building a decent domestic competition. One has to ask, although the article’s author didn’t, why in a decade where he himself spoke about being allowed “make and drive financial decisions”and where they trusted him to “invest in things that would get performance outcomes from Irish Rugby”, did the Irish women’s 15’s game plummet to previously unknown depths?
Nucifora was the man in charge, the person who made the big decisions and oversaw the entire rugby strategy for the IRFU. Yet even as we endure the longest of goodbye’s from the controversial figure, we see him and unfortunately much of the media, wash over the women’s game like it’s inconsequential and not a true measure of one’s success or failure.
Is it just me, or for the majority of us - if we failed at nearly 50% of our job for a decade, we would be considered unfit for the role? We would have got the boot long before the double digits were reached. Of course we would. But not within patriarchal structures of the IRFU, where women hold a lower value.
Strong words? You betcha. I don’t shy away from acknowledging the fact that the IRFU and the majority of rugby clubs across this island see women as a nice side show, a box to be ticked or even a burden. Some are so hostile to it, it all spills out.
Last year, Fiona Tomas wrote an article for the Telegraph in which she revealed a prominant figure in Leinster Rugby was overheard saying to an audience at a table while attending a club event “Who gives a fuck about women’s rugby?”
Though shocking to many, those of us involved in the women’s game for decades can tell you that’s a very common sentiment. Personally, a club I was a member of had a president who said at an AGM that “a rugby pitch is no place for a woman”. As a result, the women’s team disbanded. Another executive board member compared the women’s team to the under 14’s boys. No, not in terms of skill, ability or any performance metric, but in terms of the importance to the club itself.
Is the IRFU any different, absolutely not. It’s made up of the old elite of clubs across the country who have all climbed the ranks on boards that largely felt the exact same. Nucifora himself is an old elite of rugby, being overseen by the old elite of rugby. In truth, the women’s game hadn’t a hope.
During his time as High Performance Director, Nucifora allowed the women’s game to languish. Clubs begged for money to support them to build women’s programs. Today they get the same financial support that they did in 2017. AIL women’s clubs get €8,000 and a bag of balls. In this economy, that wouldn’t cover more than jersey’s and bus to games. The IRFU promised increased funding but it never came. All that financial freedom Nucifora had and the women’s top clubs got pittance.
In reality, Nucifora likely knew the old boys couldn’t give a toss, beyond the potential for bad press, about the women’s game. And he knew that the five year strategy launched in 2018 was a not going to be a performance measure for him, certainly not for the women’s game anyway. In fact, we failed to meet the headline targets.
When asked about the strategy, Nucifora called such things unrealistic and fanciful, and while I don’t entirely disagree, he followed up with day-to-day activities being what creates and nurtures a winning culture. So what was being done, or not being done day-to-day that lead to this failure? Well, it wasn’t listening to players, it wasn’t engaging with clubs and the community.
Nucifora specifically called that parts of the strategic plan weren’t acted upon. The burning question here is, why not? Why were cricial parts of the plan overlooked? Who was responsible for this failure? Were they held accountable? If it’s not Nucifora’s fault, if his hands were tied by those above him, why is he letting them off the hook and not calling them out? This is his legacy after all. This weak line, for me, is guaranteeing more of the same for women’s rugby.
If the governance or the board is responsible for holding him back, he has a duty to call that out and prevent repeated failures in the future. The big fix lies in changing the patriarchal culture that undermines those that truly want better for the women’s game. It starts with honesty about that culture. And it starts with listening to players, coaches, voluneets and clubs. As Nucifora says himself, it starts with community engagement.
Without that honesty, the legacy of David Nucifora is one of patriarchal failure, authoritatian rule, and being seen to tank the game we love. It’ll take a long long time to fix what has been broken. His successor has a mountain to climb now, I just hope he has the motivation to climb it and bring the rest of the community with him.
Ailbhe
Irish Women’s Rugby Supporters Club