A number of juicy preconceptions & stereotypes took a tumble yesterday when we paid our first visit to the Stoop of the 2010/2011 season to attend the Women’s Rugby World Cup Final, in which the holders New Zealand beat England 13-10.

My only previous experience of watching women’s rugby in the flesh had been limited to a handful of games featuring the Harlequins Ladies team. They’re a club side, of course, and not one that could claim to rank in what might be termed the ‘Premiership’ level of women’s rugby in England … so, in that sense, direct comparisons are a little unfair. Nevertheless, there was no comparison at all between the fare on offer from the Harlequins Ladies and what we witnessed yesterday. These were professional female athletes, in all but name and … er … fact (they don’t actually get paid).

There have been four Women’s Rugby World Cups since 1998 and New Zealand, whose team style themselves the ‘Black Ferns’, have prevailed in all of them. This is hardly surprising, given the national heritage of the country. Its population – now 4.3 million – has always been sport-obsessed, and particularly rugby-obsessed. It’s a truism to state that New Zealand females are knowledgeable about rugby and the fortunes of the All Blacks – I have personally heard examples of the species admit that this is inevitable when these are the only topics upon which Kiwi men can be drawn into conversation. But it’s more than that. Somehow rugby, along with Maori customs and the ‘outdoor life’, has become so embedded in the psyche of the New Zealand nation that it is part of how every citizen defines himself (or herself). Those who have been to The Land Of The Long White Cloud [the Maori name for New Zealand] – which doesn’t include myself – always remark upon the degree to which rugby dominates everything. I’d say it was the nation’s religion if that, in this increasingly secular world, was not an inadequate analogy.

Yesterday’s game was a glorious affirmation of sporting endeavour & guts. Both sides went about their business with full-bloodied commitment. The running & tackling was dynamic and at times spectacular. True, some elements of the game were ‘inferior’ to the male version (the place-kicking stood out in this respect, probably – the sports scientists would tell us – because of the different physiology of female legs & muscles) but, generally speaking, the on-field skills, not least the passing from hand, stood comparison. Despite the ferocity of the collisions, the aggression never spilled over into gratuitous violence … a statement that could rarely be made of the men’s game.

To be honest, despite the fact that it was not impossible that England might have won the match, the score-line somewhat flattered them. The Black Ferns were definitely the superior side – they must have had 60% to 70% of the possession & territory - but the England defence was outstanding and they never gave up. That’s three World Cup Finals in succession they’ve now lost, each one by a lesser margin than the last.

As an event, as a day out, the 2010 Women’s Rugby World Cup was an undiluted success. The 13,500 crowd was not quite a sell-out, but it was the largest attendance ever at a women’s international match. We regular Stoop-attenders noticed a difference in the nature of the crowd – many more females than normal, a good proportion of them plainly long-time women’s rugby aficionados, and a true ‘festival’ atmosphere (there were groups of players & supporters from all the countries taking part in the tournament). We even had a streaker, though the debate in our party continued in the pub afterwards as to whether its gender was male or female. The score was 7-0 to New Zealand at half-time and the tension/excitement grew exponentially as the clock ticked down after the break and England fought their way back into the game, to the point of drawing level (10-10) at one point.

Hats off to women’s rugby, then – and, of course, to the participating teams, the tournament organisers and indeed everyone else involved. There will have been many new converts filing away from the Stoop last night.