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Puzi, the South African Rugby Game Development Manager to attract young girls to the game<br />

through men’s youth club so as makes the clubs more sustainable. Currently they are 15129<br />

amateur female <strong>rugby</strong> <strong>players</strong>, comprising <strong>of</strong> 7167 senior female <strong>players</strong>, 4143 teen female<br />

<strong>players</strong> and 3819 pre-teen female <strong>players</strong> (International Rugby Board, n.d)<br />

2.2.2 Provincial Women’s Rugby<br />

In August 2002, SARU staged the inaugural Inter-Provincial Tournament to give opportunity<br />

to a greater number <strong>of</strong> <strong>players</strong> to play representative <strong>rugby</strong>. This culminated in Falcons<br />

winning against Natal in a closely contested match on National Women’s Day (09 August<br />

2002). SARU then launched the Inter-Provincial League in 2003. In New Zealand, provincial<br />

<strong>rugby</strong> has been played since 1980 (Chester, Palenski, & McMillian, 1998), even though it was<br />

only accepted by the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in 1992 (Chu, Leberman, Howe, &<br />

Bachor, 2003). In South Africa, Provincial <strong>rugby</strong> is played once a month with the other three<br />

weeks dedicated to club <strong>rugby</strong>. Provincial games are played either in communities or as<br />

curtain raisers to provincial men’s games in major stadiums so as to promote the game to a<br />

broader spectator base.<br />

Blue Bulls and Eastern Province are the leading Provincial <strong>rugby</strong> teams as they both secured<br />

four and three consecutive Inter-Provincial titles between 2003-2006 and 2007-2009,<br />

respectively (SA Rugby, 2009).<br />

16

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