Opinion - There's nothing bashful about the Black Ferns. No shrinking violets, no passengers, no players who aren't worthy or robust enough to handle the rigours of international rugby.
England soundly beat the Black Ferns 43-12 in Exeter. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
There's nothing about this team that suggests they're mentally weak, no-one there who's in danger of deluding themselves.
This is a group of women as admirable and self-aware as any who have represented New Zealand in any code or any era.
And yet we in the media patronise them. And, yes, that does start at the top, with the token way New Zealand Rugby (NZR) treats the players, as if the women's game remains a novelty to them.
The Black Ferns got done this week. England absolutely annihilated them 43-12 in Exeter, but few people are prepared to say so.
Instead we have "learnings" and talk that the team will return "the mana" to the Black Ferns' jersey when the teams meet again on Monday (NZ time).
If the All Blacks got thrashed like that, all and sundry would be baying for blood. Quotes from former All Blacks or ex-national coaches would flood the airwaves and internet as people demanded answers or damned those who had let the nation down.
I've written this type of stuff before, but indulge me for a minute.
I hadn't covered a lot of female teams or athletes prior to being told, by a previous employer, that netball was to become my main round.
I was not a fan of the sport. I thought it rather silly, actually.
But when I stopped and thought, it wasn't the game I thought silly, nor the people who played or coached it. Rather, it was the matey coverage from the media.
The relentless promotion of teams and players, but none of the scrutiny.
It was as if those covering the sport had decided the players were all giggly and girly and not up to being told when they'd performed poorly.
What I found instead, within days of starting to deal with people, was these were serious women putting in serious effort for club, franchise and country. Far from hurting these people by taking an honest view, you were actually insulting them by not casting a critical gaze upon things.
The Black Ferns want to be taken seriously. Why wouldn't they? Like the netballers I encountered, these are seriously-dedicated athletes who are desperate to excel on the world stage.
They haven't fought to be paid or to get franchise teams established in this country because they like money. Our elite female rugby players simply want to be treated as such, and afforded the same opportunity as their male equivalents because they deserve it.
They are actually, in many cases, more dedicated and more professional - because of their previous amateur or semi-professional status - than male players and are entitled to that respect.
Only the governing body don't really respect them. If they did, then the Black Ferns wouldn't have gone two years between test matches.
The team were on a hiding to nothing against England. In the aftermath of that defeat at Exeter's Sandy Park, there's been no examination of what went wrong. No, just some PR prattle about Super Rugby Aupiki and who's in what squad for next year.
All that kind of thing does, sadly, is diminish the efforts and importance of NZR's flagship female team. It's as if the Black Ferns themselves are irrelevant and this tour is just a box-ticking exercise.
The Black Ferns don't want to be patronised, writes Hamish Bidwell. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
"Super Rugby Aupiki is a significant milestone in the growth of the women's game in our country and this group of players rightfully take their place in the history books. The competition not only provides players with a pathway to the Black Ferns, but opportunities off the field too,'' Chris Lendrum of NZR said this week.
Never mind the pathway, mate, the actual Black Ferns are in action now, even if you've obscured that fact by announcing squads for a competition that's still months away.
The media has to play its part too. It has to wonder aloud about how the Black Ferns get wing Ayesha Leti-I'iga into more space. It has to ask questions about why hooker Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate couldn't throw to the lineout or why midfield back Chelsea Alley kicked away so much possession.
It has to afford these women the same respect as we show our male players. It has to treat the results, like the players, as if they matter and as if people care about the outcomes.
When you gloss over defeats or only seek to accentuate positives, all you do is dumb things down and insult everyone's intelligence.
It's not so long ago that women were deemed too physically frail to run the 800 or 1500-metre events at the Olympics. The women's marathon only became part of the programme in 1984, for instance.
That seems absolutely absurd now, but it's no worse than the notion that female athletes aren't robust enough to cope with being covered properly by the media.
The Black Ferns don't want to be patronised. They want the respect and attention that their performances so richly deserve and we ought to be brave enough to give it to them.