RugbyFest 1990 was a two-week festival of women's rugby, held in Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 between 19 August and 1 September 1990. The event has been inflated sometimes to the status of a mini-world cup. In reality with only four teams taking part, and lacking major nations such as France, England and Canada, it was never that. However it was still a significant step forward – the first ever world-wide multi-regional women's rugby tournament. Held only eight years after the first women's international it was a sign of how much the game had already expanded.

Status of internationals played at RugbyFest

Teams from Asia, North America and Europe took part alongside local sides in a series of 15-a-side fixtures. Participants included four "national" teams (originally there were to have been five, but Japan withdrew) and featured what are held by many to be the first internationals ever played by New Zealand and USSR/Russia.

In practice there is some dispute about how "official" the national teams were, not least because in some cases there was not yet a national women's governing body to grant official status. So, for example, the USA RFU considers all games by the USA team against "national" XVs at the tournament to be official "tests" whereas the New Zealand (or at least the New Zealand rugby almanack) lists the games as unofficial "New Zealand XV" fixtures - but includes data from from the tournament in its official player statistics. As the IRB provides no "official" ruling or listing of women's rugby internationals (the only list of any sort appears here) it can only be for the reader to decide on the status of these games.

Final table

Position	Nation	Games				Points		Table points
		played	won	drawn	lost	for	against
1		3	3	0	0	73	3	6
2		3	2	0	1	73	9	4
3		3	1	0	2	12	90	2
4		3	0	0	3	4	52	0

Results

Other "national team" fixtures

The festival also included a number of games between the "national" teams and local sides. Results were:

:

• 19 August 1990 Canterbury "B" 4, Netherlands 12
• 20 August 1990 Crusadettes 20, Netherlands 0
• 20 August 1990 Burnside-Merrivale 6, Netherlands 12
• 21 August 1990 Canterbury "A" 34, Netherlands 4
• 22 August 1990 Netherlands w/o v Tokyo
• 23 August 1990 Paremata-Plimmerton beat Netherlands (score not recorded)
• 24 August 1990 Netherlands beat Nagoya (score not recorded)
• 25 August 1990 Netherlands beat Tokyo (score not recorded)
• 27 August 1990 Wellington 10, Netherlands 4
• 1 September 1990 Auckland 25, Netherlands 0

:

• 27 August 1990 Canterbury 0, USA 12
• 28 August 1990 Auckland 0, USA 6

:

• 19 August 1990 Canterbury "A" 20, USSR 0
• 20 August 1990 Paremata-Plimmerton 0, USSR 0
• 26 August 1990 Belfast 16, USSR 14
• 27 August 1990 Auckland 25, USSR 0

See also

• Women's Rugby World Cup
  Women's Rugby World Cup
  The Women's Rugby World Cup is the premier international competition in rugby union for women. The tournament is organised by the sport's governing body the International Rugby Board...
  
  
• Women's international rugby results 1982-