Ascending four categories in four years has not been enough for the Barça women’s rugby girls to enter the club section, currently made up of the men’s team. They are the Associació Veterans Rugbi FC Barcelona, with a retro shield and recycled shirts from previous seasons. The meteoric rise of some girls who defend the Barça brand without the rights to belong to the club. Without his economic umbrella, his patronage. That is why they have to seek support to cover a modest budget between 60,000 and 70,000 euros in order to debut in the Iberdrola League, the highest category of Spanish rugby.
Paco Peña, deputy director of the Barça rugby section, was the first president of the association. He remembers the anecdote that he created a team based on a phrase from his daughter, Claudia Peña, when she was still a child. “Dad, if I’m from Barça, why do I have to go to another team to play rugby?” She is now one of the four players of her in the Spanish team. The club gives them the facilities, medical services and some surplus, such as shirts from other sections. The agreement between both parties requires a statutory modification that Josep Maria Bartomeu promised before his resignation as president and that the current board of directors postponed due to the budget cut due to the remodeling of the Camp Nou. Adding a team to the section is an extra expense.
“What we want is recognition so that we don’t have to be breaking stones every year and pulling friends,” Peña emphasizes. After losing their sponsor from last year, they have secured the majority of the budget with small contributions. “We have 10,000 left to cover before the end of the season, but we will get it with the raffles if necessary.” He explains the problems of fitting the “brutal growth” of the team, something unforeseen. And he gives the example of women’s football as “one of the most profitable sections” compared to other loss-making ones.
“It hurts me as a culé and as a woman. What do these girls have to do so that the club they want to be recognizes them within the section? They deserve it, they have taken their feeling to the highest ”, underlines their coach, Aroa González, a benchmark in Spanish rugby until his retirement at the age of 38. The time for cuts is not the best for a claim that allows boys, within the section, to enjoy a gym, license or periodic medical check-ups, something that the girls pay out of pocket. “It is not feminism, we sacrifice the same things. Why one genre yes and another no? I don’t know if it’s Barça that doesn’t give consent or it’s the section itself that doesn’t want to”.
Aroa took on in 2019 in the Catalan Third Regional a team that had just lost 150-0 the previous year, games in which it did not even reach 15 field players. “They were 15-year-old girls and they needed older people to guide them on the court.” In three months, they went up to Second. In the worst of the pandemic, they kept the job via online and they strengthened the bond. The new configuration of Catalan rugby led them to the First Division and to an epic final against Sant Boi. “I still not believe it. It was David against Goliath, the luck is that we hit them well with the stone”.
The group has players in key positions who are less than 20 years old. “They are young in age, but not rugby. They started playing at the age of six, they have a lot of skills”, emphasizes the former Spanish captain, leader of a generation that did not know the oval until university. Thus they reached a key decision: social rugby or compete. “We distributed the minutes because it is a training league; who pay more than 300 euros per token. They asked us to compete, they wanted to play in Division of Honor B”. Said and done, promotion to the first. “You have to teach them a system, to understand rugby, to anticipate, to go two plays ahead.” And last season, after two tough defeats to “get our feet down to earth”, the goal of not being relegated ended with the team in the Iberdrola League with victories like the one they achieved in Getxo, another throw at Goliath.
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