Physical fitness of elite women's rugby union players over a ...

live on pay TV channels, this has provided women with the platform to showcase their talent
to a global audience.
In 2000, when South African Rugby Union (SARU), the custodians of the game in South Africa
accepted women’s rugby into the rugby fraternity, there were less than 10 clubs playing on a
social basis in the middle class communities. At present, rugby is being played in 143 rugby
clubs throughout South Africa, with 15 129 registered players within towns, suburbs and rural
districts (International Rugby Board, n.d). In 2003, SARU launched the Inter-Provincial
League, where games were played once a month. Such domestic competitions serve to provide a
pathway for players to develop physical and technical skills so as to cope with the physical
demands at international level (Duthie, 2006).
Rugby is a field-based team sport, eliciting a variety of physiological responses as a result of
repeated high-intensity sprints and high frequency of contact (Duthie, Pyne, & Hooper, 2003).
Time-motion analysis is an objective and yet non-invasive method of quantifying the demands
of rugby and for providing information that is applicable in the designing of physical
conditioning and testing programmes (Deutsch, Kearney & Rehrer, 2007). Of interest to
coaches is the difference in movement patterns between forwards and backs in competitive
rugby (Deutsch, Kearney, & Rehrer, 2002; Deutsch, Maw, Jenkins & Reaburn, 1998). In
rugby, high intensity activity accounts for 12-14% of game time for the forwards and 4.5-6%
for backs (Deutsch et al., 2007; Duthie et al., 2003). This difference between backs and
forwards was largely as result of the greater involvement of forwards in static exertion
(rucking, mauling and scrummaging) and higher sprinting efforts by the backs (Deutsch et al.,
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