By Warren Partland, Adelaide Advertiser.
Think women's rugby union and there is little doubt the response would be of a stereotyped nature. Many instantly imagine a butch type of woman - intimidating and masculine and looking to have a physical impact on the world. The sort of female best to answer "yes" if she asks you for anything. This is, after all, the sport supposedly played by men with no necks and cauliflower ears.
So it would be crazy for anyone of the "gentler" sex to play the game. However, as with all stereotypes, that view of the sport and it's players would be wrong.
Hayley Terrett and Kim Evans are among the faces of women's rugby union in South Australia. Both are intelligent women. Terrett, 23, is studying teaching at Magill while Evans, 33, is a corporate lawyer.
Terrett has been playing the game for three years, enticed into rugby by her boyfriend Gino Gericapano when searching for some winter sporting action...br>
Evans, also a state squad member, is no less serious about her sport. For the past eight years she has been a member of Old Collegians and is now the first female president of the Tregenza Oval-based club. Her desire to play rugby dates back 20 years when her family moved to New Zealand for 12 months - a country where the game dominates Kiwi lives - before another year in Canberra. In 1997 she started playing touch with work colleagues and like Terrett, was looking for some winter sporting fun.
Despite being a petite 50Kg, Evans was enticed out to a training session by a workmate and she has been "hooked" since. "Rugby has absorbed my time", she said. "The energy and enthusiasm of the girls around me is tremendous. "There is a lot of tradition in rugby and I like that.
The game is so engaging - it requires fitness but it is forgiving of all body types. "It requires a lot more than aggression - speed, agility and vision. We will get a bit of bruising but I work with girls from other sports who have had a lot worse injuries than me. "Often when I tell a date that I play rugby they are shocked. But women's rugby has so much to offer."
How long will she continue to play rugby? Evans has promised D'Arcy Sadler, the 12 year old daughter of first grade men's coach Rob, she will hang around long enough to play in the same team as the promising youngster. And what does Evans yell out to those "playing like girls". Exactly that.