The structure and development in Welsh Women’s Rugby

I thought that in this blog I would give you an overview of the women’s game in Wales.

At present the South and Mid Wales Women’s League is looking very promising to date and is growing from strength to strength. There are three leagues up and running which are made up of the Premier League, Division 1 East and Division 1 West which consist of 17 senior lady’s teams. This is a competitive league which supplies a significant amount of players to the Senior Welsh Women’s Rugby Squad.

This year is the second year of the Regional structure which assembles five teams across Wales which are known as the Scarlets, Ospreys, Cardiff Blues, Gogledd Cymru and Newport Gwent Dragons. These teams consist of Under 18s players who are selected from teams across the whole of Wales to represent these teams. This structure has been established to strengthen the selection process for the Wales U20s squad as players are competing against teams of a higher level and therefore increasing the standard of Women’s rugby in Wales. This structure is also beneficial for senior members as they can identify potential competitors for their positions and thus striving to work harder to increase the gap to ensure they keep their shirt.

Even though the set-up in Wales has improved and is producing some outstanding stars for the future I would like to see a Magners type League set-up for the women so that it would improve the standard of women’s rugby in the Northern Hemisphere. If Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales each produced two teams to compete in the league it would not only allow senior women to play at a higher standard of rugby but would also encourage and nurture many of the Under20s players in making the transition up.

The formation would also be beneficial for the national coaching staff as they would also be able to observe players who may not live in their home nation but would still have an equal chance of selection. This would therefore strengthen the pooling system for all Northern Hemisphere nations. Finally the standard of women’s rugby would improve as teams would be playing at a higher intensity with fewer errors and thus having an impact on international rugby in the 6 nations and the World Cup. This could even make it more of an attractive game to watch as women tend to enjoy playing ball in hand rather than ping-pong kicking as the men seem to do significantly.

Unfortunately this structure would not materialise, well not in the next 10 years, as it would need a considerable amount of funding to implement and many female players would struggle with juggling their professional working careers with their rugby playing careers as there would be a substantial amount of travelling involved. But you never know dreams to come true and it was not that long ago that all men in the northern hemisphere were amateurs and not professional and since the conversion the standard of rugby has improved