Sitting In The Cheap Seats

Women’s sports and the athletes who compete in them have long been a target for trolls and social media morons, they’ve borne it out with a stoicism a few o their male counterparts could learn from. Rugby sadly is no different and despite the ever-increasing profile of the women’s game 2020 has been a tough year. First games were cancelled, leagues declared null and void. Then two historic clubs were dropped from the Premier 15s who, around the same time lost their title sponsor. To date there is still no clear roadmap for the league, or indeed any women’s rugby, in England at least, to return. Then last week Canterbury launched the new Ireland jersey. The men’s kit was modelled by members of the Irish squad. The women’s shirt? Well, like me you might have been expecting Sene Naoupu, Anna Caplice or one of their teammates. Instead the kit was launched with models… A huge opportunity to put women in the spotlight lost. https://www.instagram.com/p/CEYvlWCAMl0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_lin...

If you talk to any rugby plyer about what they missed most during lockdown it won’t be the games, the highs of winning or the determination to right a loss. It certainly won’t be broncos and conditioning stints. The thing that the very best professionals and the most amateur players alike will point to is the camaraderie of the club house. It’s that close bond that led to Aaron Beesley founding Rugby Against Cancer .

If you look around the teams in the Premier 15s you’ll see the squads are full of talent, not just from England but across the UK and further afield too. In particular the wealth of Scottish and Welsh talent plying their trade across the league has often given rise to idle conversation about whether they could add whole teams to the competition in future.