Scottish Women's Rugby Thread

[bsando]

With the women’s side earning a deserved trophy  in the WXV 2 I thought it would be good to start a dedicated women’s thread so we can discuss their progress this season.

https://x.com/scotlandteam/status/1718337160342893011?s=46

Wins over SA, USA and Japan earned the ladies a maiden WXV 2 title.

The 2024 six nations is just around the corner and the signs are promising that they can improve in their past performances.

Big congrats to them on their fine win!

6 Nations Home Game Tickets
https://www.eticketing.co.uk/scottishrugby/Events?preFilter=18&preFilterName=Scotland

[Mcsweens]

I hope we see more and more women and girls playing sport in general. The Scottish Women's team are definitely great role models.

My Mum is a former PE teacher, and she loves watching the Lionesses (and the Scottish team obviously) ; she makes the point that the Lionesses normalise sporty body shapes and more muscly and defined figures in women that are healthy and successful, which will make girls more comfortable in playing sport in the future.

Can only imagine the rugby team will do the same.

The team have some proper players too.

[broadlandboy]

Don't believe there is relegation & promotion from WXV1/2 yet. Planned for future

[bsando]

Agree mcsween! Here in inverness Highland Rugby started a women’s side and they’re doing very well. The whole highland league has been brilliant success.

[bsando]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/67431442

Couple more Scots ladies playing in England. The women’s game has the potential for massive growth over the next decade. Quite excited to see what they can do at all levels of the game.

[Poorfour]

Great to see this thread and the support for women's rugby.

Over on ComeAllWithin we've had a 6 page debate about whether women should have a professional league at all. Apparently it's not the naysayers' fault that women's rugby doesn't have bigger clouds, despite their inability to resist denigrating it at every opportunity.

Fortunately, they seem to be in the minority and support for the women's game is growing. I think it's essential that it does, as it's probably the area with the highest growth potential in rugby.

[Tramptastic]

There's a thread of thought (and its a Bill Burr joke too) that if you want womens sport to be successful you need to go support it and buy tickets to the games (Bill Burrs joke being that during covid, no-one in the WNBA got covid cause no-one buys tickets to go see them play).

I can understand this line of thought until you realise that mens rugby, whilst having a good viewership and good attendance numbers at games, is still in the red and still requires sugar daddies to fund the game.

I've enjoyed the womens games I have seen and i hope to go and see them play soon! Theres more space on the pitch for attacking rugby and skill levels are really high so the games tend to flow faster than the mens game.

[Mcsweens]

Agree mcsween! Here in inverness Highland Rugby started a women’s side and they’re doing very well. The whole highland league has been brilliant success.

My local club's (local to where I grew up) womens team is consistently more successful than the mens.

[Poorfour]

There's a thread of thought (and its a Bill Burr joke too) that if you want womens sport to be successful you need to go support it and buy tickets to the games (Bill Burrs joke being that during covid, no-one in the WNBA got covid cause no-one buys tickets to go see them play).

I can understand this line of thought until you realise that mens rugby, whilst having a good viewership and good attendance numbers at games, is still in the red and still requires sugar daddies to fund the game.

I've enjoyed the womens games I have seen and i hope to go and see them play soon! Theres more space on the pitch for attacking rugby and skill levels are really high so the games tend to flow faster than the mens game.

There are several big differences between the men's and women's games, though. Competition between countries with very different governance models (and clubs who have been prepared to break the rules) has driven men's salaries up to levels that club owners have struggled to sustain while they have also (in England at least) had to pump money into developing stadia and marketing the game.

The women's teams have several structural advantages:
- England have moved first and fastest (for once!) but have started with a low salary base. That's tough for the players in the short term, but it's enabled the game to get started and begin to build an audience without running up big debts
- The PWR teams are (mostly) linked to Prem clubs, meaning that they are sharing a lot of the infrastructure and fixed cost base. The cost in running a women's team is largel the salary cost of the players and coaches, offset by ticket, merch and TV revenue
- The unions are better co-ordinated - the WXV format is pretty good and ensures teams are regularly getting decent competition - and are jointly committed to investing in the game. The RFU is going to pull out all the stops to make RWC 2025 a success and use that to grow the game.
- The broadcast options are much better developed and there's the chance to build viewers (and revenue) faster.

While women's rugby will likely never rival women's football, I think soccer has provided a template for what can be achieved that it's much easier for women's rugby to follow than it would have been for men's rugby to follow men's soccer.

[dummy_half]

As a father of girls, I'm all for them getting opportunities in whichever sport they fancy (currently I manage my elder daughter's girls football team, while my younger daughter's bestie is the best under 9s scrum half in the area).

I actually like watching the top level women's rugby, as the level is a bit more comparable in terms of speed and skill level with what many of us have played (sort of school or lower University team level or recreational clubs) than the top men's stuff which is just a million miles an hour and intense bending of the rules...

[Poorfour]

The issue with women's rugby at the moment is that there's a huge spread of ability even within the PWR squads. In any given matchday squad you will have a mixture of international players, semi-pro players and centre of excellence kids [1].

You get some pretty wild swings in performance as a result - I've seen Quins go from 40 point wins one week to a 40 point loss the next, depending on how many of their top players they have available versus the opposition. I suspect it will even out, especially as the franchises mature and the salary cap rises over the next few years, but it's pretty uneven.

The games do have more of a balance between physicality and skill than the men's games, though, and at their best the quality can be very high. The structures that are now in place in WXV and PWR should get more of the games up to that standard over the next few years.


[1] Female players hit physical maturity earlier and come through the ranks faster at the moment - quite a few make their 1st XXIII debut at 17 or 18, and a lot of current internationals got their first caps at 19 or 20. Partly because of that, there isn't the same academy structure that the men have - a bunch of 6th form colleges run Centres of Excellence tied to the various PWR clubs, that play much of the role that the academies play.

[bsando]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/67625576

Great to see Edinburgh and Glasgow setting up women’s sides to compete in this Celtic tournament.

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