Women’s rugby union is a full-contact team sport in which players run with the ball in hand. It is played under the same laws as men’s rugby union, using the same-sized pitch and equipment. The sport has grown in popularity in recent years, aided by increased exposure through international tournaments and greater financial investment.
History
The early years: 1880–1950s
The origins of women's rugby are unclear. Initially, public reaction to women playing contact sports proved negative. In 1881, when two teams played exhibition "football" games in Scotland and northern England, several games had to be abandoned due to rioting.
While most of these games appear to have been played to the new association football rules, it is clear from reports in the Liverpool Mercury of 27 June 1881 that at least one of these games, played at the Cattle Market Inn Athletic Grounds, Stanley, Liverpool on the 25th, involved scoring goals following "touchdowns" and may therefore have been played to at least a version of rugby rules.
A series of sporting cigarette cards published 1895 in Liverpool includes an image of a woman playing what looks like rugby in kit similar to that described in reports of the 1881 team. It is therefore possible that exhibition games similar to those in 1881 may have continued (with no press reporting) or the pictures may have been reprints for earlier illustrations inspired by the 1881 games, or they may just be an "amusing" cartoon or an illustration of a sport that was not actually being played.
Other than this the official record is silent for most of the nineteenth century. Some girls played the game unofficially as part of their school teams—and the earliest confirmed record of any woman or girl definitely playing rugby at any level anywhere in the world comes from a school game.
This happened at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh."Portora the School on the Hill a quatercentenary history 1608–2008", p. 180: William John Valentine (Staff 1883–1904) was the Senior Classics Master at Portora, and the father of the Valentine brothers, William (Old Portoran 1886) and John (OP 1892). Together with their sister, Miss E. F. Valentine, the brothers were reputed to have been responsible for some of the first organised rugby at Portora. W. J. Valentine, as Second Master, also acted as Headmaster during the last difficult years of the Steele Mastership Emily Valentine's brothers were responsible for the formation of the school's first rugby team in c1884. Emily practised with the team and in c1887 she played for the school, scoring a try.
The first documented evidence of an attempt to form a purely women's team is from 1891 when a tour of New Zealand by a team of female rugby players was cancelled due to a public outcry.
There are also early reports of women's rugby union being played in France (1903) and England (1913)Col Philip Trevor in his book Rugby Football dated 1923 opens with the chapter "The Game’s Popularity – Rugger For Girls". His daughters who were in various stages of "flapperdom" (a 1920s term for the modern and unconventional woman) in 1913 called him to a conference. The end result being that they and a bunch of friends trooped of to a secluded beach for a game of rugger, 15-a-side with more players available if the need arose. Col Trevor who acted as referee marveled at the skills of the girls and described how they improvised with kit, by wearing bathing hats to lessen the chance of being "tackled" by the hair. Back chat and foul language was all part and parcel of rugby according to one girl who had watched the men play at Blackheath. The author queried that if they could find 30 girls in a village then how many would there be in the whole of England ? but in both cases the game was largely behind closed doors.
During the First World War some women's charity games were organised, the most well documented taking place at Cardiff Arms Park on 16 December 1917, when Cardiff Ladies beat Newport Ladies 6–0. Maria Eley played full-back for Cardiff and went on to become probably the oldest women's rugby playerRugby is the secret of 106-year-old's longevity, Penarth Times, 23 January 2006 before she died in Cardiff in 2007 at the age of 106.Maria remained a keen player until she married her husband, Hector, and concentrated on bringing up eight children. She attributed her longevity to a love of rugby and an aversion to cigarettes and alcohol. Away from rugby and family duties she chaired the senior citizens club at her native Cogan for 24 years and was still calling bingo until she was 101. The Cardiff team (who all worked for Hancocks a local brewery) all wore protective headgear, which predates their male counterparts by some decades.
In Sydney in 1921, two women's teams played a game of rugby league in front a crowd of 30,000—a photograph appeared in The Times in 1922—but pressure from authorities ensured that they did not play again. Throughout the 1920s a popular form of women's football game very similar to rugby called "barette" was played across France. The game had only minor differences to the full game (games were 10-a-side and had some minor restrictions on tackling) and there were national championships throughout the decade. It received support from several male rugby players and film also exists of a game being played in 1928.Letchworth Girls' Rugby: Women's rugby in 1928!. Letchworthgirls.blogspot.com (3 March 2008). Retrieved on 7 May 2011. Both barette and the full game of rugby featured in several newspaper cartoons and many photographs exist.ArmadilloPhoto. Iconeftp.campus-insep.com. Retrieved on 7 May 2011. For reasons unknown the game appears to fade away in the 1930s.
In 1930 a women's league playing the full game was formed in Australia, in the New South Wales areas of Tamworth and Armidale, which ran until halted by World War Two. Photographs of women's teams also exist from New Zealand from the same period and during the war Maori women took up the game. After the war in 1956 The Belles of St Mary’s—an Australian women's rugby league team—played games in New South Wales—but even as late as the 1960s Women's rugby was banned in Samoa.
1960s–1990 The 1960s was the decade in which the game finally began to put down roots, initially in the universities of Western Europe. In 1962 the first recorded UK women's rugby union team appears at Edinburgh University, in 1963 female students participate in matches against male students in London, and in 1965 university sides are being formed in France.
As the pioneering students left university an adult game began to evolve. Initially (1966) this tended to be confined to charity matches between male and female teams (especially at Worthing RFC, England), though the UK's Daily Herald newspaper includes photographs of girls' teams training in Thornhill, near Dewsbury in Yorkshire in 1965, and at Tadley in Hampshire in 1966Copies are held in the collections of the National Media Museum in Bradford—and appealing for fixtures. It is not recorded whether these teams did arrange any games, and so it is not until 1 May 1968 that the first fully documented and recorded women's club match takes place, in France, at Toulouse Fémina Sports in front of "thousands of spectators".:fr:Rugby à XV féminin, French Wikipedia article The success of the event lead to the formation of the first national association for women's rugby union—the Association Francaise de Rugby Feminin (AFRF) at Toulouse, in 1970.
1970 also saw the first reports of women's rugby union in Canada, and by 1972 four universities in the United States were playing the game: University of Colorado, Colorado State University, the University of Illinois and the University of Missouri. By 1975 university students at Wageningen in the Netherlands were playing, and in the same year clubs appeared in Spain (Arquitectura in Madrid and Osas in Barcelona). The first non-university clubs formed in 1978 in Canada and Netherlands, and in Italy (Milan) a year later.
By 1980 there were club championships in the United States and Sweden, and provincial championships in New Zealand. The game first appeared in Japan in 1981 and in February 1982 University College, London's women's team went on a tour to France playing, amongst other teams, Pontoise—the first recorded overseas tour by a UK team (and possibly the first international tour by any team). A few months later on 13 June 1982 the first women's international—Netherlands 0, France 4—took place at Utrecht (see Women's international rugby union for more details on the history of the international game).
In the UK 1983 saw the Women's Rugby Football Union (WRFU) formed to govern the game across the British Isles. Founder member clubs are: Leicester Polytechnic, Sheffield University, University College London, University of Keele, Warwick University, Imperial College, Leeds University, Magor Maidens, York University and Loughborough University.
The game began to be organised on a more formal basis elsewhere, including:
1984 The LNRF (Lega Nazionale Rugby Feminile) formed in Italy 1986 First UK National League and Cup competitions established 1987 Canadian Rugby Union bylaws amended to include a Vice President Women's Rugby on CRU Board of Directors 1988 Japanese Women's Rugby Football Union formed 1988 Women's International Rugby Board (WIRB) formed 1989 Women's rugby union began to be organized in the USSR 1989 ARFR is formally integrated into the Fédération Française de Rugby (FFR), and 1990 First Irish club teams formed 1990 The US team become the "Eagles" and play-officially for USA Rugby for the first time.
1990 also saw the first international tournament—RugbyFest held in Christchurch, New Zealand. As well as a variety of club sides, including teams from Japan (but not the Japanese national team), were four "national" teams—USA, New Zealand, USSR, and the Netherlands—who played a round-robin tournament. The winner was New Zealand, who then played—and beat—a combined "World XV".
A world game in the making: 1990–1998
Rugbyfest 1990 led to the first women's Rugby World cup, which took place in Wales the following year.
Timed to coincide with the second men's World Cup being held in England, it did not meet with official approval from World Rugby (then known as the International Rugby Football Board), a decision which threatened the competition and was a factor in the New Zealand RFU not supporting their entry. However, this did not stop the New Zealanders from taking part, and there were also teams from Wales, the United States, England, France, Canada, Sweden, USSR, Japan, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.
The competition was run on a shoestring: Russian players sold souvenirs before and during matches to raise funds to cover their expenses, while four England administrators re-mortgaged their houses to cover the expenses of attending the competition. But after fifteen matches, the first world champions were crowned: the United States, who beat England in the final. Despite the lack of support from the men's game, and very little media coverage, the competition had been a success, and the women's game continued to grow.
1991 Netherlands Rugby Union take control of the women's game 1991 Women's rugby revived in Australia by Wal Fitzgerald in Newcastle, New South Wales 1992 Irish women split from the WRFU to form their own Irish Women's Rugby Football Union 1992 The New Zealand women are taken under the umbrella of the NZRFU 1993 Scottish women split from the WRFU to be governed by their own Union (the Scottish Women's Rugby Union) 1993 Australian Women's Rugby Union formed 1994 The WRFU disband, with the Rugby Football Union for Women (RFUW) being formed in England, while the Welsh Women's Rugby Union affiliates with the Welsh Rugby Union