By PHIL CAPLAN
AS THE welcome spring sun streaming through the plate glass windows of the function room at Leigh Sports Village glinted off the women’s Betfred Challenge Cup and Super League trophies and picked out the colours of the shirts of the assembling players at the launch, optimistic thoughts were directed towards what the new season may hold.
Staged at the home of the newly promoted side, there was also an understandable cloud that hung in the room, the aftermath of England women’s mauling at the hands of the Jillaroos in Las Vegas, and whether that had set the game here back at a time when women’s sport overall is gaining further traction in terms of profile and status.
Head coach of the double-defending Women’s Super League champions, York Valkyrie – the first side to achieve the feat – Lindsay Anfield, felt that the Test should never have taken place.
Always honest and forthright, “What’s the political line?” she mused, before confirming: “Our comp needs to be better.
“It needs to be more competitive and we’ve said this for a long time. Hopefully they’ll see that there’s not enough high quality players to fill eight teams.
“The NRLW were very clever to start with four and building slowly, whether we have to restart from some place like that, I don’t know but yes it was disappointing.”
Amanda Wilkinson, with a long and distinguished coaching history in the women’s game, took Barrow to fifth spot in the WSL in 2024 in their first season in the top flight and considered: “it doesn’t give a true reflection of the work that’s been done, in my opinion.
“Are we ready to put it on such a big stage? Through no fault of the people who decided they were going to do that, I don’t think so.
“We’re only just getting the men’s Super League sides involved in Vegas so I’m not sure why we decided to put the women there at this time.
“As professional as it has gone and as much as the growth of the game is strong, it’s still in a development stage, we are part time and still learning, a long way off where they are in Australia.”
Wilkinson added: “There’s good reason to have done it and to give something back to the girls to make them feel valued but I don’t think it was the right option at all for where the game is, it didn’t showcase what a great Super League season we’d had and underneath that the Championship is so competitive – we’d have been better off singing about that.”
Wigan women’s head coach, Denis Betts – father of five daughters, and who knows all about facing the best in green and gold – was in favour of the clash.
“You don’t know until you try and sometimes you get kicked in the face,” he said. “They are ten years ahead of us in how they run the game, what playing numbers they’ve got and the athleticism of their girls – you don’t know where you stand with them until you stand with them.
“Hopefully it’s a wake-up call for everybody who put themselves in that situation of learning how far they’ve got to go.
“I don’t see it as a negative, obviously the scoreline wasn’t great but there was no real lack of effort. They were just really hot that day and you have to put it in context, you had two of the best teams in the men’s Super League going toe-to-toe and if Wigan hadn’t backed off a little bit, that could have been 70-0 – sometimes it just gets you that way.”
Previous England women’s head coach, Craig Richards – now back in the hot seat with Dec Hardman at four consecutive time Challenge Cup winners St Helens – had some sympathy with what successor Stuart Barrow and his staff had been through.
“I just thought the timing was strange,” he said. “I remember when they wanted to play us in 2018 and we declined because we didn’t think the girls were ready.
“We were true believers that, for England, it takes the full four years of real tough preparation to get to the level to be able to compete, which I felt we did in 2022.
“It was a massive challenge for Stuart and the girls, the score was a shock but it’s not about what happened then but what we do from here onwards.
Everybody has to take some responsibility because the players that represented belonged to the clubs and we’ve got to do a better job.”
Tom Brindle, general manger of the Betfred Women’s Super league, head of development at the RFL and also Wales women’s head coach as they head to their first World Cup acknowledged: “Obviously it was disappointing for the people involved, the score line was a little bit of a shock and there was a bit of negativity surrounding it but, equally, we have to test ourselves continuously.”
In his fifteenth season involved with the women’s game, he looked at the bigger picture, revealing that WSL and the Challenge Cup make the game the fifth most-watched women’s sport.
“This is the year we’ll see the rise of the Super League generation, those young players in the room today who will take the sport to the next level,” he reflected.
“Nine years ago we started and those players have been inspired by the likes of Lindsay, Lois (Forsell – back at Leeds after maternity leave) and Andrea Dobson, increased investment, more players coming from overseas – I think we’ll see the most competitive season to date and possibly new names on trophies which would be good.
“When we started Super League there were about 500 women playing and we have seen another eight per cent growth going into this season, so significant over that period and we’ve got our ‘rugbees’ programme getting more young girls involved.
“There are 20 teams across the Midlands and South so we are seeing continued expansion in communities, clubs, schools and universities and colleges, and hopefully we’ll keep on investing to maintain that progress.”
Brindle revealed: “We are already in a strategic review for the next period. We started the current ten year one in 2016 ready for the launch Super League in 2017 which was to creaate a competition and get more women playing to get us to the point where we could start commercializing it, and we’re now at the start of the next phase and looking at how we can build on that.”
Image: Allan McKenzie/SWpix
