The opening statements have been made, and on 1 September the trial begins in earnest. Within a couple of months, all the evidence will be in and the jury will consider its verdict. Soon after, the ‘foreperson’ will rise to their feet and announce a decision on the WRU’s proposal to defibrillate the ailing and failing body of Welsh rugby.
It is an important reminder of the gender-based issues which have dropped under the radar in the media wrangle between ‘remainers’ [those who prefer the existing four-team format] and ‘leavers’ [those who want a reduction to two].
Two of the five pillars of the WRU’s new consultation document are squarely based on bringing the women’s game up to the same standard as England’s Professional Women’s Rugby on the far side of Offa’s Dyke:
- Two clubs, four teams: each club hosts a professional men’s and professional women’s team, funded for excellence and winning at the highest level.
- Significant investment in pathways, including a new women’s domestic competition, expanded academies and player development centres, and enhanced coaching opportunities.
The men’s team would comprise 50 players, with a playing budget of around £7.8 million, while the women’s investment would subsidise two squads of 40, with budgets designed to compete with the PWR, currently the most advanced professional club/provincial league anywhere on planet rugby.
Both regions would be supported by a national academy, a network of player development centres and a domestic competition equivalent to Super Rygbi Cymru. The new ‘world-class’ National Campus would be a common foundation for both versions of the game, men and women alike.
The four-team remainers have ignored or downplayed the amount of investment needed in the women’s game, but the leavers know it is vital to the health of present-day rugby in Wales. The Women’s World Cup has proved its point in the very first week of the tournament, without needing to resort to evidence culled from the showpiece matches at the pointy end of the competition.
During the opening week of the tournament, 3.2 million visitors with a unique footprint accessed World Cup content on the BBC Sport website and app, and viewing figures from just the opening weekend exceeded those for the entire World Cup four years ago. The live attendance record was broken in the opening encounter, with 42,723 watching the Red Roses beat the USA 69-7 at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, a traditional hotbed of soccer in the Northeast. The game drew a peak audience of 2.4m on BBC One as 4.6m tuned in on the first weekend overall.
Women’s rugby is here to stay. If anyone was in doubt, the point was drilled home by Black Ferns icon and 2021 World Cup winner Ruby Tui on the BBC: “If you could buy shares in women’s rugby, it would be your number one investment right now. It’s such a buzz to be here in England to witness this phenomenal growth of our game. World records are being broken every weekend.”
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European soccer champion Chloe Kelly blew women’s rugby the ultimate kiss of social media approval when she appeared on the telly in the half-time break during England’s second-round game with Samoa. Kelly has over 1m followers on Instagram and reportedly earns over £8,000 for every sponsored post she makes.
The WRU realises it needs to catch up in a hurry just to earn a seat at the women’s table, let alone claim a slice of the increasingly inviting financial pie on offer. With its new restructuring proposals, the Welsh Rugby Union would still be investing in four teams, but instead of the quartet belonging exclusively to the men’s version they would be evenly split between men and women. That’s a sign of the times and it’s progress, old friend.
Nowhere is the fundamental interconnectedness of the two games better illustrated than in the refereeing career of Scotland’s finest, Hollie Davidson. The Aberdeenshire native only picked up her first whistle in 2017 and appeared to have reached the apogee of her officiating lifetime when she managed the 2021 World Cup final between England and New Zealand. In fact, it was just the beginning of a radical crossover into the men’s game.
You could hear the glass ceilings shatter, one after another. In 2023, Davidson was the only female appointed to the referees panel for the World Rugby U20s [men’s] Championship. She became the first woman to form part of an officiating crew for a men’s senior international at the 2024 Six Nations game between England and Wales. Six months later she was taking the lead for South Africa vs Portugal in Bloemfontein, and underlined World Rugby’s confidence in her abilities by refereeing the first Test between the Springboks and the Azzurri at one of the grandest rugby cathedrals in the world, Loftus Versveld, one year later. If you can hack it in Bloem and at Loftus, you can hack it anywhere.
After receiving her ceremonial Scottish Rugby referees cap at Murrayfield in February, Davidson paid tribute to the rocket-fuelled speed of her upward trajectory while recognising the difficulties she has experienced along the way:
“All of the experiences that happened to me in 2024 I did not foresee happening. Going from refereeing South Africa-Portugal men to being in charge for Ireland-Fiji and then being referee for the Stade Francais-Saracens Champions Cup game was crazy.
“When I was running the line for the Ireland-England men’s game just a couple of weeks ago, I was really excited to go out there whereas one year before, when I made my men’s Six Nations debut, I was so nervous and maybe I thought I shouldn’t have been there.
“Now I feel quite comfortable in the environment and I deserve to have my spot here. It’s probably a mind shift from me.
“[But] earlier in my career it was really hard, probably because it’s just such unknown territory, you’re just not used to it. I’d gone from a corporate job where there were no people effing and blinding at me every day to something completely different.”
Progress comes with a heavy price tag. Before the First World War, women were barred from taking Law Society exams, with the Court of Appeal ruling they did not qualify as ‘persons’ under the Solicitors Act. It was not until the Sex Disqualification Act of 1919 women were legally enabled to become upholders and interpreters of the law, much less hold a whistle in one of the most macho, male-dominated games on the planet.
As fate would have it, the twin threads of Davidson’s refereeing career, and Wales’ urgent need to improve in the fastest-growing segment of the game crossed in the World Cup pool match between Wales and Canada at the Salford Community Stadium last Saturday. The world number two-ranked Canucks duly dispatched the Welsh 42-0 and Davidson gave an object lesson in how to referee a modern elite scrum, male or female.
Up until the 70th minute, Davidson only awarded two penalties and one free-kick in 16 scrum sets, despite an obvious imbalance in power and technique between the two sides. In the meat of the match, she produced a stream of quick usable ball from the set-piece in a performance which deserves to be a model for the men’s version of the game.
The key to her sympathetic handling was a refusal to penalise Wales simply for the inability of their forwards to hold much stronger opponents.
On both occasions Wales [in white] are being pushed back at a rate of knots, but Davidson sees no reason to interfere with the ball being played out from the back on the retreat. Wales may be weaker in the contest but they are not committing any offence -either by standing up, or twisting in, or otherwise causing the scrum to destabilise or collapse. So why just not ‘play on’? It is a good question for the men’s edition of the game, and it promotes the use of ‘channel one’ ball and development of number eight skills at the base.
Davidson’s interpretations were as clear as daylight, and she only [reluctantly] penalised Wales when they failed to stay together as a unit and dangerously collapsed the scrum.
As for the step-around wheel epidemic with which the men’s game has been blighted, Davidson remained a model of patience, giving both sides every chance to opt out of the ultimate ‘scrum con’ by withholding the ultimate sanction for it.
At the first set-piece, the Scottish official warns “I’ll reset it [if you wheel]” midway through the scrum, then admonishes Welsh tight-head Sisilia Tuipulotu at the end: “Go forward first, before there’s any movement.” In the second, she only awards a penalty when there is no response to her previous nudge and the Welsh forwards again shift their weight straight across the face of the scrum: “You’re driving across, then round” she finger-wags the big prop. This is crystal-clear instruction, and no player could ask for more.
Sisilia plies her trade for Gloucester-Hartpury, little brother Kepu is contracted to Bath in the English Premiership and her cousin Carwyn has moved away from the Scarlets to Section Paloise in the Top 14. The story for some of Wales’ top young talent is emigration, and it might never have happened had there been enough incentive to stay in the country.
The incentive is not just financial, it is the prospect of winning silverware, and that is what Tuipulotu did in the 2025 PWR. She is part of a winning program sitting just across the border. For Wales, success consists in rebuilding the men’s pyramid while launching an entirely fresh initiative with its women. If it produces a referee of Hollie Davidson’s quality in the process, so much the better, for both versions of the game.
What a dreadful and biased article. Yes we all want the womens game to grow. However welsh rugby is badly run by the WRU and the regions are struggling. It is not right to bankrupt the regions in order to subsidise new pro womens teams for several million pounds taken directly from the mens game. It will fail. As these womens sides dont exist have no stadiums no names no fans no revenues. Yes in decades perhaps it can be done but certainly not now amidst a welsh regional financial crisis. Theyre robbing peter to pay paul. itll end up bankrupting both. Patience is a virtue wokeism is not always right and certainly not when rushed foolishly like this
How good has the WRWC been? Heading off to Northampton this weekend for the double header at the instigation of the missus, who watched her SA team with my rugby-playing 13yo last weekend.
£75 for 3 premium tickets to a top drawer double-header? What’s not to like?
Enjoy DM! I’m going to try to get to Sandy Park for Canada-Scotland.
I’m not going to share what a 2027 world cup ‘platinum’ costs…it’s a lot more and that’s before you even buy a ticket!
Under the current laws is there any way the tight head can legally get a strong right shoulder twist to open up say a blindside 8/9/14 move?
Yep I think they can G.
For the modern ref as long as the THP starts straight, they don’t mind them changing their angle after the first step forward. Which is why Hollie said Sisilia could move across once she had some forward momentum. So the attacking wheel is very much viable.
Great article, Nick. And for me very educational. A lot there I did not know about the women’s game. Delighted that the World Cup is going so well in England. I can just imagine the buzz, with the Lions having been here so recently, bringing all their supporters. A World Cup is ofc a step up, with so many more countries involved.
Good on Holly Davidson for refereeing the scrums “correctly”. A trend setter I would hope, though to be fair other referees such as Ben O’Keefe are tending to move in the same direction, actually going back and looking at the laws of the scrum.
Agree with your comments on No 1 channel, and 8th man skills at scrum base.
My bit of “skin in the game” is having Georgie Freidrichs at 13 for Australia. Her family live just below us here in Toowoomba, down the escarpment, we get our coffee beans from her mother. And the family hail from Marondera, Zimbabwe. Georgie born there, and like the Pococks, left with the farm invasions hitting them. And also I am watching Ireland with great interest, def. my No.2 team😀
Thanks Miz. Tbf to the men I think their reffing of the scrum is also on the right track, but I did feel HD’s reffing of the scrum was outstanding in tough circumstances. She could easily have awarded a shedload of pens to Canada if she’d wanted to.
And a return of those #8 skills at the base and used of channel one can only be good for the game. Both teams in the game were keen to attack from scrums because they knew the whistle would prob stay ‘in pocket’!
Classic Miz! Do you share the odd glass of shiraz with em?
You could possibly apply similar theories to Australia. We have the next women’s world cup and I would like to see us develop our current squad (how good is it to watch Halse at fb??) And also recruit every athletic female in the next 2 years. In many ways the women’s game here is less bogged down in ‘what elite school did you attend?’. A great opportunity for Wales and Oz to strengthen both men’s and womens rugby
And a great opportunity to change the social fabric of the game DW, which prob still limits its appeal in the mens game.
Wonderful that Davidson is reffing this way at the scrum. I loath milking for penalties from the scrum as it seems to be a lottery who is at fault. Unless there is danger or the contest is unfairly halted play on I reckon. It does not help when commentators watching the wheel from one side proclaims dominance.
And there is nothing wrong with going backwards, it is not an offence OM! As long as there is no intent to destabilize the scrum, no problem. I think Hollie had a convo during a break with Daleaka Menin about it. Wales are going back together, and considerable skill is need to save that ball at the base, so it deserves a reward.
Ofc in the mens game they would prob all pop up and throw their arms up in the air to force the pen - very cute!
A lot of unknowns here. They say 2 professional womens teams but what does that mean? all players and coaches on full time salaried contracts? or simply a professional environment and structure with players more semi pro like PWR? Are these 2 teams on top of the 37 national contracts? Will welsh contracted players be expected to return to wales to play for these 2 teams, and how likely is that if these 2 teams will just be playing in the celtic challenge? some of the welsh pundits seem to want them to join the PWR,but thats probably not very realistic-PWR will surely want to expand with a couple more english teams at some point-not welsh regions.
Obviously there are understandable concerns I have heard from many welsh(im english)-that money is being cut from the mens to fund womens teams that have no prospect of being financially viable for a long time. I am huge fan of the womens game but even I accept its currently not financially profitable-even the england womens team is still running at a loss. This idea that womens rugby is the next big thing and there could be big crowds all paying mens prices and big broadcast deals- well it could happen but it also might not-we certainly years away from that so I am sympathetic to those who complain that mens rugby is funding a professional womens game that is not yet viable/financially sustainable based on an assumption it will one day be
Men’s club rugby in England runs at a huge loss in any case Chris. What is undeniable is that the women’s segment of the game is clearly the fastest growth area and deserves proper investment on that score alone.
To put it another way - is it worth preserving four failing men’s regions in Wales because the women might not make money immediately? I think the WRU proposal is banking on national success in both versions of the game and a trickledown from it.
And yes, I would imagine the two Welsh womens regions would be added to the PWR in England.