Women’s Rugby in Australia has received a significant boost with the reintroduction of the Australian Rugby Union’s National Women’s XVs Championship to be held in Sydney in June.
The two-day championship will be hosted at St Ignatius College, Riverview across June 23–26 and give female players across the country an ideal opportunity to impress for future Wallaroos and Women’s Sevens Rugby selection.
Teams competing in the championship are Australian Services Rugby Union, Sydney, NSW Country, Queensland, Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria.
(Wallaroo, Mollie Grey successfully transferred from the ARU XVs program to the Qantas Sevens squad)
In addition, the ARU will host a Wallaroos training camp for an extended squad at Bond University in August, commencing the squad’s preparation for the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup.
The re-introduction of the National Women’s XVs Championship comes on top of the introduction of the Junior Gold Cup Championships introduced in 2014, The National Under 20s Championships and the Senior Sevens and Youth Sevens National Championships.
All of these programs have been successfully implemented over the last 16 months.
The National Women’s XVs Championship has been re-introduced to provide an additional development pathway for players and coaches to take their games to the next level.
With World Rugby Women’s World Series well underway for Olympic qualification, players will also have a unique opportunity to chase their Olympic Games selection dreams.
ARU General Manager Pathways and Performance Ben Whitaker said the tournament will provide excellent opportunities for players.
“Committing to a National Women’s XVs Championship in 2015 and 2016 will provide our Women’s programs around Australia with the opportunity to grow player depth, representative competition exposure and increase our talent pool,” Mr Whitaker said.
“Our Wallaroos performed admirably in last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup and we are keen to advance the program to achieve greater results moving forward.
“Our elite pathway for female players will be enhanced with both the Sevens and XVs programs working together to create more elite female Rugby players for Australia across both formats of the game.”
The Wallaroos finished the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup in seventh after beating Wales for the second time in the tournament.
