You will know more about the “Founders Cup” as the name for women’s rugby’s peak club trophy after understanding what the late Karen Keach and so many others contributed.
When the trophy was named, it identified that there was no single architect for the birth of women’s rugby in Queensland in 1994.
It was a competition with many mothers so to speak and just a couple of fathers.
These women of the 1990s were pioneers. Players, administrators, unbridled club voices…they all were essential to get women’s rugby started.
The Bond University and Sunnybank women who are stepping onto Ballymore Stadium on Saturday to tussle for the Sumo Energy Founders Cup should know a little of this fight for recognition.
Queensland Reds skipper Jemma Bemrose will be pushing for the Bull Sharks' fifth straight premiership. Sunnybank's Ivania Wong will be striving to get the Dragons back on top after their own five-peat (2015-19).
It wasn’t so long ago that women’s club teams were banished to train under the poorest lighting on the most outer field.
On Saturday, they are the feature game of six grand finals with a 2:45pm slot. The Hospital Cup has a separate Sunday focus.
There was fierce opposition to a women’s competition even starting which is why not every club put up a side in 1994.
Wests and Selena Worsley’s Souths were pitted as the main 6.45pm curtain-raiser on the April Friday that Queensland played under the lights at Ballymore for the first time in 1994.
There were more than 10,000 fans in the ground already for the Queensland vs Transvaal game by the second half of the women’s game.
It was pretty crazy for one of women’s rugby’s most formative moments to be on the main field. Under lights. With a major crowd.
Behind the scenes, as ever, was Karen Keach, who was the Wests representative on the initial committee in 1993 that set-up the women’s competition.
Keach was Wests Secretary (1993-94) at the time. She was the first female in the role just as she’d been the first female on the Wests board in 1983.
A nurse in casualty, she was dismayed at the absence of medical support beyond the tired old bucket and sponge when she found her way to the club in 1976 from Balclutha in New Zealand.
“We had a worrying incident where a player nearly drowned on a wet field down the Gold Coast when there literally wasn’t a medical kit to clean anyone up,” Keach once told me.
She did a sports medicine course, organised medical kits for teams and started strapping ankles and knees on training nights.
When coach Alec Evans called extra Thursday morning training sessions for his premiership team of 1985, Keach would be there serving up a feast of bacon, eggs and cereal for the hungry horde.
“Wests has been a very big part of my life. I’ve always been a Wests girl. I like the people and the atmosphere and you just try to help out your club where you can,” Keach said.
“You could just walk into Wests and , socially, you felt at home straight away.”
She was never offended by being known as “the Wests Lady” by countless figures from other clubs.
More than anything, it was a compliment that she was always there which was a feat in itself because, uncomplainingly, she dealt with life on regular kidney dialysis.
Keach was a welcoming part of the fabric of Wests for decades, most recently selling Wests merch with a smile from a desk inside the club on game days. She was as an unsung hero.
Her passing will be recognised today by her closest friends and Wests players who valued everything she did.
Karen Keach is one of the reasons we call it the Founders Cup.
Her seat will be unfilled at the Hospital Cup grand final on Sunday but a true Wests woman will be cheering for the Bulldogs from up high.
