The Evolution of Women’s Rugby

Women’s rugby has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, with England’s most recent win at the Six Nations is a key indicator of how much women’s rugby has improved over the 130 years since it first started. To fully understand the scale of its growth let’s take a look back into the history of women’s rugby from the very beginning.

The First Record of Women Playing Rugby

Similar to the start of rugby as a sport, the history of women in rugby is incredibly vague. There is very little information on how and when women started playing rugby. What is known is that around 1884, Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland formed the school’s first rugby team which included a young woman called Emily Valentine, making her the first official woman to play rugby.

Furthermore, in 1891, there is a record of an attempt at a women’s touring team in New Zealand, however, this was stopped due to social unacceptance, and the team was forced to disband. Primarily, women had to play the sport in secret to avoid public pressure and societal issues. It is only until 1917, that a first official charity match at Cardiff Arms Park featuring female teams, Cardiff Ladies and Ladies, is documented.

Moreover, it is not until after the second world war, where the roles of women changed, that women’s rugby began to take root. In 1962, the first ever recorded women’s rugby union team took form at Edinburgh University and the first fully documented women’s club match took place at Toulouse Femina Sports, in France. This led onto the first national association for women’s rugby union, the AFRF, and the formation of women’s rugby unions in universities across Canada, the USA, the Netherlands and Spain. In 1978, Canada and the Netherlands were the first to form non-university rugby clubs, and other countries across the world were soon to follow.

Source rugbyspeakersuk