Edwards, who as Head Coach, led Wales Women to unprecedented success at last year’s World Cup in France guiding his side to eighth position, will oversee both the XVs and VIIs programme where he will be assisted by Richie Pugh.
The newly created role will include responsibility for forging closer links to the regional programme to ensure Welsh talent is developed on the playing and coaching front. He will also be responsible for creating partnerships with colleges and universities to support the regional and international pathway.
WRU National women’s Rugby Manager, Caroline Spanton said Edwards possesses the passion, drive and experience to take the women’s programme on to a new level.
“We are thrilled to have Rhys on board for the next cycle,” she said. “It is an exciting new era with a great coaching and support team now in place to set us up for future high profile events such as the World Cup [in 2017] and the Commonwealth Games [in 2018].”
Edwards has been coaching Wales Women since 2011 and is now looking forward with optimism to the next chapter of his career.
“This is a new role created and supported by Sport Wales to lead the Womens Performance Programme. I was fortunate to be head coach of both XVs and VIIs teams in my previous role, but I had to manage it with my role as a PE teacher at Caldicot School,” said Edwards.
“This new role will allow me to dedicate more specific time to the programme and in particularly the players themselves. I am honoured to be part of this programme and we have a very talented player base who themselves have to balance their rugby commitments with their careers. This attitude has allowed us to continually compete against the best teams in the world, and as we proved against England in the Six Nations, we can beat them when we perform. Our challenge is to be consistent.”
Edwards’ immediate aim is for the VIIs squad to qualify for the Women’s Sevens World Series (WSWS).
“We have an opportunity to achieve this goal in Dublin next month after being drawn with Brazil, Japan and Samoa in a competition where the top two finishers qualify for 2015-16 Women’s Sevens Series. The longer term aim is for us to be competing on the World Series regularly and then achieve qualification to the Commonwealth Games.”
Edwards added: “The key challenge for us is to ensure that both the XVs and VIIs programmes are competitive in their own right and that they mutually benefit each other.
As with any new role there will always be obstacles but we now have a very experienced management team who are now established, and a new National Rugby Manager (Caroline Spanton) to lead the strategy of the women’s game. There are some exciting changes to the women’s pathway being implemented from September which will ensure that any woman or girl who plays has a suitable outlet to play, whether that is socially or aspiring to play internationally.”
