For while a dramatic change is taking place on pitches and in schools and colleges all over Wales, with women and girls grabbing the increased opportunities to play the game in all formats, so too are females taking up leadership roles in those environments, be it as coaches, referees, team managers or lead volunteers.
Women like Tracey Balmer, cluster lead and under 9s coach at the Ogwr Hawks girls’ cluster in Bridgend and Bridgend Sports U8s coach. Despite battling debilitating illness, she says the rugby roles give her strength and confidence which is something she wants to impart to a whole generation of girls.
“My husband Craig introduced me to rugby and I started coaching at Bridgend Sports when my youngest son’s team didn’t have a coach.
“Our sons have gained so much from rugby on and off the field and when the WRU asked us as a club if we would consider running a pilot girls’ cluster, I jumped at the chance at being able to give girls the same opportunities. For me, it’s about letting girls know they can do anything we want to.
“I want them to be able to fall in love with sport like boys do. Even if you don’t want to play, there’s always something you can do, you can coach or volunteer in other roles.
“When you coach you learn something new every day, it’s certainly given me confidence, which is something I’ve always struggled with.
“I believe so strongly that anyone can play rugby, just give it a go. I find you get as much out as you put in. I love to see the girls’ happy faces running and passing with the ball.
“I look at our Under 13s and Under 15s girls now, a lot of whom have been playing with us for two or three years, and I can see them growing all the time as players and young female leaders.
“As women, we battle things each day. There was a stigma that rugby was for men but I think we’re certainly starting to show it’s no longer the case!”
One member of Tracey’s Ogwr Hawks cluster, Abby Steel, has also become a rugby leader within her school, Maesteg Comprehensive, where girls’ rugby is played throughout the school.
She said, “I just love rugby, I get so much enjoyment from it and I want to share that with others. I tried other sports but rugby was the only one I enjoyed and now my life evolves around rugby, I can’t get enough of it.”
And throughout the game there are now women and girls of all ages taking up key roles on and off the field inspiring other females – and males!
Take Rachel Taylor the former Wales Women captain and WRU rugby coordinator for North West Wales.
Along with her ‘day’ job of growing the male and female game in the area, she is head coach of RGC Women along with her colleague, Women and Girls’ Game Changer Dave Roberts and in the summer she became the first sole head coach of a male WRU National League side when she took up the reins at Colwyn Bay RFC.
She insists that although she’s the first head coach, other have certainly paved the way. “I’ve seen the likes of my former teammates Catrina Nicholas and Jenny Davies move up the coaching ladder and that gave me the extra confidence to give it a go. There are a lot of qualify female coaches coming through the ranks, so why not coach men’s sides? It also helped that many of the on and off-field roles at Colwyn Bay are filled by females in our club, as is the case in many clubs around Wales.” Rachel’s former team mate Elen Evans has now joined the coaching team at another Division Two North club, Dollegallau while elsewhere in the game, there are now more than 350 active female coaches in Welsh rugby.
Wales wing Jess Kavanagh has taken the initiative of starting her own programme of multi-sport clubs for girls across Gwynedd – Gall Genod Gwynedd or Go Gwynedd Girls (GGG), launched with a day of 15 sports and activities involving 20 schools and interaction with ambassadors across different sports to talk about their pathway to success including Rachel Taylor explaining her rugby transition from playing to coaching.
Jess, who started for Wales this morning against South Africa said, “Girls want to be involved in sport, it’s just about making sure they have a range of opportunities in their area, and that’s what I’m trying to do with Gall Genod Gwynedd. We’ve had a huge response already, both from girls themselves and other youth and sports organisations. The clubs are a way of socialising, getting active and inspiring girls.”
WRU Women and Girls’ Engagement Manager Charly Wathan believes that it’s the grassroots role models like these who are going to radically open up a whole range further opportunities for the next generation of Welsh females to engage in various forms of the national sport.
“Rugby transcends boundaries and gives children a sense of belonging, lifelong values and friendships that nothing else can quite compare to. I want to make sure that all girls growing up in Wales have an opportunity to experience this in the most appropriate way for years to come.”
After wins over South Africa and Hong Kong, Wales Women play Canada on Saturday 24 November at Cardiff Arms Park (11.30am). Tickets are £5 adults, £1 for all concessions including students. The game will also be streamed live online by S4C.
