Future of the Women's Game press conference - Q&A quotes
Sally Horrox (Chief of Women’s Rugby, World Rugby), Alex Teasdale (Executive Director Women’s Rugby, England Rugby), Jilly Collins (General Manager Women’s Rugby, Rugby Australia) were joined online by Alan Gilpin (CEO, World Rugby) to address the media and discuss the four-year vision for the women's game, including the new WXV Global Series.
Alan Gilpin
"Together with our national unions, we're really proud to be launching the next evolution of WXV, the WXV Global Series, the biggest and most ambitious programme of international women's rugby ever. Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 has already raised standards across the board, on and off the field, and shown that the journey we're on is about momentum and purpose. We've seen more than 300,000 fans inside the stadiums, more than double the attendance we had in the last World Cup in New Zealand, and we still have two fantastic weekends to come.
"So we're building on that momentum, and we're providing crucial certainty, a runway that will play its part in raising competitive standards across the women's game and driving greater financial sustainability for those women's programmes with our national unions.
"We’re delighted to announce that the WXV Global Series will kick off next year in 2026, the result of a huge amount of collaboration between our national federations, World Rugby, International Rugby Players and our stakeholders across the game. It creates a structure that strengthens elite women's rugby, drives participation in the game, manages player load and unlocks new growth as we start to look ahead to Women's Rugby World Cup 2029 in Australia.
"Between 2026 and the end of 2028 this will deliver more than 100 international fixtures. It will feature the best 18 women's rugby teams in the world and, for the first time, for the top 12 teams, it will feature home and away fixtures and a central competition for those next six teams."
On the key considerations in redefining the international competition landscape:
Alex Teasdale
"I am from England rugby; Jilly is here from Australia. But our role on the working group was to represent all of the unions that we were supporting at that point in time. So it was really easy to take your hat off and to be able to look and say, 'What does women's rugby need globally over the next two to three years? What does it need in the future?" And a huge thank you to World Rugby, because it was a very pleasant experience to go through in the last 18 months to get to this point. We've seen a lot of each other at strange times of the night online. But that aside, it's been a really good collaborative process. They were relatively easy to pull together.
"Player welfare was the most important piece. Why would you want a de-conflicted calendar? Because we need to prioritise player welfare, and we were fortunate to a degree in the women's game to come in with a slightly blank sheet of paper, some really good cornerstones.
"The two other pieces were around making sure we had a good-value exchange from a performance point of view, for the fixtures. And that was across all three years. It wasn't about saying if you're ranked number two you want to play number three or number one. It was about saying, what does that value exchange look like in terms of growing the game?
"And the third part was looking at how we could fully commercialise those fixtures. Unions need home fixtures, and we need to be willing to travel to give people that. they were the main principles that we stuck to relentlessly."
On how the new series can harness the momentum of Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 into Rugby World Cup 2029:
Jilly Collins
"Incredibly excited that we'll be hosting the next Rugby World Cup, and certainly a lot to live up to from this fantastic tournament here in England. It's really helpful for us to have four years to build up. What we need to do is build that fan base, build the visibility. We need to make sure that our fans in Australia know the names of women stars from all around the world, not just the Wallaroos. And that's a big job. So knowing who's going to be playing in Australia over the next four years is incredibly helpful for us to build on that momentum so that come 2029 we're successful, both on the field from a Wallaroo perspective, but the tournament is a great success and lives up to the expectations that have been built from 2025."
Alex Teasdale
"From an England point of view, we have a 10-year business case in place. It's not always about money, but ultimately that's what it takes to be able to grow the game and to invest in the players. We're in year four, so to be able to secure the next four years gives us an eight-year footing. Many of you in the room will have been here over the last few years, but we haven't had the certainty over the next few months, let alone a year, let alone two, three and four years. So being able to really have those fixtures laid out across both the global window but the regional window as well is really helpful. We've been able to talk to broadcasters, sponsors and partners, and ultimately to the players as well about what they can expect in the future. Having that path mapped out to 2029 has been very helpful for all of the reasons we said."
Jilly Collins
"There's an awful lot we can learn from this Rugby World Cup, from how well the tournament's been organised to what fan engagement looks like, what it takes to fill the stadium, what the marketing around it is.
"Australia is unique. We have our own challenges, geography being one, and next year we will be deciding what that looks like in terms of the tournament model. From a Wallaroo perspective, the ability to play against the variety of opposition we will do over the next four years... we're ambitious for 2029; we want to be there on the final weekend. That is incredibly important for us as well."
On the potential for the leading teams to play each other too often:
Nicky Ponsford
"Everybody's bought into the fixtures. Yes, people could play outside of the window, but within the structure of the tournament, that's not going to be there. That crossover has been a really important part of the conversation with the unions."
On whether this creates a massive increase in the workload of women’s players who have jobs outside of rugby:
Jilly Collins
"It's a very good question. And from our perspective, this is one piece of the jigsaw. You can't be a professional rugby player unless you've got rugby to play. So this is a massive part of that, and provides that certainty. What we're working through at the moment is what the domestic competition looks like. To complement that from a player welfare perspective, we want to be playing in Australia, our top players be playing 22-24 games a year. Then, what do those training environments look like and, therefore, what does the contracting model look like? Our high-performance team back in Australia are working through all of those pieces of the jigsaw, but they all have to fit together and work together for us to be successful and also for the game to be sustainable in the long term."
On the need to move away from the original WXV model:
Sally Horrox
"The feedback we got from the unions participating in the first and second iterations of WXC - and we heard it from media as well - was a desire to choose the right opposition at the right time. So we had a centralised competition in a particular format and our union partners wanted a greater say in who they were playing, where and when. That was crucial consideration. Why make this change now because it did have digital, social and broadcast reach? When you look at the importance of a fan narrative and the position of your local broadcast partners and domestic sponsors, the feedback was: please let us play at home more often to keep this story going, so that we can grow our revenue, so that we can engage our local fans. You described it as a ceding of control, but we looked at how we could best make the global pie bigger for the game, but don't do it at the expense of any one territory or union.
"We also received feedback about playing opposition outside of regional competition. The new model allows for that. We wanted to create a model that had minimum standards that were particular and bespoke to the women's game, so that costs could be controlled within the current financial landscape of the game; that was sustainable but needed to be rolled out in countries around the world, not just through World Rugby."
On how big a threat is R360 to this plan, if the world's best players are signed up to a different competition:
Alan Gilpin
"It's not really for us to talk about R360. We don't know what sort of player base they've got signed up, particularly in relation to the women's game. We've always targeted announcing WXV Global Series before the end of this Women's Rugby World Cup. This is about providing certainty; the players have been asking for that for a long time. So this allows national federations to have that next phase of contracting discussions with their women's players. Then, potentially, there are choices for those players to make about what competitions they want to they want to be playing in. The international game is the driver of visibility, fan excitement and growth for the sport, and we believe this is going to be a really meaningful competition that helps to pick up that momentum and drive the women's game forward."