Leicester Tigers and Ealing Trailfinders
Vicky McQueen, ex-England international and DoR of the Tigers, has spoken to the BBC at length [www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/64066310] about their prospects as they welcome their acceptance into next season’s elite league.
Tigers become the third and by far the most renowned club to be added to the ‘House of Ten’, after Exeter Chiefs and Sale Sharks.
McQueen admits they came to the party very late, the women’s section being set up as recently as eighteen months ago.
That calls into question the values the RFU wants to establish within the women’s game. McQueen pays great tribute to Lichfield, the club they linked with last March, which worked hard to establish one of the strongest women’s outfits in England. For their pains they were not admitted to the inaugural league in 2017, and now we learn that they will be reduced from being Leicester’s partner (‘Lichfield-Leicester Tigers’) to a mere feeder-club, just as I feared when I heard of the merger.
It helps to prove that the RFU does not value highly the hard work and enterprise of women who established their own clubs, whether as part of an established men’s club or quite independently. That looks to be the fate of Wasps, as they suffer the unrealistic ambitions and financial miscalculations of previous owners.
Tigers started life in Championship North, the second tier of the national structure. Even that RFU decision had its critics. Why were they not invited to start on the bottom rung and work their way up to the summit? There is an exact parallel in the men’s game, where Saracens, multiple winners of the Premiership, were found guilty of malpractice, but sent only one rung down the ladder. In a previous generation both Richmond and London Scottish were sent packing to the bottom.
At this second level Tigers have carried all before them, winning nine games on the trot. But McQueen knows the struggles they will have among the top ten.
Paying the Price
McQueen says: ‘We want to do all we can to do right by the women’s game.’
But what is ‘doing right’? Does it mean ensuring the abandonment of clubs that have existed for three and a half decades, as has happened to Richmond and, in all probablility, Wasps?
‘Yes’, say the hard-hearted, ‘that is the price of professionalisation, of putting the game on a sound footing.’ Hoho. It’s dog eat dog.
Beyond them, other clubs find themselves overlooked too. Several have been flourishing in the same league as Tigers, only for much longer. Names like West Park, Leeds and Cheltenham come to mind; there are plenty of others. But Leicester get the nod because of their fame. Yet they, like every other Gallagher Premiership club, are battling to keep their heads above the waters of debt.
Building a Squad
Where do you find the players? That is the question every club outside the Prem 15s (and in more than one case, inside) has to ask. McQueen describes her current squad as ‘eclectic’, one that includes a number of rugby newcomers. That hardly sounds like a sound basis for development. Susie Appleby well knew that as she set about building a Chiefs’ team in the midst of a global pandemic. She accepted she would have to look abroad to find the talent necessary to survive and succeed.
Leicester’s renown will help to attract quality players, but the presence of Loughborough Lightning, a mere twelve miles up the road, highlights the hazards of team-building. Lightning had no fewer than six England representatives at the World Cup. Can an ‘eclectic’ squad including newcomers hope to match them, or do Tigers offer top players juicy contracts that Lightning cannot match?
McQueen makes the curiously contorted statement: ‘We 100% believe we would compete at the bottom end of the Premiership with the squad we have.’ But every season four or five clubs fight that good fight. Appleby aimed at once for the top of the league; this season she may achieve that target.
That leaves Ealing Trailfinders, the other successful applicant
They provide a quite different case from Tigers. The men’s section sits top of the Championship at Christmas, but previous attempts to join the Premiership were turned down as their well appointed ground has insufficient capacity (5,000).
Like Tigers, the women’s section was established only recently. Unlike them, their club doesn’t have top trophies elbowing each other for space on the shelves.
Their management team looks like this:
Director of Rugby: Giselle Mather
Chief Operating officer of the Women’s Programme: Simon Sinclair
Henley College Head Coach: Kim Oliver
Brunel University Head Coach: Steve Wagstaff
So Kat Merchant is no longer in charge at Brunel. Wagstaff joined in summer 2022.
ET have formed three PODs (Places of Development), partnerships with other clubs, to build pathways for promising young players. They are Farnham RUFC, Old Reigatian RFC and Medway RFC.
While these help to secure the nurseries vital for future growth, there is no mention yet of how the club hopes to build a squad to hold its own in the Prem 15s.
What is striking about the coverage of their good news is the lack of any details about matches played by a full ET side. The two academies have had success at their level, especially Brunel, but the main team cannot show a record of achievement on their website to match Tigers. And Tigers, remember, are looking no higher than the lower reaches of the Prem 15s.
Once more we are left wondering how the RFU gauges the playing strength of applicant clubs.
Making the Grade
It’s a tough old battle getting to the top. Compare the fate of two women’s clubs with highly contrasting histories, Richmond and London Irish. Richmond, who probably have more international capped players to their credit (well over a hundred) than any women’s club, were shown the door in 2020; LI, very anxious to be admitted to the big time, find themselves one place below them in Championship South, sitting sixth out of ten. And Richmond had to rebuild their team almost from scratch.
Ambition and achievement are not the same thing.
