Thank you for the feedback from last week’s story on what we considered to be a backward step for women’s sport with the decision not to repeat last season’s international at the Aviva Stadium.
There was a strong though not exclusive sense that women’s sport had been poorly served by the decision.
Investment
Others pointed out that the IRFU has in fact invested substantially in the team and we will be following up with a look at one such way this has manifested itself next week.
Others again suggested that it was too early in the development of the Women’s game and that playing to a largely empty Aviva would be counter productive. This is a fair point but the English and French games this season will be the ones of the highest quality, the memory will have faded from France 2014 by the time they next come to town and most crucially of all is the “build it and they will come argument.”
When England’s Women’s soccer team played a friendly against Germany at Wembley Stadium last week they drew a crowd of 55,000.
That’s 15,000 more than watched the men’s team three days earlier. That could never have happened without the courage to put it on at the biggest stadium in the country.
Physio
Most alarming of the feedback came from one correspondent who told us that the Women’s XV had to pay for their own physiotherapy and that some who could not afford it were letting niggling injuries go untreated. If that was the case we are sure it will quickly be reversed.
Donnybrook
It’s never too late to make a good decision and one suggestion that could gain traction is to play games at Donnybrook on a Friday night. With a large club population around and better transport links that exist for Ashbourne, it would draw a larger crowd and move beyond the core audience that the games will otherwise likely be limited to.
Finally thanks to those who pointed us in the direction of the English RFU’s strategic document on Women’s Rugby published only weeks after their success at the World Cup.
Image Credits: Inpho.ie and RFU
