A woman's game as well

Women's Rugby has a bright future according to enthusiast Jill Zonneveld on the IRB website. Women began playing the game around 1976 making women's rugby a youthful 23 years old. There are currently 150,000 players playing the game worldwide and 15,000 others involved as coaches and referees, physiotherapists and administrators.

Twenty-four IRB member unions have national women's programmes (including Ireland), and there have been two Women's Rugby Championships and one Women's Rugby World Cup, which was held in 1998 in Amsterdam, Holland. On that occasion 16 unions participated, the previous two championships having 12 and 11 participating unions respectively.

The question administrators of women's rugby now face is whether they should expand or keep the number of participating unions to 16. If the recent men's World Cup is any indicator, they may well decide that occasionally more is less.