By Tallon Smith
In a major leap forward for the women’s game in the Riverina, Group 9 Rugby League has announced a women’s tackle nines competition will kick off in 2024.
To be run as an eight round pilot season, the competition will allow clubs to play almost one complete round robin, however it will not feature a finals series or crown an official premier club.
Group 9 President Mark Daly said that the competition’s future will be based upon interest, and there is some scope for an extension to the season should it be a success.
“It’s a nines competition at this stage for the first eight rounds, we’ll see how much interest there is for the start,” Daly said.
“If there’s a lot of interest in it we might extend that eight rounds to a few more rounds, and then hopefully next year have 13-a-side.
“It will be like trial games, [to] give girls the opportunity to play rugby league, hopefully next year we’ll build on that.”
The new Group 9 President said that the impetus for the swift formation of an organised senior competition largely stemmed from the need for the growing number of girls playing the game to have a competition beyond Under 15s.
“Most of it has come from the juniors, the juniors produced 11s and 13s last year, and now in 2024 [there] will be 15s going into the competition,” he said.
“In 2025 they’ve got nowhere to go, so hopefully in 2025, we’ll have an Under 17s women’s tackle competition as well.”
As for the potential for a representative fixture against Group 20 in a reboot of the Kelly Cup, Daly said that would be great for the league.
“Hopefully, that’d be great, it’d be good to see that back again.”
The development comes a month after neighbouring Group 20 announced a 6-round pilot women’s tackle season, to kick off alongside the Group 9 competition in April.
Women’s Rugby League in NSW continues to grow massively year on year, recording a 22 percent increase in participation figures in 2023 to crack the 23,000 mark for the first time.
Crucially, players will also be able to play League Tag, which will continue to run, ensuring that players have a choice for both the full-contact and semi-contact variants of the game.
It is anticipated that Under 16s will move from the senior body to the juniors in both major Riverina competitions to accommodate the extra women’s games.
