Player and coach development
Through our partnership with The British & Irish Lions, we’re investing to drive positive, long-term change for women’s rugby. We’ve committed to a £3 million Levelling The Playing Field grant for player and coach development in the four Home Unions. The grant will support women’s player and coach pathways to increase overall standards and promote equality amongst the Unions in the lead up to the 2027 Howden Lions Women’s Tour in New Zealand.
Our partnership with The British & Irish Lions will support each of the four Home Unions with their three-year funding plans, tailored to their specific player and coach needs, details of which can be found below. The Unions will also work collaboratively to share non-proprietary research, ideas and experiences with each other.
The impact of our funding so far, and what it means to elite players, is brought to life in this video:
Transcript
Alex Callender, Wales: ‘It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?
Aoife Wafer, Ireland: ‘To give women a chance to cement their name in history. It’s going to be monumental.’
Lisa Thompson, Scotland: ‘The first British & Irish Lions team is massive for the women’s game.’
Aoibheann Reilly, Ireland: ‘It was always kind of a question posed, why isn’t there a women’s team?’
Ellie Kildunne, England: ‘We’ve got this opportunity to, yes, make history, but also create something that is so big for the future.’
Linda Djougang, Ireland: ‘We’re all hungry for that jersey.’
Aoife Wafer, Ireland: ‘I’m getting goosebumps talking about it.’
Making the first Lions Women’s Team a reality. With our £3 million investment.
Linda Djougang, Ireland: ‘I think the investment from Royal London is massive for the game. The resources that are available for us even to train in a high performance centre is a massive thing.’
Sisilia Tuipulotu, Wales: ‘We don’t have to worry about anything else, other than to train, to recover, do what’s best for us to perform.’
Emma Orr, Scotland: ‘In the long term we are really going to reap those rewards, with the players that are going to come through and receive that money and funding and support.’
Investing in player pathways.
Sadia Kabeya, England: ‘It was my first experience of being in a semi-professional setup.’
Aoife Wafer, Ireland: ‘My sister is going through the pathway as well, to have her come through a pathway and knowing that people are investing in her future as well is really special.’
Alex Callender, Wales: ‘For those girls being able to have those coaches, have those experiences, going away to tournaments, playing against different nations, it only makes other nations better.’
Supporting elite coaching talent.
We want the best coaches to coach us.
Sadia Kabeya, England: ‘I was coached by Briony Cleall who was an England player at the time when I was at secondary school. It’s only now that I look back and I realize how monumental it was to have someone of such calibre, at such an early age.’
Ellie Kildunne, England: ‘They’re the people that make us the players that we are on that day.’
Aoibheann Reilly, Ireland: ‘It’s great to see that some of Royal London’s money is going into the IRFU accelerator coach program which will hopefully benefit us in the future.’
Shaping a new future for women’s rugby.
Ellie Kildunne, England: ‘If we get the funding right, the investment right, it creates a movement that changes it for not just the next generation, but it changes it for our generation.’
It’s just a very exciting time to be a part of women’s rugby, and it’s only going to get better.
Alex Callender, Wales: ‘The younger generation are now going to be like, ‘I can do this, I can now become a British and Irish Lion.’
This is very much the start and the beginning. It doesn’t get any better.
Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU)
- Host additional U18 and U20 camps and training matches to accelerate player development.
- Develop a 'Coach Accelerator Scholarship Program' to accelerate coach capability and long-term career progression.
- Work with universities to identify the future talent and unearth potential high-performance players.
Rugby Football Union (RFU)
- Develop it's 'Player Development Groups', boosting the overall player experience journey and increasing the targeted skill development of players coming through the pathway.
- Invest in strength and conditioning staff and development coaches within these centres to improve the support available to the players.
Scottish Rugby (SR)
- Recruit for two new Performance Pathway coaches.
- Host additional U18 and U20 camps and training matches to accelerate development within the teams.
- Host residential camps for a national academy that brings together the best pipeline players in Scotland.
Welsh Rugby Union (WRU)
- Strengthen coaching staff with five new members; a Performance Pathway Coach, Physical Development Lead, Performance Pathway scientist, a set-piece coach and a specialist skills coach.
- Invest in talent identification and screening across the country.
Story Shirt
To represent our investment into aspiring rugby players and coaches across Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England, we commissioned a bespoke shirt to showcase what this investment will mean for women in rugby. Matthias Hamzaoui, an artist and calligrapher, has designed the shirt using his iconic grayscale portraiture surrounded with typography quoting players, coaches and staff from across the four national women's programmes on what this £3 million bursary means for them.
