At long last the women of OUWRFC will join their male Blues counterparts in the annual Varsity Rugby showpiece at Twickenham, starting in December 2015. It has also been announced that the women’s club will merge with the men’s club, OURFC, to form one greater, united front of rugby at Oxford University.
For the past 27 years, the the women’s varsity fixtures have been staged at both the Iffley Road stadium and Cambridge’s Grange Road stadium, but, clearly, neither can match the history and prestige of the home of English Rugby, marking a new chapter in one of the oldest rivalries in sport. The women’s game at university level is finally being given the exposure and platform it thoroughly deserves.
It has certainly been a rollercoaster week for the OUWRFC as this news came on the same day as a tough 47-0 defeat for the Blues team in the 2014-15 edition of the varsity match at Grange Road. Despite this setback, OUWRFC have their eyes set firmly on the future development of their club and also the popularity of women’s rugby at College level. The game is more popular than ever, and is continuing to grow in stature, buoyed by England’s victory in the Women’s World Cup Final over Canada in Paris last summer.
The decision to merge the women’s and the men’s clubs was made by current members of OUWRFC in consultation with their alumni at their AGM on 10th March and it is an exceptionally important building block for the future of the women’s club and also the wider development of the game. The two clubs already have shared joint practice sessions, and there is the prospect of further interaction between the clubs moving forward.
On the subject of the merger, Women’s Captain Carly Bliss commented, “We are thrilled to be merging with OURFC and welcome their support, encouragement and wealth of experience. The identity and future of women’s rugby at Oxford University has been secured by the hard work of past and current members of OUWRFC, and the decision to host the Women’s Varsity Match at Twickenham in 2015 is an important landmark in those endeavours.”
This decision to give both the men and women’s varsity rugby matches an equal stage is a huge step forward for sporting gender equality on the University stage. This follows another long overdue Oxford-Cambridge sporting first: last term’s decision to move the Women’s Boat Race to the traditional Putney-Mortlake course, to row the very same course on the same day as the men for the very first time. This sporting equality can only be positive for the promotion of grassroots sport University wide and beyond, as to ensure that the reward for their dedication and playing at an incredibly high level of sporting achievement is to be able to showcase your abilities in a setting such as Twickenham – something that should certainly be open to men and women.
On a professional level, the disparity between the coverage of women’s team sport and that of the men’s is clear. However, with the Women’s Football World Cup looming this summer, 2015 stands to be a very important year in the world of women’s sport. On a rugby front, however, the future is absolutely bright, both in the UK and further afield. The official England Rugby Twitter account stated recently that over 1.8m women and girls in 120 nations are now playing the game worldwide. In this exciting new era for OURFC and OUWRFC, all that remains is for our Blues to take their revenge and to lead a monumental charge to shoe the Tabs at the home of English rugby on 10th December 2015.
