RFU aims to sell out Twickenham at 2025 World Cup
It seems premature to label England as favourites to lift the 2025 women’s Rugby World Cup after being confirmed as hosts yesterday. But such is their dominance, including a remarkable 23-game winning streak, that is exactly what they are.
Should they win the women’s rugby showpiece in New Zealand later this year, in 2025 they will have a glorious opportunity to do what no England rugby team have ever done and seal back-to-back World Cup triumphs. To achieve such a feat on home soil would be the stuff of dreams, and they would join the English sporting teams who have tasted World Cup-winning success in their own backyard. Think the England men who triumphed in football in 1966, or the England women’s cricket team who defeated India in 2017.
Economic forecasts have predicted the tournament will boost the UK economy by more than £156million. The Rugby Football Union, the first union to professionalise its women’s programme three years ago, is not holding back in its ambitions for 2025. The main goal will be to sell out Twickenham, the home of English rugby, for the final and set a world record for the biggest crowd at a women’s match. It is a bold prospect, albeit not unrealistic.
A crowd of 15,836 watched England dispatch Ireland at Welford Road in this year’s Women’s Six Nations – less than a fifth of the required number to fill the 82,000 seats at Twickenham. Evidently, there is a mountain of work to do.
But the RFU has a penchant for sustainably building the women’s game to great effect through the creation of the Premier 15s. Hosting the 2025 World Cup is just reward for a union that has gone where no other union has dared to tread in establishing a league that is now considered the leading destination for elite internationals from across the world and continually growing.
Momentum will only swell post2025, with the tournament itself likely to sow the seeds for fully fledged professionalism at club level. And then there is legacy. What will that look like for women’s rugby? An uptick in female coaches – at least 1,000 according to the RFU – along with 500 women referees, and thousands of new players. Off the pitch, too – modernised toilet facilities and upgraded changing rooms at grass-roots clubs.
Although female participation has exploded – with the number of registered female players at clubs in England jumping from 13,000 to 40,000 and 80,000 more playing at school level – it is not uncommon for women and girls at grass roots to be denied use of first-team pitches, or to carefully juggle use of changing rooms with boys’ teams.
If England win the 2025 World Cup, such problems in the community game could be consigned to the past. At the top, the landscape would change for ever.