England to follow Black Ferns’ lead
ENGLAND women will be centrally contracted from the New Year in a bid to close the gap on world champions New Zealand.
Twenty-eight full-time deals will be available from January 1, along with seven elite player squad agreements.
All England players will be eligible to play for their clubs in the Premier 15s and will return to the RFU for international duty.
Contracts were previously awarded based on the next major tournament and England’s elite female players were on full-time contracts in the leadup to the last women’s Rugby World Cup – won by the Black Ferns in Ireland in 2017.
But the contracts were controversially scrapped after the 2017 World Cup as the RFU focused on sevens rugby with the World Cup in San Francisco in August 2018 – but England were shocked by Ireland, finishing ninth overall.
New Zealand Rugby introduced full-time contracts for 28 Black Ferns players this year. They are top of the women’s rugby world rankings with England in the second slot.
The Black Ferns have won five of the eight Women’s Rugby World Cup titles since 1991 and England have been champions twice, in 1994 and 2014.
With immediate effect, the squad will be based at Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre during core periods, providing a permanent base within a high-performance training centre.
RFU chief executive Stephen Brown said that England needed to make its best women’s players fully professional.
“We are at a tipping point for women’s rugby globally and it is our ambition to be world number one and drive growth,” he said. “We are very much behind this and want to see the continued expansion and growth to realise the ambitious targets we have set ourselves.”
RFU director of professional rugby Nigel Melville added: “As a union we want to lead the way for driving standards in women’s rugby through everything we do. Full-time contracts are a big step in ensuring we have the access to players to develop them and fulfil their potential.
“Bisham Abbey is a world class training facility and it’s a great opportunity to have a permanent base and use of their facilities.”
In August, the RFU awarded 17 full-time England women’s 7s contracts for the 2018-19 season. World Cup winners Emily Scarratt and Natasha Hunt will once again play sevens this season.