CDRL plans growth of women’s game
DETAILS of a new senior women’s tackle competition in the Far North will be ironed out at a Cairns and District Rugby League annual general meeting this weekend.
It comes after the Queensland Rugby League announced plans for a statewide women’s competition in 2020.
As first revealed by the Cairns Post, the QRL is looking to establish a women’s competition alongside the Intrust Super Cup.
QRL Northern Division assistant manager Robbie Moore said a CDRL senior women’s tackle competition would be the first step towards seeing a Northern Pride women’s team compete in the statewide competition in the future.
“Rugby league is about giving opportunities for everyone to play the game,” he said.
“To get a five or six-team competition in Cairns next year is going to be really, really big for our ladies and the Northern Pride to eventually, in two or three years down the track, have their own women’s team in the state competition.”
Moore said the QRL had provided recommendations to the CDRL and its clubs about the new competition.
“We sent surveys out to the girls who played Women’s League Touch and the women’s tackle series this year, just to see what they wanted, their ideas, whether they enjoyed it and all that sort of stuff,” he said.
“From those steering committees, we put some recommendations back to the CDRL for next year, which need to be ratified if they’re going to go ahead with it or not.”
“The whole idea is to expand on the competition we had this year, but the league needs to take ownership of that.”
He said the recommendations centred around a fiveteam tackle competition that would run in line with the first half of the senior men’s CDRL season. While there were four City-versus-Country tackle games in the Far North this year, Moore said the plan was to develop that into a weekly competition.
“Next season, they’re asking for expressions of interest from the clubs who want to put in a women’s team,” he said.
“There’s already been a few clubs say they’re interested in putting a women’s team in.
“Potentially, we could have five or six women’s teams playing in the CDRL next year for that first half of the year.”
The QRL on Thursday announced its plans to strengthen female pathways across the state with a new, open-aged female competition in 2020.
Starting at the same time as the Intrust Super Cup, the competition will run over a period of between seven and 10 weeks, including a finals series.
The new-look format will allow Intrust Super Cup clubs to field a female team in the statewide competition, with the QRL working towards a maximum eight-team league.
Moore said there were plans to field a combined Mackay, Townsville and Cairns team next season.
“They’ve already put some names forward, from 15-yearsold up to opens, and have been identifying ladies in the areas of Cairns, Innisfail, Eacham and Cape/Torres,” he said.
“It’s all there for the women now … at the highest level, there’s a clear pathway there.”
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