Wiverns help game go global
Brendan Gallagher continues his series charting the history of the women’s game
Women’s Rugby led a precarious existence in the 1950s and, more surprisingly, in the 1960s when women were enjoying all sorts of new social freedoms but that is perhaps testament, if that’s the right word, to the vice-like grip on the game held by men. It was ‘their’ game, an exclusive Boys only club. Women, in the main, were positively discouraged from playing.
Happily, edging into the 70s, there were still pockets of enthusiasm for the women’s game, notably in the USA and France, not least in universities and colleges.
It was perhaps the USA – at the forefront of the modern feminist movement – that the most striking strides were taken with three universities establishing teams early in the 70s. That’s Colorado State, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Illinois. Other colleges soon took their cue.
When the United States Union was formed in 1975, Women’s rugby had its own board of directors and staged its first annual championship three years later with Portland Maine winning the first title.
The main problem, in terms of forming a national team, was finding opponents or the finance to tour because on the American continent only Canada were showing any inclination to play. So in 1985 came an innovative tour to England and France by a 36-strong USA selection – a Barbarians team if you like – who named themselves the Wiverns.
The USA Union would not recognise them as a national representative side so they came up with the acronym WIVERNS which they felt represented their raison d’etre – Women’s International Vagabonds, Emissaries and Rugby Nomads. There have been some big landmark moments in the history of women’s rugby but in retrospect few bigger than this pioneering tour which raised the bar massively in terms of fitness, the quality of athlete and the skillset of those playing.
They won all five matches on tour and a women’s Festival at Shenley, and a good number of those involved represented the USA in the first women’s World Cup in 1991, which of course they won.
The Wiverns were trailblazers and two years later the USA – far and away the dominant nation at this stage – were finally allowed to form an official national side, but the honour of playing the first women’s Test match fell on France and the Netherlands. Their historic game took place on June 13, 1982 when France, overwhelming pre-match favourites, struggled to a 4-0 win in a very feisty affair at Utrecht.
That match had only come about after a Dutch delegation, headed up by Leo Van Herwijnen, had visited France a few months earlier to see how Women’s rugby was organised and prospering there. It transpired that the Dutch were not so very far behind France so, with the Dutch Federation celebrating its 50th anniversary later that year, the challenge was laid down.
It was all a bit ad hoc but it was demonstrably international rugby – national shirts, anthems before the game – and indeed the first four Tests France played were all against the Netherlands. The games remained close and competitive; in 1984 the French were again lucky to escape with a 3-0 win in Hilversum.
What with the Wiverns tour that followed in 1985, the gauntlet had been thrown down. It was high time Women players in the UK responded – hence the short-lived existence of the GB Women’s Rugby team. Women’s rugby in the UK at the time was run by the Women’s Rugby Football Union and until the individual nations formed separate unions and representative teams, a Great Britain side was the flagship representative XV.
Their first ever Test was at home to France in April 1985, a 14-6 defeat at Richmond and over the next four years they mustered for another seven internationals – three against France, two against Italy and two against the Netherlands. Great Britain’s last ever game – in fifteens anyway – came in March 1990 when they defeated
Italy 32-0 at Moseley.
In the meantime the splintering into national teams was already underway with Wales and England meeting for the first time at Pontypool Park on April 5, 1987, a game I was lucky enough to cover. England – consisting mainly of previously capped GB players and with five Loughborough University Students in the team – were strong favourites and won 22-4 but Wales, with No.8 Lisa Burgess to the fore, resisted strongly.
It was a feelgood occasion with a 2000+ crowd on a Sunday afternoon and the quality of play impressed many sceptics. Certainly there was much praise for England
“Gauntlet had been thrown down, high time UK responded”
fly-half Karen Almond, whose willowy Barry John-style running attracted much comment.
Almond was not unlike a number of women players in this era who had arrived at university with high ambition in another sport – with her it was hockey – but got seduced by rugby and the opportunities to play at a high level that were opening up.
Meanwhile later that year the USA finally got to play an officially-sanctioned Test match when they beat Canada 22-3 at the University of British Colombia, the hotbed of women’s rugby north of the 49th parallel. Captaining the USA that day was Kathy Flores, a star turn on the Wiverns tour two years earlier, and she was still doing her stuff at No.8 two years later when they took the first World Cup.
Another key member of that original USA side was utility back Patty Jervey who later achieved IRB Hall of Fame status by becoming the first woman player to appear in five World Cups (1991-2006). She was a key player in a start-up team at the University of Carolina and then, with the likes of Flores and Candi Orsini, made Florida State an absolute driving force in the domestic American game.
A larger than life character, she summed up her personal philosophy to the game when she wrote a mission statement for her beloved Atlanta Harlequins: “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: ‘Wow! What a ride!’”
By the end of the 80s women’s rugby was gaining a foothold around the world. North America, New Zealand, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Russia and France where a young Nathalie Amiel was a driving force, first playing internationally at the age of 15, against Great Britain in 1986.
The game had a base and was set for its next major step forward. It had taken a long time – too long – to reach that point and now the Women’s game was in a hurry.