Women's rugby: a history back to... when???

Probably Joe's fault this, because I'm not entirely sure why I should start thinking about looking back on past women's rugby internationals, but the discussion about the "team outing" to the Six Nations games at OAs perhaps was one reason.

Anyway leaving aside the why for a minute, where do you go to find such things? Well, not the RFU/RFUW website for starters (try to search for, well, anything much on it - you'll soon see why!). No the best source will be the IRB - I thought - for are they not the international body for the women's game as well, and do they not have a massive database of all rugby international result back to 1871 or whenever? And indeed they do - here - and there is an option for women's internationals. Fascinating...

Except that - while the men's database does indeed include ever international ever from the year dot, with every fixture included from England vs Scotland to Japan vs Korea - the women's database isn't quite as extensive. Indeed it may be news to everyone to learn that - according to the IRB - women's international rugby began rather more recently than 1871. Indeed FAR more recently. In fact the first game they acknowledge was on 4th February last year - that cold night some of your will remember when England beat Wales at OAs. Yes indeedy, our international governing body seems to think that THAT was the first ever women's international.

Pathetic isn't it? Also I guess mildly predictable.

I suppose the only positive argument might be that perhaps only men are sufficiently mad enough to want to look up the result of Wales v Scotland from 1925, and there may be something in that, but even so personally I suspect its more an indication of how seriously rugby's Lords and Masters take the women's game.

Ah well, at least the IRB acknowledges the 2006 internationals (well, most of them). Presumably 12 months ago it didn't even do that. So we are getting somewhere. Slowly. Maybe.

See you all tomorrow...