England women's summer of rugby

Amatuers? Its a full-time job in the England Women's rugby team! Barely weeks after the FIRA European Championship and Sevens tournaments the England team are now starting to prepare for a series of five internationals next month, three of which will make up the first "Nations Cup" tournament.

The only downside to this is that the Nations Cup - for reasons unexplained - will not be quite as ambitious as was first suggested. No Wales or France will limit the tournament to a three game round-robin involving England, Canada and the USA to be played between 22nd and 26th August at Esher RFC. In addition, and presumably to compensate their visitors who would otherwise be travelling a long way for not much rugby, England will be playing an extra international against each team outside the Nations Cup event.

The full programme of internationals is:

August 19th: England v USA (7pm)

Nations Cup:

• August 22nd: England v USA (7pm)
• August 24th: England v Canada (5pm)
• August 26th: USA v Canada (7pm)

August 29th: England v Canada (7pm)
(All games at Esher RFC)

A 30-strong squad has been named - details on the RFUW website - no great surprises, but some of you will recognise a victim of one of Nim's most famous tackles in there!

• One small matter of note. Compare and contrast the publicity and promotional efforts of the hosts of the U20 Nations Cup (see here for example) and the efforts for the adult Nations Cup (see... erm... ??). Admittedly the former event does start this weekend and the latter is over a month away, but the Canadian site has actually been up for over a month already...