News on news

Every summer, it seems, someone has the bright idea of producing an independent newspaper (or electronic newspaper) devoted to women's rugby. And a good idea it is too - there is a staggering amount of largely unreported and really quite interesting news out there, not to mention the mountain of totally unused opportunities to question those in authority about what the heck they think they are doing with the women's game. For anyone with a modicum of journalistic ability the game is an untapped goldmine of opportunities (and with a potential audience approaching 10% of all rugby players worldwide - and 25% in some of countries).

The only snag is that, to date, nothing has ever come of various schemes. The plan to launch a printed magazine a couple of years ago faded into nothing, and last year an e-magazine got as far as a swish and technically clever website but never seemed to find anything to put on it (beyond a few recycled RFUW press releases).

And now there is a new attempt - and possibly the best yet. Launched to co-incide with the World Cup build up, Scrum Queens will be a website (www.scrumqueens.com) aiming to:

"offer the best in news, features and results for the sport across the international game".

The draft homepage design appears to the left. Each nation (well, those nations in the World Cup, not yet all 70+ active countries) will also have a home page of their own.

The site will only cover international rugby (15s and 7s) including:

"in-depth coverage of international competitions such as the Six Nations, the European Championships and the Women’s World Cup"

which will be great as the only place this year to give full coverage to all of the above was, well, this blog!

The author is Alison Donnelly, a journalist and ex-PRO for the Irish Women's Team, and with experience of working for the IRB. As a result she does say a few worrying things, like:

"The IRB's website already offers an excellent resource and snapshot of news from the global game"

That might be about right if you interpret "snapshot" as something very small and random, but "excellent resource"? The site that lists every men's international since the dawn of time but cannot list women's internationals that took place two months ago? No.

However, Alison has assured me that she is:

"certainly not looking to be a mouthpiece for the bodies but of course I will be in touch with the IRB and all of the unions for news and stories and interviews over time, so there will be a fair bit of collaboration between us.

I've already met the RFUW as it's important for me to have a relationship with them for when I'm after interviews/pictures/clips etc but I'll be reporting from the games myself at the 6 Nations/home friendlies and the WC so it will be very much independent opinion."

She also assures me that she will not be simply republishing press releases (which is the sum total of all the BBC do, for example!).

Launch date should be some time in September (just in time for the Asian qualifiers I suspect) - so watch this space, and if anyone wants to contribute Alison would be delighted to hear from you.