How to start a Premier 15s team from scratch

The Premier 15s will have a new look next season, with Ealing Trailfinders and Leicester Tigers joining English rugby’s top flight.

Telegraph Sport heads to the East Midlands and West London to find out how the two clubs are preparing for their first campaign.

Leicester Tigers

From the deafening thud of a deadlift to the groan of a pull-up, Leicester Tigers’ gym – a space that for years had been exclusively reserved for the club’s male professionals – is an echo chamber of sounds for a group of women on a mission to make up for lost time.

In the evolving world of women’s rugby, passion still trumps pay. Most of the women have travelled to this Tuesday-night session at the club’s Oval Park training base after a full day’s work. One player, a midwife who commutes from Hull, has not managed to make the five-hour round trip on this occasion due to work commitments.

Among those being put through their paces is Tanya Bird, a Philippines international. The 28-year-old thought the opportunity of competing domestically at the highest level had passed – until Tigers announced in the summer of 2021 that they would be launching a women’s team headed up by former England international Vicky Macqueen.

“This is what I’ve been wanting since I started playing rugby,” smiles Bird, a former gymnast who took to the sport at a summer camp as a child. “I’m fortunate to be in the team at my age, too. Vicky was actually one of my idols growing up, so when I met her I was very much fangirling her.”

Leicester knew they were behind the curve in having no female representation at the elite end of the game but, with Macqueen’s expertise, were determined to build a women’s team worthy of competing at the highest level.

Despite their amateur status, the women, it was decided, would play their games at Welford Road. They would wear the Leicester Tigers badge on female-fitted kit. And they would be promoted on social media in the same way that their men’s players are.

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“We had to create a brilliant environment,” explains Macqueen, who won 34 caps with England before retiring in 2009. “At the end of the day, these girls are not getting paid to play.”

Due to a mismatch in schedules, crossover with the men’s team is scarce – but that has not stopped Macqueen learning from the best during her time at the club.

Before he moved to England, Steve Borthwick, the former Leicester Tigers head coach who guided the club to their first Premiership title in nine years last June, would regularly WhatsApp Macqueen nuggets of advice and share ideas when the two crossed paths in club-wide meetings.

“He’s an inspirational leader and I’ve learnt so much during my limited time here from him,” says Macqueen, whose previous coaching stints include Hinckley RFC men’s team and roles with the England women’s pathway.

So, what pearls of wisdom did Borthwick impart? “Hard work and clear thinking,” Macqueen says. “Seeing the bigger picture but being able to focus on the detail as well. And being really calm, being able to reflect a bit more on where you’ve got to and then move forwards again. Those constant pieces of reflection are important. And just making winning a habit.”

Those words have had a transformational impact. Macqueen’s Tigers are second in Championship North in their inaugural competitive season, one point behind Cheltenham, who have played two games more. Having won all of their 13 league games, Leicester are hurtling towards their first title.

It is an impressive streak for a side who two years ago did not even exist, but Tigers have been savvy in their recruitment. By partnering with Lichfield RFC, a traditional powerhouse of the women’s game who were controversially denied a place in the Premier 15s – the English top flight – when it launched in 2017, the club were able to cream off the best talent locally, although welcoming more than 250 women at open trials was also a central part of their recruitment process.

Last November, the club set an attendance record for a women’s club fixture – eclipsing the number who attended last year’s Premier 15s final – when 3,523 watched the team’s victory over Loughborough in a double header with the men at Welford Road.

“If you talk to any of the players, you see their passion,” says Andrea Pinchen, the Leicester Tigers chief executive. “The story is always, ‘I used to stand on the terrace with my dad and never thought a woman could run out at Welford Road’. It makes you think, ‘Isn’t it wrong that we haven’t been doing this and giving the opportunity, cutting half the population out?’ ”

Pinchen has made no secret of her lofty ambitions, saying: “The aim is very much for the women to turn professional. You don’t want to curtail anyone’s dreams. If you’re giving up so much to train and play, and have the yearning to make that your full-time role, then that’s as it should be, exactly like the men’s sport.”

Selling out Welford Road for a Leicester Tigers women’s fixture is also on the agenda. “I say it to the girls regularly,” says Macqueen, who points to the example set by Newcastle United Women, the third-tier football team who drew a crowd of 28,565 at St James’ Park last autumn. “Imagine running out and there’s 25,000 people watching you. You have to aspire to that. I genuinely believe it will come.”

After their gym session, Macqueen’s squad head to the club’s air dome to begin drills on a synthetic grass pitch. Later this year, such sessions will take on added significance, with the team having been granted a place in the Premier 15s from next season.

“We’re not just there to make up the numbers,” Macqueen says. “I want us to be competitive with those top-four big names, actually beating teams. Looking at that league now, if we were there I believe we’d be competing at the bottom half of the league at least.”

For those such as centre Molly Draycott, a dog groomer from Uttoxeter, the prospect is surreal. “We’re going to give it our all” says Draycott, who was a latecomer to rugby aged 18 after watching GB sevens at the 2016 Olympics. “It’s weird to watch those England girls on TV and think, ‘We’re playing against some of them next season’.”

Flanker Morgan Richardson, 20, who helps Draycott with her grooming business on training nights, adds: “When I started, you do it because you love it. You never think you’re going to make it to the level where we’re headed for.”

Ealing Trailfinders

In Giselle Mather’s office, nestled in the heart of Ealing Trailfinders’ ground, plans for the club’s first-ever women’s team are in full swing. A display on one wall features a labyrinth of arrows and neat hexagonal shapes, all intersected by the club’s logo. The word “unique” is scrawled across a whiteboard, a constant reminder of how the west London club intend to set themselves apart in the increasingly competitive market of elite women’s rugby.

It was late last year when Ealing convinced the Rugby Football Union that they were deserving of a place in the Premier 15s, its top women’s league, next season. Mather unpinned her roadmap from the wall and presented it to the powers that be at Twickenham, assuring them that the club were capable of starting a women’s team from scratch.

The granting of top-flight status is a welcome reversal of fortunes for a club whose men’s team have repeatedly been blocked from joining the Premiership. Their successful Premier 15s bid is all the more intriguing considering Ealing are yet to officially assemble a team.

“When the Premier 15s started, everything was about the top,” says Mather, one of the most experienced coaches in the female game, who previously led Wasps. “You had to get your team – but that was six years ago and the game isn’t where it is now. You didn’t have all the pathways and academy-type situations. Back in 2018-19, when the last tender process was, Ealing wanted to have a women’s side but were nowhere near ready.”

Having favoured a “roots-to-tip” approach, the club are now ready to reap the rewards of their “pod system” – a series of partnerships they have struck with the likes of Brunel University, Henley College and Cardinal Newman College, to name a few, which will form the basis for Ealing Trailfinders Women’s Academy.

“I definitely want to give opportunities to young athletes,” Mather says. “I feel that in the Premier 15s at the moment, a lot of the youth gets blocked by internationals and as a result, we have England Under-20 players,

21 and 22-year-olds sitting on benches, or not even necessarily making a match-day 23, but the potential is there. With a little bit of nurturing, love and opportunity, I think those players will go quicker.”

It is an unsurprising admission from the woman who has a proven track record in developing young talent. Mather oversaw the development of England stars Sadia Kabeya, Maud Muir and Abby Dow during her time at Wasps and mentored a number of men’s players, including Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph, while heading up London Irish’s development programme.

She does, however, have ambitions to attract a handful of internationals to the west London club – Trailfinders even sent her on a scouting mission to last year’s World Cup in New Zealand – to keep up with the ever-increasing standard of the Premier 15s. In a tell-tale sign of how the league will aim to fully professionalise within the next decade, next season’s salary cap will jump from £120,000 to £190,000.

“If there are 10 teams in the league and 32 Red Roses, that’s three each, for a competitive landscape,” Mather suggests. “That’s what I believe should be in each of the sides and then our Red Roses are challenged week in, week out. I also want to bring in some players from around the world because they add flavour. But do I want to fill it with players from around the world? No.”

Players will be encouraged to have dual careers. There will be opportunities to study at Brunel or pursue work opportunities with businesses connected to Ealing.

It is partly why there will be a dedicated area at Trailfinders’ ground, where players can study or work remotely.

“Back in the day, everyone had careers,” says Mather, who was a PE teacher before coaching became a full-time job. “It was a really rich, diverse environment and with women’s rugby you still get that, you have a dentist who’s doing this, a doctor who’s doing that, police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers. When you all rock up in the same place you can park the c— that’s going on in that side of your life.”

The Ealing men’s team average about 1,000 spectators for every home game, but Mather is targeting double that for her side’s big Premier 15s debut in September.

The opportunity to continue traditions is another aspect that she is excited about. She says: “Ben Ward [the Ealing Trailfinders director of rugby] rang me the other day saying, ‘I’ve got an idea – the legacy numbers – we have to do the same for the women, too, 1-45 straight off’.

“I’m Red Rose 35 and I’m really proud of that. That’s what’s exciting – this is a beautiful blank canvas.”