Red Roses growing women’s rugby: ‘it won’t be too long before we fill the top green seats’
Nearly a year on from clinching the 2023 Women’s Six Nations in front of 58,000 fans, England played just their second standalone Test at Twickenham Stadium on Saturday.
Crushing Ireland 88-10 before 48,778 fans was the next step in growing the Red Roses’ brand.
A drop in 10,000 spectators might seem cause for concern, but this is progress. Last season’s victory over France was a final round Grand Slam showdown.
For all their progress beating Scotland in round three, Ireland are not a top team yet, failing to even qualify for the 2021 Rugby World Cup.
A more one-sided affair was to be predicted this time, although few would have expected such a blowout. Being able to sell so many tickets for such a match should be applauded.
For context, England men’s 22-30 Rugby World Cup warm-up loss to Fiji saw only 56,854 of the 82,000 Twickenham seats filled.
Following their bruising of Ireland, head coach John Mitchell is confident that the Red Roses will continue to grow their brand and attract more fans to these big matches.
He said: “We’ve still got to drive to fill this stadium on a constant basis. We want to play here consistently.
“If we continue to produce performances like that, it won’t be too long before we fill the top green seats.”
This has been part of the Rugby Football Union (RFU)’s strategy to grow the women’s game.
From now-transition coach Sarah Hunter’s Newcastle retirement party, to facing Wales in Bristol in this year’s Six Nations, the RFU have taken England cross-country to increase their domestic exposure.
Captain Marlie Packer acknowledged how this effort has had a positive impact on her side, but that playing at Twickenham should not be taken for granted.
She said: “We’ve gone on the road and that is how we have built a fanbase. So that when we do come here [to Twickenham], it’s not an empty stadium.
“We want to play here as much as we can, but let’s keep growing the fanbase.”
With the men’s side playing all their home fixtures at Twickenham, this is a great opportunity to reach a new audience that might not have been able to experience international rugby before.
It is no secret that these women’s Tests attract a somewhat different clientele than the men’s game, being much more family oriented, and crucially, seeing more female fans.
This is in part due to the high ticket price, as well as the perceived drinking culture that surrounds the men’s game. This has been something that has put many fans off attending live fixtures.
The RFU has identified this and is actively trying to diversify the audience of women’s rugby.
Another bumper crowd is expected with it now announced Twickenham will host New Zealand’s Black Ferns in September, along the way to selling out the 82,000-seater stadium for the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup final.
On the Ireland match Packer said: “We wanted to finish this game with smiles on our faces. We got that today, and what better place to do it than here at Twickenham, the home of English rugby, our home?”
Their home it certainly is, with the RFU actively making improvements to the ground to make it more inclusive for the women’s team.
History drips down the dressing room walls with every capped England woman’s international now individually listed on an honours board installed last year opposite their male counterparts.
Adding to this, the names of iconic female players have been included above the seats of each place in the home dressing room, with the names of Gill Burns, Katy Daly-McClean, and Rochelle Clark now joining the likes of Jason Leonard, Will Carling, and Jonny Wilkinson.
Packer said: “They are pioneers of the women’s game and having their names in the changing rooms is rightfully so. When we came in today, the boarding into the changing room had the men’s and women’s [achievements from] over the years.
“For the group we are now, it’s about creating memories and being in the present. We talked about that this week.”
With the arrival of Umbro as England’s kit supplier in 2021, the men’s and women’s teams each received their own bespoke designs, another step in growing the Red Roses’ brand.
It was only in 2014 that the Rugby Football Union for Women (RFUW) was merged into the RFU, with players forced to play under an alternate English rose as a result.
Similarly, the Red Roses launched their own social media identity at the start of the 2024 Women’s Six Nations. Dedicated X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram accounts are allowing the side’s online presence to grow for themselves.
Sports journalist and author of The Red Roses: Behind the Scenes with the England Women’s Rugby Team Jessica Hayden recently told the Sports Gazette’s Maul from Grace podcast that England are following in the footsteps of Arsenal Football Club.
She said: “Arsenal are the most successful women’s sports team in the UK. They are doing incredible things – they have sold out stadiums and really focus on data.
“They have so much information on their fans, which means they can really market to them.
“What they do with social media is that Arsenal women have their own separate identity and the men’s account repost them when something interesting is going on. That is what the Red Roses are going for.”
These changes are giving the Red Roses, and wider women’s rugby, the long overdue respect it deserves. The line between complete inclusion and the forging of their own identity must be toed.
The Red Roses are one of the most dominant forces in sport right now. With the rapid growth of women’s rugby in England, it will not be too long before John Mitchell’s prophecy of filling out those top green seats comes true.
