![(from left) Shaunagh Brown, Megan Gaffney, Elinor Snowsill and Niamh Briggs - Is a women's British and Irish Lions tour a good idea?](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/rugby-union/2024/01/17/TELEMMGLPICT000362928472_17054788851430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqIkt0tJZIanbI8csonJ5sUEnbwQak9OIpzwEg9cppHGw.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Is a women’s British and Irish Lions tour a good idea?
Former England prop Shaunagh Brown and Telegraph Sport’s Fiona Tomas look at the pros and cons – plus have your say and vote below
![(from left) Shaunagh Brown, Megan Gaffney, Elinor Snowsill and Niamh Briggs - Is a women's British and Irish Lions tour a good idea?](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/rugby-union/2024/01/17/TELEMMGLPICT000362928472_17054788851430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqIkt0tJZIanbI8csonJ5sUEnbwQak9OIpzwEg9cppHGw.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The first women’s British and Irish Lions squad will tour New Zealand in 2027, but is this the right move for the women’s game?
Yes, women’s game is the future
By Shaunagh Brown
There is no doubt in my mind that there should be a British and Irish Lions Women’s team. The Lions were formed in 1886 but it has taken until 2024 for a women’s team to be announced.
So what is the point in starting one now? The answer is simple: women are the future of rugby. The Lions are a brand steeped in history and tradition and having a women’s team will help close rugby’s gender awareness gap. Current players as well as young women and girls starting out in the sport can now dream of wearing that famous red jersey.
In this country, women’s sports are booming. On a societal level, we are living in a time when women and girls are learning they can do more, empowered by the realisation that they don’t have to be consigned to the boxes that society often puts us in. This extends to a women’s Lions team, which has a golden opportunity to be unapologetically female.
When I first joined the Women’s Lions steering group 18 months ago, there were lots of things to explore and ideas to thrash out. We spoke about the DNA of the Lions. It has to be a touring team, with no quotas – it has to involve the best of the best – but we also don’t have to follow the template of the men’s tours. There will inevitably be some crossovers with the men’s team, but the women will stamp their own identity onto theirs, including tour locations.
Where else would we take a women’s Lions tour? It is radical but one idea I’ve always liked is playing a team like New Zealand in Hong Kong, tapping into the existing rugby sevens market and fanbase there.
One of the ideas that has been floated around is playing New Zealand in the USA and tapping into that emerging market in North America. Or perhaps a New Zealand and Australian combined team, or even a women’s Lions against a southern hemisphere outfit. Some of those conversations were really tough and challenging – there was a lot of back and forth – but I’m confident New Zealand is the right decision as the location for the inaugural tour in 2027.
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One of the non-negotiables for me is that a women’s Lions tour must be bespoke. The optimists among us will expect women’s rugby to be in an even better place in 2027 than it is now.
But I’m a realist. Drawing on my experience as a professional player and coach in the sport, I suspect we will still have a significant number of top athletes who will be juggling rugby with full-time work in three years’ time. Even now, working women are still playing international rugby and I doubt by 2027 domestic clubs will be running full-time programmes. But you don’t want to close the door to those players who are not fortunate enough to be contracted players through their union.
So how does that help shape a women’s tour? It means a women’s tour might not be as long as a traditional men’s one. It is not right to ask someone to take more than 30 days off work for one tour, before you factor in training time and recovery time. This has to be about what works for women.
Another big aspect for me will be the different considerations for female athletes, particularly in the area of childcare. Women – both in society and in sport – still occupy the role as the main childcare. We’ve already seen with the likes of England lock Abbie Ward, who is targeting an international comeback after the birth of her daughter last year, that it is possible to combine a career with motherhood and elite sport.
Although many of the home unions are yet to follow the Rugby Football Union’s lead in implementing maternity policies, I would like to think the Lions’ advisory group will be receptive to the potential needs in this area for future players.
For me, issues around female athlete health also need to be central to any women’s Lions programme. We are all aware of the dearth of female sports science – World Rugby are currently funding research into breast injuries – while female concussion is another area being explored.
An increasing number of female players at club level are harnessing the power of their periods to get the best out of their training each week but there is still a long way to go. We have only just started closing the female body literacy gap – even I’m learning all the time about how I can harness the peaks and troughs of my menstrual cycle to maximise my training.
Ensuring the 2027 tour is inherently female extends to its commercial sustainability. In a promising sign, the women’s team already has a shirt sponsor in Royal London, while insurance company Howden has been named as its title partner.
But for me, even more can be done here. Ben Calveley, the Lions CEO, has described this project as a blank canvas and I’d love to see female-centric brands and partners align with the team, such as sanitary products providers, cosmetic companies or female sports apparel brands.
Some people will say the women’s game isn’t ready for a Lions team, that there isn’t enough infrastructure in place and there is no need to follow an established template in the men’s game. I’d counter that by asking them why?
It has not been the right time for 136 years, so when is the right time? It is now or never.
No, tour would be dominated by England players
By Fiona Tomas
Alas, the British and Irish Lions are ploughing ahead with their vanity project. A women’s team will tour New Zealand in 2027, with a three-Test series against the Black Ferns.
What do you think the team will be called? The Lionesses? Already taken. The Women’s Lions? A bit too original, although a safe bet. The team’s brand, however, should be the least of our concerns given that the concept of a women’s tour is one the female game can ill afford.
The “historic” announcement came bubble-wrapped in all the usual rhetoric and cheery hyperbole about “growing the women’s game”. But when you strip it back, this is nothing more than a copy-and-paste idea that smacks of men attempting to board the women’s sport hype train for the sake of some positive PR.
The idea, of course, naturally carries appeal. Who wouldn’t want to see Wales flyer Jasmine Joyce on one wing and England’s Abby Dow tearing it up on the other? Or a pack stacked with Red Roses captain Marlie Packer, Alex Matthews and Sarah Bern? Women, after all, should be allowed to share in one of rugby’s most revered institutions.
Herein lies the first sticking point with a women’s Lions team, whether one were to be launched tomorrow or in three years’ time. English players would dominate any touring side. Only when we have a commercially viable and competitive Women’s Six Nations can we begin to entertain the concept of a women’s Lions team. The last four Women’s Six Nations have been won by England, whose giant killings of Scotland, Wales and Ireland have occasionally made a mockery of the championship.
Without international quotas, which organisers have made clear they will not apply to a women’s Lions team, it is hard to see how it would work in practice while the competitive chasm between England and everyone else remains as stark as ever.
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Lions organisers cannot hide from this. However well intentioned their efforts might be, the fact that they are even exploring such a venture shows how out of touch they are with the women’s game.
At the official announcement, their ignorance showed. Ben Calveley, the Lions CEO, and Ieuan Evans, the Lions chairman, were quick to wax lyrical about the success of the 2022 Women’s World Cup in New Zealand, which attracted record-breaking crowds and, in the country at least, cut through to the mainstream.
They were notably less forthcoming about the apathetic nature New Zealand Rugby showed when it hosted a different global women’s tournament last year. In fact Evans didn’t seem to realise WXV, rather worryingly, had even taken place, at one point confusing both competitions.
In his defence, the first edition of WXV1 – the inaugural global competition organised by World Rugby in which England were victorious – was a massive flop, characterised by scores of empty seats and an underwhelming broadcast reach. Why should New Zealand Rugby be trusted to cough up more of its precious finances to welcome a women’s Lions side?
And where else would a women’s Lions team tour? The women’s game does not boast the same competitive landscape that there is in the men’s and this has undeniably been its greatest drawback in recent years.
That is all before we turn to the Darwinistic elephant in the room. Rather than enhancing the women’s game, a Lions team could end up doing the exact opposite. More opportunities for those at the top mean less for those at the bottom, meaning the competitive gulf gets bigger. The fact that September 2027 has been chosen as the tour window also casts doubt on the future of WXV, a competition launched by World Rugby to help other nations play catch-up.
“It’s not for me to comment on some of the other competitions that will happen,” Calveley said, with an air of diplomacy. No, it’s probably not. But as a man in a position of authority wading into the women’s game it might be a good idea to at least show some interest in the ecosystem you intend to cohabit.
On the subject of money, Calveley insists that 2027 will not be a loss-making enterprise, having secured financial backing from Royal London and Howden. “We are absolutely expecting it to be commercially sustainable,” he said. “All the modelling we did during the feasibility study demonstrated that that would be the case.”
In a cruel twist of irony, hours later, Chloe Rollie, the Scotland full-back, took to social media platform X pleading for help finding a boot sponsor. It was telling of the bottom-up approach that the women’s game desperately needs to build before it can entertain a Lions team at the top.
The lack of basic support available to female internationals is a subject that rings particularly true closer to home. You only have to look at Telegraph Sport’s investigation last year into the sexism that pervades the Irish Rugby Football Union to gain a sense of how unions continue to drag their feet when it comes to investing in the women’s game.
A women’s Lions team can only embrace its feasibility when we have a professional and competitive Women’s Six Nations and the female game is flooded with a deluge of other off-field support, from liveable salaries to fully-fledged maternity policies to female-specific health support.
The excitement will no doubt build when the time comes. But it is hard to shake off the feeling that one of rugby’s most established and revered brands is opening its doors to female rugby players more out of duty than necessity.