Women’s game at heart of World Rugby

What has been particularly impressive about the World Rugby Conference this year has been the high profile women's rugby has had. As Maggie Alphonsi said, it is remarkable how far the women's game has come in a short time. There was barely any presentations that did not include women - Rachel Buford, Anna Richards, Fiona Coughlan and Maggie Alphonsi spoke on a range of subjeccts from the importance of the Olympics to sports psychology, with Maggie opening day two with the keynote address.

The inclusion of women in the Hall of Fame for the first time was perhaps the highlight of the two days, showing more than anything else quite how far women have come in the game in playing lifetime of many players. The first two world cups - which were mentioned as highlights of the inductees careers - took place largely despite the then IRB than with its help, and that was barely 20 years ago. Indeed the first World Cup only took place because two of those inductees put their homes on the line to pay for it (fortunately the RFU, to their great credit, came in at the end to prevent their becoming homeless!), while little more than ten years ago the IRB's first attempt to get rugby included in the Olympics did not include women!

Today it is very different, with the expansion of the women's game being far more central to IRB than at times seems the case from the outside.

We took the opportunity to speak to a number of key people in the game, most importantly Su Carty - the much-travelled head of the women's game at the IRB - and we'll publish what she told us about her and the IRB's thoughts and hope for the game in more detail later in the week. Suffice to say it is very positive.

We also has a word with those in charge of media rights, remembering how many people complained about not being able to see all the games at last summer's world cup due to rights issues, and again it was positive with rights moving toward a "use it or lose it" model.So hopefully in 2017 if a local broadcaster does not show the game, the IRB will open up the stream. Indeed it was interesting to hear Niall Sloane from ITV say that he did not see live streaming being a competitor to live TV broadcasts.

Not all the news was positive - it was confirmed that, after nine years, the European Emerging Nations Tournament will not take place in 2015. This was a groundbreaking international competition that grew from the grassroots and has been key to the development of particularly central and eastern Europe women's rugby, in recent years bringing in coaches from particularly from the RFU to offer advice and guidance, and mainly due to the work of Renee Carmen-Jones and the Austrian RFU.

Unfortunately one offshoot of the development of Rugby Europe seems to be that they now wish to have more central control of such events, although at this stage they are not putting anything in to replace the Emerging Nations.

Overall, though, that was the exception and the main message from the two days seems to be that, despite what you may think from following rugby on newspapers and on TV, women's rugby is central to IRB development plans.