Remembering WRWC’91: The Press

Press coverage of the first women??s rugby world cup was, at best intermittent. The occasional article appeared in the lead-up to the tournament, especially concerning the USSR team whose simple attendance was seen as extraordinary, the USA because of the size of their second row, and the Japanese because of their stature (or lack of) and fashion in headgear.

Once the tournament began the first day achieved some good coverage, as did the final, but in-between the best that could be found tended to be the appearance of scores in the classified section. However what did appear, once the trivialities were out of the way, was very positive, especially towards the organisers. One telling comment from the The Times near the end of the tournament praised what they had achieved, while suggesting that this was?˜perhaps?˜because the WRFU (the RFUW would not be born for several years) was?˜?˜affliliated to the RFU. Rugby writers of the?˜time did not have a high opinion of the main rugby authorites!

The lack of coverage after the opening day was almost cetainly due to timing, and the fact that the tournament was in far away Wales. Day one was on a Saturday afternoon, allowing the press plenty of time to file their stories back in London, especially for the opening game which ended about 3.30. However most subsequent games only kicked off in the early evening, which would not have helped the press deadlines of the 1990s regardless of the sport.

The best coverage tended to be in the broadsheet papers, especally the Times and Sunday Times, and certainly the most detailed report?˜of the opening day appeared in the latter, written by Paul Nelson. Curiously there are several slightly different versions of this in the files, so what appears below is an amalgam of what we have found.