England coach John Mitchell believes smaller rugby balls could be a valuable recruitment tool for the women’s game.
World Rugby, the sport’s global governing body, is to analyze data collected from a trial at the recent Six Nations Under-18s Women’s Festival, as well as from the training sessions of three Celtic Challenge teams.
There has long been a debate about whether a smaller and lighter ball would benefit the women’s game.
Photo: AFP
The current size-5 ball is the same as that used in men’s rugby, with the trial testing a size-4.5 ball, which is about 3 percent smaller and 4 percent lighter.
“We use the big ball and we’re quite happy with that,” Mitchell said on Wednesday. “When the smaller ball arrives, we’ll deal with that, but if I put my development hat on, these young girls have been exposed to a big ball their whole life.”
The New Zealander, a former head coach of the All Blacks, added: “If you’ve got younger girls wanting to come into the game and you have smaller communities that don’t have the ability to play 15s, but could do a lot more in school yards with smaller balls, if that gives them confidence to play the game, then I’m all for it.”
“We haven’t had many issues so far with a size-5, but we’ll go ahead and see what the 4.5 ball will do,” England’s Zoe Aldcroft said.
Elsewhere, the first women’s professional rugby league in the US is targeting next year for its start with six to eight teams, organizers said.
Women’s Elite Rugby (WER) said in a news release its plans call for private investors to provide funding for salaries and fulltime front office staff.
Locations for teams have not been determined.
“The mission of the WER is to be the defining standard of rugby in the United States,” WER president Jessica Hammond-Graf said.
Additional reporting by AP
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS