Women heading in the wrong direction

WATCHING last week’s game between England’s women and their French counterparts I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps their game is heading in the wrong direction.

- JEFF PROBYN

I say wrong direction even though England once again won against a team that they haven’t lost to in the last seven years.

That said, as the first country to create a fully professional women’s game with full time players playing at club and international level, it is no wonder that the team is so successful, as unlike in the men’s game they still have fixtures against amateur international sides who are still playing purely for the honour of representing their country.

The women’s team have reached a level of success that the men’s team should aspire to, as the women are currently continuing to dominate their game and have won their third consecutive Grand Slam, something that no men’s team from any of the competing nations has ever managed to do in either the Five or Six Nations competitions.

We did get close to it though and if we had a TMO back in 1990 and Tony Stanger’s try was reviewed, it would have been disallowed because, as their coach Jim Telfer said at the time, “Stanger failed to touch the ball down”. With our following successes in both the ‘91 and ’92 tournaments, it made us the first England team to win back-to-back Grand Slams since 1923-24 but it would have made us the first and only male team to ever have achieved three successive Grand Slams.