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Worcester and Sale offered conditional spots in next season's Premier 15s

Allianz Premier 15s flag on November 28, 2020 in Exeter, England. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

The Rugby Football Union has confirmed Sale Sharks Women and Worcester Warriors Women have been issued with a conditional offer to join the Allianz Premier 15s league for the 2023/24 season, bringing the number of clubs up to ten.

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During the recent tender process, for entry into the league from the 2023/24 season onwards, eight clubs were granted places. However, the tender panel made a strong recommendation for the RFU and Women’s Premier 15 Ltd (WP15) to explore how greater geographical spread could be provided in the league.

The RFU press release read:
The RFU and WP15 recognise the need to grow the game in the North of England and acknowledge the challenges faced in the region. The RFU has therefore developed a package of support to grow the game in the North, which coupled with a strategy for further investment will allow Sale Sharks to adequately address the feedback from the tender panel.

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Worcester Warriors Women have recently secured funding to enable them to continue to operate, therefore, they have also been offered a conditional place, subject to providing the required information requested by the RFU.

Once the Premier 15s NewCo Board is established, it will be the responsibility of the Board (and shareholders) to consider any league expansion for the 2024/25 season onwards and the process or system for entry.

Alex Teasdale, RFU Women’s Game Director said: “We know rugby in the North can be disproportionately challenged. We have therefore responded to the panel’s recommendation to explore if a northern club could be part of the league. Given the importance of having a northern provision, we believe with the proposed support package Sale Sharks will be well placed to continue their work to develop and grow rugby in the region.

“Worcester narrowly missed out on being awarded a place in the initial tender. The club’s circumstances are now changing and we believe it is only fair to also offer to work with them on a conditional basis to also continue to deliver elite rugby in the region.”

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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