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Rugby league’s return to Las Vegas in 2026 was confirmed this week for the best of Super League and Australia’s National Rugby League but there was one notable omission from the billing.
This year’s four-match card was always likely to be reduced after administrators admitted they would cut one match and, unfortunately, it was always likely the women’s international between England and Australia would miss out. This year’s match, which the Jillaroos won 90-4 against Stuart Barrow’s side, illustrated the gap between the two nations.
The ninth season of the Women’s Super League (WSL) begins on Friday night with that result still fresh in the memory. The sobering reality is that women’s rugby league in England lacks the resources, player pool and financial power to compete with Australia’s National Rugby League Women’s Premiership (NRLW).
In Australia the best in the world are professionals but England’s top players are not, and that is just the start of the disparity. Yet a full review was launched by the Rugby Football League into the women’s game after Vegas and, with a scratch beneath the surface, there are signs of cautious hope for the WSL.
The competition is not even a decade old, after all. In 2025, there are more women and girls playing the sport than ever before in the United Kingdom and the foundations laid upon the WSL’s launch in 2017 are bearing fruit: participation is up 400% in that time.
“When we started in 2017 there were 1,700 females playing and we’re going to tip over 8,000 this year,” says the WSL’s general manager, Tom Brindle. “In the 2013 World Cup we weren’t far away from Australia, but we only had 600 women playing then. Australia have accelerated their growth with huge financial investment. But we said the original stars in 2017 would inspire a new generation of girls to play rugby league. 2025 was earmarked as the moment when we’d see that materialise.”
No club epitomise that better than the side who kick off the competition at home to York on Friday night. For years, the game has been dominated by three teams, St Helens, Leeds and York. But Wigan’s victory over the Rhinos to reach the Challenge Cup final for the first time last weekend was a watershed moment. Not only did it announce the arrival of a new force in the game and a fourth team of genuine strength, but the Warriors’ success is built around young girls, many of whom picked up a rugby ball inspired by the stars of the original WSL. Their coach is Denis Betts, the former Great Britain men’s star.
“ At the moment I’m feeling the most satisfied I have ever felt as a coach,” he says. “When I first came in I really didn’t know how I could improve them because they’ve never really been coached. York, St Helens and Leeds made a commitment to the game in 2018 and now we’re doing the same. It’s up to others to follow.”
Wigan will this weekend open a new £1m facility in the town specifically for their women’s team, underlining their commitment. The challenge for the sport is that not all clubs have a billionaire owner like Wigan do, meaning investment is thin on the ground without valuable government support that has been lacking in recent years.
Some have argued the Vegas experience for England – who hope to play again this year in the run-up to next year’s World Cup – has been damaging for the game. Betts disagrees. “Playing Australia doesn’t harm our game, it just lets us know where we are,” he says. “The only way to get better at playing Australia is to play Australia, take our medicine and understand they are a way ahead of us. Hiding away doesn’t make us any better, does it?”
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The RFL’s Marc Lovering says: “There were a lot of experts after the fact but the reality is there’s no silver bullet and no kneejerk reaction from us. That performance review might be a bit wider now, but we were presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play there.”
Brindle and Lovering say nothing is off the table when it comes to continuing the WSL’s growth. There have been suggestions of playing the WSL at a separate time in the year to the NRLW, allowing the best Australians to come to England and vice versa. There are obvious financial implications there, though.
The reality is next year’s World Cup may come too soon to bridge that gap to Australia. There are significant performance and, more important, financial challenges to overcome in the medium-to-long term.
But with participation numbers rising and the emergence of new, competitive teams and exciting young players, the WSL’s growth will continue. Vegas was a bruising experience for all involved, but it may yet prove to be a line-in-the-sand moment.
