The 12 participating nations were initially promised that their accommodation and food would be paid for, they just needed to get to Wales.<\/p>\n
But with the bill rocketing to \u00a335,000 the Richmond four soon realised they were in trouble.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t so much that we were running it on a shoe string, we were running it on a frayed thread,” said Cooper.<\/p>\n
Hundred of companies were approached for support, but purses stayed shut.<\/p>\n
“I remember picking up the phone and a corporate organisation said to me ‘Sue, women’s rugby is a participation sport, it’s not a spectator sport, good luck with that’,” said Dorrington.<\/p>\n
“I just couldn’t unlock anyone who had the vision that we had, companies saw us as a novelty. In the end we had no money.”<\/p>\n
They were forced to go back to the teams to say they did not think the tournament could go ahead, but they all came back and said they would pay themselves.<\/p>\n
One team brought their own challenges though, as Cooper explained: “The Russians weren’t allowed to take any money out of the [former] Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
“They didn’t have any money for food, they were really hungry. They used to come down and do a sweep at breakfast and live on cornflakes for lunch.<\/p>\n
“They got by selling Russian dolls and vodka on the steps of City Hall right in front of the authorities, which of course attracted the unwanted attention of customs.”<\/p>\n
Fortunately the people of Cardiff were generous with donations, players even got \u00a380 worth of Marks & Spencer vouchers each, which Cooper remembers them spending on underwear.<\/p>\n
Stresses were also coming from inside the camp after Dorrington splashed out \u00a31,000 for an antique silver cup for the tournament trophy. <\/p>\n
“I wanted something that would last the time, it was just stunning and I bought it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The other three were furious at me.”<\/p>\n
While money was still a worry, the World Cup started to attract media attention, but not all of it was good, recalled rugby journalist Cooper: “We got some coverage but still only as a novelty thing. <\/p>\n
“There was quite a lot of detractors going ‘that’ll be a load of rubbish, that’ll be silly girls rolling in mud’.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 12 participating nations were initially promised that their accommodation and food would be paid for, they just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-84060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}