The IRFU is expected to discover if its bid to join Premiership Women’s Rugby is successful in the next three to four months, with a potential merger for the 2028/29 season on the cards.
Lynne Cantwell, Irish Rugby’s head of women’s strategy, says they are focused on exploring the “massive” opportunity to merge the Celtic Challenge with what she describes as the “best elite domestic league in the world”.
In April, PWR welcomed expressions of interest for expanding the current nine-team English league, with the IRFU making a combined bid along with the Welsh and Scottish unions, which could see the Celtic Challenge merge to form a British and Irish League.
“I think the opportunity is incredibly massive, when we look at the elite competition that we want our national players and emerging players to be part of,” Cantwell told RTÉ Sport.
“We’re on that journey. The opportunity to play in a cross-border competition with the Red Roses and the Scottish players and Welsh players is really significant, so it’s one we are very focused on exploring.
“It’s the best elite domestic league in the world at the moment. What we are seeing is a lot of international players to play in the English league because of that.”
If successful, the earliest timeline for a potential merger of the leagues would likely be in the 2028/29 season, but Cantwell explained there is a lot of red tape to be crossed before anything is confirmed.
Aoife Wafer of Harlequins is one of several Ireland internationals currently contracted to a PWR side
“We had to submit a huge big data dump, which took a considerable amount of time, that explored strategy, to commercials, to performance plan, to stadium access and accessibility and so on.
“We met with them, they interviewed everybody, or met with everybody to check and challenge the information, and that’s all we have at the moment.
“So we’re waiting to hear from them. What they have said is that because they’re PWR, they’re an entity who are run by shareholders, which is all the PWR clubs and the RFU as a stakeholder.
“Obviously it’s a competition that’s run in England as the RFU, and therefore the governance and sign-off behind any change takes a couple of layers and therefore we’re not going to know it for another kind of three or four months, that’s what they’ve said,” she added.
Irish Rugby have run the Celtic Challenge with the WRU and SRU since 2023, with that league so far dominated by the two Irish sides, the Clovers and Wolfhounds, the latter of whom have won the competition three years in a row.
Although the long-term ambition of the IRFU is to have four Irish provinces playing in an elite competition, a Celtic Challenge merger with the PWR would likely see the Clovers and Wolfhounds retained as the two Irish sides represented by the union.
The Clovers and Wolfhounds are selected from the pool of players based in Ireland, with the union recently confirming a list of 31 centrally contracted XV’s players, with several key players – in particular forwards – are already contracted to Premiership sides, including Aoife Wafer, Brittany Hogan, Clíodhna Moloney-MacDonald, Dorothy Wall, Sam Monaghan and Neve Jones.
“The opportunity with Ireland so close to England, and the opportunity to be part of that league is exceptional, and therefore we are very focused on exploring it.
“I think what that means for player is that she is in a great daily environment, getting great access to training, medical and all those things that she needs to put on a weekly basis, and she is playing a really intense competition, and where you are feeling into that principle of iron sharpens iron, which makes everyone better,” Cantwell said.
A record crowd of 31,294 watched Ireland defeat Scotland earlier this year
Elsewhere, the IRFU are expected to confirm the venues next week for the 2027 Guinness Women’s Six Nations, with a return to the Aviva Stadium on the cards.
Ireland host France on Saturday, 17 April, and England on Saturday, 8 May, with Dexcom Stadium and Aviva Stadium believed to be the venues the IRFU are planning to use for their two home games, after they successfully staged matches at the venues this year.
A record crowd of 9,206 watched Ireland hammer Italy in Galway in Round 2 of this year’s championship, before they smashed that attendance record in their final game when 31,294 turned up for their first ever standalone Aviva Stadium fixture, where they beat Scotland 54-5.
And Cantwell believes this year’s Aviva turnout means they will be setting a high bar next year.
“Next week, the Six Nations fixtures and locations will go out and the tickets will go on sale,” the former Ireland centre said.
“We’ll just restart our run in of eight months or six months into the Aviva. We want to go for a bigger crowd.
“We definitely want to sell out the Aviva and we want to put a timeline on that. Will we meet it? No idea. But is it possible? Absolutely, yes.”