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Former Wales captain Ken Owens has hit out at the impact Welsh rugby’s radical plans could have on communities(Image: BBC Sport)<\/p>\nThe latest rugby news from Wales and around the world<\/p>\n
17:10, 06 Sep 2025Updated 17:35, 06 Sep 2025<\/p>\n
Former Wales captain Ken Owens has hit out at the impact Welsh rugby’s radical plans could have on communities(Image: BBC Sport)<\/p>\n
Here are your rugby evening headlines for Saturday, September 6.<\/p>\n
Wales World Cup campaign not a success, says former Lions star<\/p>\n
Ken Owens insists Wales Women’s World Cup campaign has not been a success despite the Welsh Rugby Union saying otherwise.<\/p>\n
Wales have lost all three games at this year’s competition<\/a> and have clearly regressed since reaching the quarter-final at the last World Cup. This is on top of finishing the recent Six Nations<\/a> with a Wooden Spoon.<\/p>\n Despite a series of poor results the WRU’s head of women’s rugby, Belinda Moore, insists it has not been a failure.<\/p>\n “You definitely can’t say they’ve failed,” Moore told BBC<\/a> Radio Wales.<\/p>\n “We are talking about a sport which is very much in the emergence.<\/p>\n “What has been brilliant about this World Cup is seeing the growth, the number of fans and the digital engagement.<\/p>\n “The stadium here is full today so I think failed is a really negative word to use.<\/p>\n “As we grow and develop so do all the other teams around us, they aren’t standing still, so the competition gets harder as teams get invested around the world.”<\/p>\n But former Wales hooker Owens took a very different view to Moore.<\/p>\n “From a growth point of view there’s more fans here and all the rest of it but from a performance point of view I don’t know what the WRU’s expectation was of this women’s team coming into this tournament,” Owens told the BBC.<\/p>\n “Perhaps they do view this as successful but three years ago in the World Cup the women’s team got to a quarter-final.<\/p>\n “For me as a Welsh person a quarter-final is the minimum standard.<\/p>\n “If that’s the expectation of the WRU – is to go out in group stages- then it’s a sad case.<\/p>\n “There has been positives in the growth of the game but as a nation and for myself as a proud Welshman for us a quarter-final is a minimum.<\/p>\n “We lost comfortably against Scotland in the first game, we lost comfortably against Canada, albeit a slightly better performance and at half-time we are down against Fiji.<\/p>\n “It depends what the expectation of the WRU is.<\/p>\n “For me from a performance point of view it hasn’t been successful.”<\/p>\n Cardiff crush Richmond to start season with a bang<\/p>\n