Phillips: Player development is key

A Welsh Development side entertained the crowd at Cardiff Arms Park a fortnight ago, beating the UK Armed Forces 39-22 in a lively display of running rugby. On the weekend, Wales Women took to Edinburgh for a game against Scotland that was played behind closed doors at the Oriam sports performance centre in Edinburgh – the biggest facility of its type in Europe. 

“Both game served a similar purpose,” explained Phillips, “but where against UKAF we kept a little momentum from the World Cup in terms of selection – introducing new players as we went along – in Scotland we started with a few new faces. However, it was exactly the same thinking around what we wanted to get in both games.” 

Over the course of both fixtures, Wales fielded 14 different players: part of the coaches’ plan to blood several youngsters coming through the ranks. “We want to give them that little bit of experience. Against UKAF, our average age was 23, and for Scotland it was younger again. We’ve seen a lot of positives in these past few weeks that have reinforced our thinking around long-term planning.” 

Does he already have a Six Nations squad in mind, then? “It’s a work in progress,” he responds. “We’ve said from day one, our programme will be one of long-term planning. We want to keep continuity and structure around what we already know. That said, I don’t want us to go into every one of the Women’s Six Nations tournaments leading into the next World Cup sticking to what we know. The only way we’ll ever develop new players is by giving them opportunities.” 

There may be parallels with the men’s national squad, but Phillips recognises that his team’s advantage is that the Women’s Rugby World Cup isn’t until 2021. “That means we can really start to bring through these 17- and 18-year-olds. We’re confident that in the next three or four years we can develop a new generation of top international players.” 

Phillips references the One Programme ethos that Wales Women are cultivating: a synchronicity between fifteens and sevens. “Now that we’ve come out of the autumn window, we’ll be accelerating the sevens programme,” says Phillips. “Every girl in the programme has an opportunity to play either code, whereas in the past you might have had two separate squads, focusing on one or the other. In our mind, player development is key.”

Wales Sevens’ Sam Cross is one example of a player who has recently made the seamless transition between the two sports, gaining his first two caps in the current Under Armour Series. “That’s a fantastic achievement for Sam,” Phillips says. “He’s one of the leading sevens players in world rugby, and the bottom line is this: if you can play rugby – tackle well, pass under pressure, run hard – you can compete in either code. We simply want to develop these girls’ skills.”

Wales Women have a large training block going into next year’s Women’s Six Nations; one which culminates in a pre-competition training game at home against Ireland. Before then, Phillips says they “might look at having something in-house, perhaps having some competitive games within the squad so we can get these girls working on their skills under pressure.”