• The RFUW is the governing body for women's rugby - their pages are to be found from the link on the men's RFU website - the RFU website also has links for fixtures and results which includes all women's divisions. London and the SE have their own web pages (not currently being updated).
• This site endeavours to link you directly to the women's rugby page for a particular club but many of the links here are to the main club page - sometimes the link to women's rugby is obvious; other times you need a little guile and sometimes the women's teams are ignored altogether
• This page is organised by leagues, with teams in their leagues and the links to the league tables for 2011-2012 but these leagues may well be adjusted before September
• The RFUW have reorganised their league structure into three competitions which are in essence a single pyramid:
  • the Premiership with just one league for the whole of England - the team finishing bottom of the Premiership will play off against the winner of the Championship Cup
  • the Championship feeds the Premiership - it has two levels
    • the first being north and south leagues - the winners of the Championship North and Championship South leagues will playoff in the Championship Cup to find the Championship winners. There will be a minimum of one and a maximum of two sides relegated from each league at the end of the season (because the team that is relegated from the league above might go into a different league than the one that has been promoted)
    • Championship 1 is fed by a second level consisting of four regional leagues - SE, SW, Midlands and the North. Clubs winning their respective leagues will play off to be promoted to Championship 1 North and South respectively. (North v Midlands winner will go into Championship 1 North. The South East v South West winner will go into Championship 1 South). There will be a minimum of 1 side and a maximum of 2 sides relegated from each league at the end of the season. These teams will go into their regional league depending on their geographic location.
  • the National Challenge feeds the Championship - this is more complex, firstly as clubs struggle to find players (as a result, different laws apply) and secondly as women's rugby is not uniform across England and clear pyramid structure is difficult to establish. Note that there are many more clubs in the SE than in the rest of the country:
    • level one consists of three regional leagues for the North, Midlands and SE
    • level two consists of eight smaller area leagues (such as North East and North West etc)
    • level three consists of three feeder leagues from the SE

National Challenge - Level 1 play 15 a side, under 19 laws

National Challenge - Level 2 and below play 15 or 12 a side, under 19 laws

There are many clubs with women's team, not playing in the league structure. A list can be found at:

The Ladies Club Directory

All the information gathered here is public but it involves a lot of work done by myself and others. Some club sites have simply copied the links over to their own site. There's no problem with that but recognition of the origins of the material would be welcome. This site is maintained by Steve Uglow, Canterbury Rugby Club

Last updated: August 17, 2011